PhreeZone's home on the web

We dropped in an invisible fence for the dog last week and what a difference it has made! Before we had a tie out that we used for her to go potty with but she was constantly getting wrapped up around the bushes and required us to go unwrap her. That really sucked in the snow storm or when we’d put her out at 10 at night and then we had to go out and untangle her. She basically destroyed one of our bushes by wrapping it up with the cable then breaking off branches as shed try to pull free of it. We bought the Petsafe regular one from Petsmart for $150.

Here are a couple of lessons I learned:

1) Buy the Wal-mart version instead of Petsmarts. I could have saved $50 and got a better version from the same maker.
2) Use an edger to make the trench to bury the wire. A single blade width is all that is needed.
3) Use a paint stiring stick to push the cable into the trench. Its the perfect width to push it to the bottom.
4) Lay out all the wire before starting the trenching to make sure the layout is correct.
5) If you have to cross pavement or sidewalks do it at a seam and use a masonary saw to cut the groove then reseal it.
6) Leave slack as you lay out the wire. I needed an extra 5-6 feet through out the course of the whole yard due to the waves as you push the wire into the trench.

A couple of other observations I’ve noticed with the reciever.
1) Cell phone chargers can trigger the collar. She was laying in my office and I moved the cable for the charger near her and the reciever started beeping as its warning prior to activating. Not cool.
2) Long prongs are needed if the dog has thick hair.
3) Figure out where to get spare batteries from, they are a special type.

You start out looking for something like Chickadee (looking at birds in the back yard) and next thing you know you are looking at Reynolds Number. I swear looking things up on paper would be better since info would be harder to get to then just a click.

Same goes for YouTube. Start out looking at a cat joke and a few clicks later you are at a home made Guitar Hero song and someone playing it.

I was reading through some of the logs on the site just to see how people were find it and I was expecting some of the usuals like my name or even Phreezone but there are some others in the logs that are just out there.

Here is a sampling of some of the searches. If any regular readers were responcible for these please let me know.

’skydive painted bathroom floor picture’
’skydiving bathroom pic’
‘bathroom floor skydiver’
‘Home Depot + Hawaii + shower bases’
’smashed finger treatment’
‘iguana nail melter’

I did see this one also: ‘”Ted Nelson” skydive’.

Somewhat on topic I did see these that are somewhat related to my site via some of my old topics:

’skydiving photography lens’
‘x2gen rebate scam’
‘micro center rebates transaction’
‘WingSuit Dallas’
’skydiving dublin’

I used to have a link to a friends blog but she has since closed the account and has a new site that I will not link to since she does not want it cached or appearing on Google’s results as linked to her old one. It appears thats for good reason since I see this result also: ‘broccoflower blog’

Just picked up the rigs from the rigger and needed to pack the mains back into them. I now remember why I hate packing so much.

I got a little bit into photography a few years back mainly as a way to make some more money skydiving by taking stills also during my jumps. After spending over $700 on a camera body and lens that I only used for skydiving I decided that it would be nice to have a tele-photo lens in preperation for a local air show. I made the decision at that time that if I was going to spend money I was going to get the best that I could for the money.
I didn’t know much but I knew that Canan made L lenses that were to be the top of the line for quality. I saw that B&H had a refurbished 70-200L f4 lens for sale for a decent price so I decided to pick it up. I used it at the GML2007 airshow with good results but the Canon rep let me use his 100-400L and I really ended up liking it. The results were super crisp but it cost more then I wanted to spend. I then started to spend some time looking at my photos and realized that there was a lot of room for improvement in most the photos so I spent most the winter reading books about photography and got a much better understanding of photography in general and a much better understanding of apature, shutter and everything else.
Once it started to warm up a bit I got the urge to take some more photos but I quickly came to realize that I needed to have a camera bag to move cameras around to keep them safe. I shopped around and found the one that best fit my critera was over $200. $200 for a padded backpack, that is the business I need to get into. I hated spending the money but I did it and bought a Kata R-103.

Now that I have a camera and bag I realize I need a Tripod to make some shots possible. I’ve shopped around and found that the set up for the Tripod and Ball head is over $900 for the one I realy want and anther $300-400 in accesories for it. Once I realised that was out of my budget I decided on a used low end one to get started with the plans to transform that to a light stand/video/traveling tripod when I upgrade to the high end system that I want at some point.

I’m starting to see the limits to my 70-200 lens already so noy I’m looking at upgrading to another lens like the 100-400L IS or even the 400L f4 prime. Either lens is another $1500-1800. I’m also needing some flashes like the EX 580 II which are about $400 each. Once I get those I’ll probally need PocketWizards to match at $200 each. I can’t forget snoots and barndoors to light better along with some reflectors to help also. About then I’ll need to upgrade to a better body so thats another $1000-2000 on that. At this point my camera bag will be full and needs upgraded.Its a never ending cycle.

I swear next time I pick a hobby its going to be doing something for free!