Let's Talk With Bill G Awhile

[Woodwackr]

Mostly DEAD!.........well some got away.

All joking aside I really do not know. There are millions of subjects I am clueless on and insect identification is one. They appear to be some sort of a Hornet. The head and tail seem to be black and white with the body being black. I am going to "bug" one of our Illinois or Iowa Extension folks next week and see what they say. My gut is they are just simple Hornets.



View attachment 423577View attachment 423577

Yup, Hornet

 

[Wilhelm]

This them?
I Google Lens-ed Your picture

 

[full chizel]

The baldfaced hornets are the spawn of satan. Them MFers are about as evil as they get.

 

[Wilhelm]

 

[Bill G]

If You can get a clearer more close up picture You can try searching it through Google Lens.
I am having decent search results looking up bugs and grubs.

I will see what I can do but I am cheap and have a cheap $20 "smartphone".

 

[Wilhelm]

I will see what I can do but I am cheap and have a cheap $20 "smartphone".

No need for another picture, I successfully Googled the one You posted.
Baldfaced Hornets they are/were.

And, You don't have a cheap smartphone.
You have a smart cheapphone!

 

[Bill G]

I have a bad history with phones. I got my first "cell phone" in 1992. It was a car phone or bag phone that plugged into the cigar lighter. You had to have an antenna on the roof of your vehicle. You also had to keep a book of roaming codes if you wanted to call any distance. It cost $150 to buy and $15 per month for service. I believe the per minute charge was $0.75. Well I was mostly driving a Mercury Cougar at the time and it had a sunroof. I came home late one night and never shut the sunroof. It rained that night and the phone got wet. It still worked but the #4 button did not. My Dad's number was 3141, Grandma was 3184, and I am sure my brother's number had a 4 in it. Those were the only numbers I called because I just used it for when I was in a pickle. The phone was useless.

Later my Father, who never could figure out how to even play a VCR tape, bought a cell phone from US Cellular. I was floored when he did it but by gosh he figured it out. Of course it was a flip phone and he did good with it. I still never had one as I did not see the need. Well one day I was leaving to mow hay at the neighbors and he gave me his phone. We had an old New Holland mower conditioner that was prone to issues. He was headed to the house to watch the the Busch Race so if I needed something I could call the house phone. Well I put the phone in the chest pocket of my bib overalls and took off. I plugged the mower a few times and had to crawl around unplugging it. I finished the field, went to his place to put the equipment away. He was getting ready to head to the dirt track that night and of course needed his phone. I reached up to my chest on the bibs and my heart sank into my bung hole. It was gone. I immediately took off on the wheeler back to the field. I was hoping it had fallen out where I plugged up and was laying there. Well I found it smashed to chit as it had went through the rollers. I took it back up to him and said well I have your phone but I don't think you will be making any calls tonight. He actually laughed a bit and said "damn good thing I bought the insurance plan"

I went for years without a phone. I am guessing around 2004 or so I bought a cheap TracFone flip phone. It was exactly $10.69 including tax and it came with 30 minutes of talk time. I did use it some and had to buy airtime cards but they were reasonable. The beauty of that cheap flip phone was I have a nasty habit of washing phones. I tended to leave them in my pocket and toss my pants or bibs in the washer. Phones do not withstand the Kenmore wash cycle. Of course I kept a landline at the time so I relied on it until I got a new flip phone from Wally World for $10.69.

Over the years I made fun of folks with "smartphones" I told them to put the damn thing down and pick up a real phone. Well as things changed I had to embrace the future and my landline went away. My brother was cleaning the road ditch and destroyed the phone stantion. The phone company refused to fix it because I was the only one with a landline or their DSL internet that was serviced by it. It was obvious I needed a smartphone. On December 31, 2021 I entered the modern world of phones and damn I am happy I did!! I knew nothing about phones but I went to US Cellular and told them I needed a cheap phone that was easy to use for a idiot like me. They sold me a Motorola android of some sort. The phone was about $60 and the service was $33.10/month. It is still the same today. Well of course I was too cheap to buy a case and I dropped the phone cracking the screen. It was still usable though until Saturday October 29, 2022. One week earlier I had an accident at home and torched my feet and legs. I needed to go to a burn unit but the ER doc would not send me. I spent a week at home in agony. I was planning on going back to the ER the next day and not leaving until I was sent to a burn unit. I wanted to get all my trash burned and clean up a bit as I knew I would be gone a while. I was burning trash in the burn barrel and had my phone in my chest pocket of my bibs again. Well I bent down and there went the phone right into the burn barrel. Now at this point I am royally screwed as I have no communication. I took off on the wheeler hoping to find my son or brother somewhere. Luckily I saw my son on the road. He drove me to US Cellular and I got a new phone for $16 and change. I later dropped that one on the concrete in the warehouse and used it until I could get a new one. The new one was around $35 and change.

Yeah I dropped the new one also but she is like a Timex......just keeps ticking

 

[LAWN BOY]

On the topic of phones…
I think it’s ridiculous how parents buy their kids phones when they aren’t even in middle school yet. I didn’t get my phone until 7th grade and it was only because I was working for a guy down the road a lot, and I often pay for the card/plan myself.
My dad has very bad luck with phones. He breaks them constant, he lost one in a river. Another he dropped on concrete 3 times. Another he smash in the process of closing the trunk on one of his old Ford Tauruses.

 

[Bill G]

................Another he smash in the process of closing the trunk on one of his old Ford Tauruses.

You see that shows the quality of a Ford.
Had he closed the trunk of a Chevy on his phone the phone would have been fine and the Chevy trunk lid would have fallen off.

 

[Boomer2230]

I don't own a cell phone. House has a land line. No cell service here.
Satellite internet.

 

[jblnut]

Years back I took a bunch of old disc blades and welded a piece of angle iron to them and screwed a 2x4 on. I then attached some cheap Menards prebuilt fences to them and put them around an area in the yard to create a fenced in play area for our then much smaller kiddos. It worked GREAT until it came time to move them. We moved one or two and then Mama Bear and I each grabbed a different one and out came a swarm of some sort of angry ground bees from each of them. The house door was open and the little bastards got inside the house so even when we and the kiddos ran into the house screaming bloody murder they still got us. Damn that was a long afternoon !!

Edit: my memory of the event always goes to the kiddos reactions but I ended up in the hospital that night once they were in bed. I puffed up and struggled to breathe once I laid down in bed. If memory serves me correct I got stung 35-40 times and reacted in a suboptimal manner. I now have a bee sting pen in the house and shop if it happens again.

 

[Bill G]

I don't own a cell phone. House has a land line. No cell service here.
Satellite internet.

I do not have a landline phone
I do not have satellite service of any type
I do have a 9ft dish but after 30 years it still cannot get a signal.....I am still hoping though.
My radio cost me $10 and has a piece of baling wire sticking out of it.
My TV .......well that damn thing cost $900 from Best Buy in 2008 but that was a one time purchase.
I have a "smartphone" from US Cellular and the total monthly bill is $33.10 including fees and tax.
My wireless internet is through T-Mobile and is $50 including all fees and taxes.
My home electric bill is currently $25.40.

 

[Boomer2230]

Lots off free channels on the big dish. Ku band.

 

[Bill G]

Back in the 1980's I had a buddy that had a big dish and a Videocipher II descrambler. It was a illegal one and he got every single channel for free including the early pay-per-view events. Lots of great weekend nights spent there with a few buddies and brews................a few females mixed in

 

[Boomer2230]

It started there and then we had dish, direct, and bell wide open in the 2000's.

I had alot of toys back then.

 

[Bill G]

In college since we lived above an auto parts store in town we could get cable. It was $9 but hell our power bill was $19 so that was a lot of money and the bar across the street had 50 cent draws. Later when I took a teaching job in Iowa we rented a farmhouse. I was accustomed to watching NASCAR so I had to get "Primestar" The first winter my wife and I realized how piss poor Iowa took care of their rural roads. We were from Illinois where all our roads are gravel and dirt and taken care of. She was working at a hog farm and got stuck too many times. We then bought a house in town and cable was $19. A few years later we moved back to my farm in Illinois and got Dish Network. Yeah at the end the "bundle" of internet, phone and TV was well over $200 a month. Screw that!

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

First I like Bill, when I've had a question and sent a PM he's always been quick to provide a useful, accurate answer. Second, as i recall he did challenge some people on AS, but if I wasn't interested I skipped past the banter easy enough. The bottom line is from my perspective he's a good guy with a lot of life experience.

While we're on the topic of banning people, I fall into that category. A few of you think I'm from the city, but i grew up in the middle of farmland. We grew most of our own vegetables and canned a year and a little more worth every Fall. We slaughtered chickens and ducks, and the chest freezer held them and the deer we ate. We heated with wood and helping my dad is how I became interested in saws and axes, and thanks to members here I've learned and acquired enough to enjoy maintaining my family's land. I don't have a TV and instead stay busy with hobbies like saws and axes, and maybe like them a bit too much, but they save so much time and effort it's hard not to.

I also think different than others, blessing or curse it's how I was born. For example I planted hedge apples, and if maintained every two years they become pretty nice trees. While that kind of thinking combined with a passion for (pretty much everything in life) rubs some the wrong way it's not my intention.

Anyway, thanks for the education and a few saws and axes I really appreciate, here and elsewhere.

 

[Bill G]

First I like Bill, when I've had a question and sent a PM he's always been quick to provide a useful, accurate answer. Second, as i recall he did challenge some people on AS, but if I wasn't interested I skipped past the banter easy enough. The bottom line is from my perspective he's a good guy with a lot of life experience.

While we're on the topic of banning people, I fall into that category. A few of you think I'm from the city, but i grew up in the middle of farmland. We grew most of our own vegetables and canned a year and a little more worth every Fall. We slaughtered chickens and ducks, and the chest freezer held them and the deer we ate. We heated with wood and helping my dad is how I became interested in saws and axes, and thanks to members here I've learned and acquired enough to enjoy maintaining my family's land. I don't have a TV and instead stay busy with hobbies like saws and axes, and maybe like them a bit too much, but they save so much time and effort it's hard not to.

I also think different than others, blessing or curse it's how I was born. For example I planted hedge apples, and if maintained every two years they become pretty nice trees. While that kind of thinking combined with a passion for (pretty much everything in life) rubs some the wrong way it's not my intention.

Anyway, thanks for the education and a few saws and axes I really appreciate, here and elsewhere.

I appreciate that.

I do need to send you a better and more detailed explanation on the cutting board question. Now this is going to sound disrespectful but It is not meant to be in the least. I would like to draw you a picture of what I was trying to explain. I used to draw out all types of things in AutoCad but I just got the 2025 version and I am dumbfounded by it. I was used to using 2002 and 2006. I am totally lost. I drew a simple puller the other night and it took well over an hour and still looked like crap.

 

[hacskaroly]

I started using AutoCAD in 1985 in school, drafting was converting from paper to computer. I started back up with it in 2012 and oh my was it different!!

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

I appreciate that.

I do need to send you a better and more detailed explanation on the cutting board question. Now this is going to sound disrespectful but It is not meant to be in the least. I would like to draw you a picture of what I was trying to explain. I used to draw out all types of things in AutoCad but I just got the 2025 version and I am dumbfounded by it. I was used to using 2002 and 2006. I am totally lost. I drew a simple puller the other night and it took well over an hour and still looked like crap.

Thanks Bill, I appreciate that. I didn't attempt putting in the groove yet because of the risk...
---
I prefer AutoCAD 2014 for 2-D, it's enough without being "too much." I used to use it for 3-D but redesign work took darn near forever.

I switched to FreeCAD and manually save multiple files by revision number because it can be a little flakey at times, but parametric modeling is far better (once I got the hang of design order). The TCO is far less too.



(the smaller cutting board, full-size banana for scale)