Posts Tagged ‘surveillance camera’
Minor Victories
I monkeyed around with a lot of little issues yesterday, most of them related to tweaking the mounting points in the barn for my shade sail. Very few of the things I tried to accomplish were easy victories. When nothing is going smoothly, I am tempted to give up and try again some other time. I ended up doing just that.
The day started with my left foot giving me a weird feeling as I walked. It almost felt like one of the toes was missing, though I knew it wasn’t. By the end of the day, after standing on a ladder for much of the afternoon, I figured out that my foot was complaining about standing on the rung of a ladder. Maybe my foot was unhappy with my recent addition of extra weight around my middle. I had my annual physical on Tuesday and learned the actual number for my weight. We don’t have a scale at home.
I also received fresh readings for my fasting glucose and cholesterol numbers, which were both elevated compared to a year ago. It wasn’t an increase into scary territory, but since my numbers regularly fall just outside (above) the desired healthy range, they tend to get noticed by my doctor. This time, I was meeting a new doctor who agreed to take me on as a patient after my previous doctor retired. Luckily, they share very similar opinions and styles, and my elevated numbers didn’t cause him grave concern.
However, they do bother me a little bit. With Cyndie’s support, since she prepares our breakfasts and dinners, I am renewing an effort to control my blood test results by diet and exercise. We are targeting a cholesterol-lowering, heart-healthy menu. The challenge will be, as it has always been, maintaining this effort for longer than a week or two.
It is way too easy to fall back into old eating patterns.
For all the issues that put up a struggle the whole day through yesterday, there were a few others that went my way. For some reason, I couldn’t get a picture from our surveillance camera down at the barn. Simply cycling power to the camera was all that it took to remedy that situation. Also, while I was up on a ladder in the barn, I found myself in reach of an LED lightbulb that was failing.
During a trip to the house, I asked Cyndie if she remembered where we stowed the box of spare bulbs. She found it on the first try, and soon I had a good bulb installed in place of the old one.
Minor victories.
Trail Shots
That visible trail of wildlife traffic coming onto our property from the north that I thought might be a fox might have been used by a fox at one time, but that is not what is making the path so well established. I staged our trail camera to face the direction and look down to where the traffic was passing beneath our fence.
This is what the camera captured Thursday afternoon through Friday morning, the last image happening about a half-hour ahead of the morning walk with Asher when I retrieved the memory card and turned off the camera:
The time stamps add a lot to the story of this overnight activity. The raccoon photos started at 6:35 p.m. and then at 12:38 a.m., 4:32 a.m., and 6:03 a.m. These are just a partial selection of the raccoon traffic that was happening all night long. Interestingly, there was only a tiny percentage of pictures showing raccoons going in the other direction, leaving our property.
I have noticed raccoons living in a few of our trees, but I had no idea how many are roaming around in the woods all night. Since they likely evade coyotes by climbing trees, their main predator is probably automobile traffic. There’s not a lot of traffic on the roads in the countryside during the hours raccoons are wandering around, and there are more acres of woods than roads, so I can understand how the number of raccoons could get high.
Maybe we should offer hunters an invitation to spend time in our woods controlling the population. A quick search turned up coonskin caps on sale for almost a hundred dollars each. I could post an ad that I’ve got a lot of raccoon fur that I’m willing to give away for free. Interested parties just have to catch the wild raccoons themselves.
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Mia’s Malaise
Someone left the freezer door open on the planet, and our air is feeling rather Arctic again. Yesterday morning, I took some pictures of Mix because her eyelashes looked like she was wearing white mascara.
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It stayed cold all day, but the sun was shining, and the horses all appeared to be coping with it as well as they usually do. However, when we showed up to serve the second feeding of the day as the sun was setting, Mia wasn’t her typical self. As the other three moved into position near the overhang, Mia stood motionless, facing out toward the hay field.
We called out a few invitations to join us, but she showed no interest. When all the buckets were hung and the other three horses were eating, Cyndie started toward Mia, and Mia turned to make her way slowly up. It’s not uncharacteristic that the other horses display some attitude toward Mia but it doesn’t ever seem fair that they emphatically dis her when she obviously doesn’t feel well.
Mix would not leave Mia alone as Mia was headed toward her bucket of grains, so Cyndie unclipped the bucket and held it for Mia to eat, which she slowly did without her normal zest. Thinking the cold might be getting to her, we got her blanket out and she let us cover her up without a fuss. The lack of objection is also unusual.
What bothered me the most was how she simply stood in place when I finally moved the bucket back to her placemat. She showed no energy and no sign of wanting to eat hay for the internal warmth it would provide.
When we got back to the house, Cyndie checked with Johanne, our handler from “This Old Horse” and she recommended a dose of Banamine. Cyndie and I headed back down and administered the pain reliever, which Mia accepted without complaint. I wondered, “Where’d the Mia I used to know go?”
It was sad to see her so lifeless. I adjusted the camera on the spot where she remained standing so we could keep an eye on her. It didn’t take long before I noticed she had disappeared from view. I eased the camera around and found her eating from a hay bag.
She was back!
We followed the horses for most of the evening on the surveillance camera and saw Mia eating hay a good percentage of the time. To our surprise, we also picked up 3 or 4 small canines (foxes? coyotes? too hard to discern) romping around. Didn’t seem to bother the horses.
Based on the tracks frequently visible in the paddock, I suspect they visit often enough that the horses are unperturbed by the activity.
Now, due to an even colder weather forecast for next week, we plan to blanket the other three horses very soon. Hopefully, Mia will be feeling better by the time that test of stamina gets here.
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Imaginary Problem
When something’s not right, does your mind wander toward the worst-case scenario? Mine did last night. Yesterday, we were “gifted” with a rain shower that would have been perfectly normal in the month of May. Unfortunately for me, it was the 27th day of December in a location that used to get snow instead of rain during the winter. Harumph.
I pulled up the images from our surveillance cameras and found nothing but a black screen from the barn view. It was late and rainy, and I didn’t want to trudge down to investigate, so I imagined what the problem might be. One possibility I came up with was that water had infiltrated my protective cover over the wiring to the camera and shorted out either the power or signal lines.
The other much worse possibility was that the remaining power line to the barn had failed, and the whole barn had lost electricity. That meant no lights and, more importantly, no heat on the water fountain for the horses. I would need to run a temporary cable from the shop and somehow hang it over the driveway high enough so delivery trucks wouldn’t snag it.
The moment this morning when I flipped the light switches up, my heart skipped a beat, but the lights came on, to our great relief. Also, a green indicator light on the camera showed it still had power. Hooray!
I unplugged the power to the camera for a minute or two to reset it and solved the problem with minimal effort. So much for my fatalistic imagination.
We continue to be blanketed by a thick fog that has the poor horses on edge because they can’t see the horizon to scan for threats.
Yesterday, there was still some ice in Paddock Lake, but it was all water this morning and topped to the brim.
I sure wish the warming climate was an imaginary problem. Maybe if we unplug insatiable greed and constantly increasing demands for land and air travel in fossil fuel-powered vehicles, we can reset things. Hahahaha!
I made myself laugh.
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More Damage
Of all the things we learned from Pam and John when we arrived home, the last thing I anticipated was a report of more damage to the paddock fence.
If you inspect that image you should be able to find that the top board of the wooden plank fence to the left of the gate opening is missing. That board was broken completely in half and the screws holding it to the posts were ripped loose. In addition to that, the high-tensile wire that was strung above the top board was also broken.
The power to the electric fence had been turned off while we were away and I will need to repair that break before we can energize the wires again. It occurred to me that having the electricity off for such a long time may have allowed the horses to show less respect for the fence. Still, the mystery remains about what precipitated the dramatic actions on two different occasions to trigger the horses bashing the barriers they’ve tolerated for all the years they’ve been here until now.
One factor I am considering, beyond the fact they were initially being kept off the pasture (while we anticipated the arrival of hay-cutting equipment), is that the four horses were separated in twos, split between the two paddocks. We did that to make it easier on our horsesitters at feeding times.
Now that Cyndie and I were home, I was able to remove the barrier between the two paddocks after they finished eating late yesterday afternoon. It didn’t take long for the horses to move across to the side they had been kept from for the last ten days. I stood and watched as the horses explored and surveyed the grounds “on the other side of the fence.”
There was a lot of sniffing and some brief grazing as each horse patrolled the space that had previously been out of reach. Mia laid down to roll in the dusty dirt.
We tried to look for video recorded by the camera mounted off the overhang but couldn’t see any evidence it was being saved. It looks like it is programmed to record so my troubleshooting will look toward the format of the memory card and the instructions about the path (network address) where the files are to be saved. This exercise may require the expertise of my primary technical consultant, our son, Julian.
Pam and John did report hearing coyotes but that is not an unusual sound whatsoever in these parts so we don’t think that would explain Swings or Light suddenly damaging fences. I did hear some fireworks after dark last night but that is also not that unusual. I put the camera view up on our TV in the bedroom and observed their behavior during the “pop-pop-popping.”
They looked to be aware of the situation and paying attention to the surroundings but weren’t showing any signs of being particularly anxious or upset by the noise.
While I am mowing grass today I will be pondering my options for trying to bend the metal gate flat again. It may be a fool’s errand, but I figure I might at least improve the spacing between the bars where it got opened quite a bit. If that doesn’t work, we’ll probably end up shopping for a replacement.
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It Snowed!
Around the time we headed out to feed the horses in the late afternoon yesterday, it was beginning to drizzle. By the time we finished, the precipitation was changing over to sleet. After our dinner, snow was beginning to collect on the ground.
When Cyndie took Asher outside for one last pee, she said the snow was pelting them and it was very sticky underfoot.
I turned on the barn camera to check the view:
Those flakes were falling straight down.
A couple of hours later, the snow was floating around a little more:
At bedtime last night, there was already about an inch piling up on the deck railings. From the way the radar looked at that time, I’m expecting we will have received the upper end of the predicted 3 to 4 inches by this morning.
It was even snowing up in Hayward, where we will be this weekend. Another week after that, the annual American Birkebeiner ski race will happen. It has been significantly modified in length and route due to the snowless winter.
It’s not like a real winter but with any instances of accumulating snowfall, it sort of rhymes with winter for a short time.
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Remote Viewing
We are getting so much pleasure out of being able to see and hear what the horses are up to from the cozy confines of our house.
Horses are incredible creatures. These four beautiful mares bring a special energy to our property. Standing with them provides its own reward but I’m noticing that experience becoming enhanced by the opportunities to look in on them between visits and see their behaviors when no people are around.
I was thinking maybe we would watch streaming television series less often now that we can view our horses, but in reality, we can easily peek in on them during commercial breaks or between episodes. People are constantly multitasking because we always have mobile computerized devices within reach.
After watching the Golden Globe Awards Show last night, our list of things we’d like to see grew by a surprising number of titles. When winter weather doesn’t provide conditions for the usual outdoor entertainment, movies and TV series become a cozy alternative.
That is… an alternative when we’re not reading books, listening to music, baking in the kitchen, assembling jigsaw puzzles, or out walking Asher.
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No Worse
Things being “no worse” is not a ringing endorsement of happiness but I’m claiming it as a victory. There was no sign of water on the floor in the laundry room one day after Cyndie had cleaned it all up. Instead of blindly calling any plumber to help us diagnose a potential problem with the water softener, I figured I should at least try to learn enough about it to discuss its functions.
In searching online for a manual, I learned of a company in Red Wing that services our model. Without needing to see it in person, a plumber talked me through testing the “regen” operations over the phone. At each step, he could tell me where to look for the possibility of leaking water.
The good news is that by his analysis, the softener was unlikely to be the source of the leak. The bad news is we are now even more confused about where the water had come from to soak all our throw rugs. The plumber offered his thoughts about other possible causes, but nothing definitive came of it. For now, we are hovering in an observation mode and not returning any rugs to the floor.
Asher kept busy by familiarizing himself with a new pull-apart toy Elysa gave him for Christmas. I think he’s getting the hang of it.
My project for the ethernet cabling to the Wi-Fi repeater faired much better than being labeled, “no worse.” I reviewed the wiring in the last connector I crimped, using a magnifying glass, and deemed it visibly faultless. That led me to dig deeper into the software initialization of the hardware.
In a phone conversation with Julian, we were making our way through the connections and I climbed up to look one more time at the original router and associated hardware on top of the desk shelf in the den. The answer appeared right before my eyes. I had failed to plug in an RJ45 connector that I had disconnected when testing the attic cabling.
2024 is already looking better for us on day 3.
After succeeding with the repeater, my next step shifted to getting the camera mounted and connected to AC power down at the barn. I was thrilled to find the horses curious but not the least bit disturbed by my showing up with unfamiliar tools, making potentially scary sounds, and focusing on my task when they were expecting me to be serving feed for them.
I couldn’t finish last night, but completing the camera installation should be in reach today. Although, I am beyond committing myself to actually reaching such a goal.
At this point, I’m leaning toward seeking to make things ‘no worse’ for two days in a row. I’m on a roll!
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End Near
On the last day of the year 2023, I was considering looking back through the images in my blog library to review what happened in our lives in the last 12 months. I couldn’t finish a scan through the images because the pictures stopped loading for some unknown reason.
That’s similar to my attempt to complete the installation of our new WiFi repeater cabling yesterday. I couldn’t finish because icy conditions kept me off the roof.
In the morning the heavy frost made the shingles way too slippery so I concentrated on the indoor work. Later in the day, a freezing mist started to fall on top of the frost that hadn’t dissipated. This morning there is a fraction of an inch of snow on top of the icy substrate.
Yesterday, I spent some contorted hours in the attic, balancing in a crouch on angled trusses to route a length of ethernet cable from one side to another. I drilled holes to give mice another couple of potential access points where the cable passes through wall and ceiling boards.
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I plugged the camera in to test my new connections and verified everything worked. The portion remaining involves drilling through the log wall at the peak of the loft ceiling to bring the cable from the repeater inside. Then I need to seal around that cable to prevent mice and bats from taking this new opening as an invitation to come live with us.
Today, I may putter about devising the mount for the camera down at the barn if the roof of the house remains overly hazardous.
I’m hoping the project doesn’t end up waiting until spring like the plan appears to have for digging up the electric supply wires to the barn.
I hope the theme of ‘not finishing’ doesn’t define the year ending today. Without the benefit of reviewing the year in my blog images, this is what comes to mind about the odd-numbered year, 2023:
We spent much of the winter months focused on Cyndie’s convalescence from her ankle reconstruction the previous November. She was functional enough to travel to Puerto Rico in April. In May, we adopted Asher. I did my annual bike trip in June. We made it up to the lake as much as possible through summer. As fall approached, we got the shoulders of the driveway professionally graded and then did the raking and grass seed planting ourselves. Finally, Cyndie opted to go for one more surgery on her ankle and had the metal hardware removed now that the bones had healed.
This morning a meteorologist on the radio announced this December has been the warmest since measurements started being recorded in the 1870s.
We have obviously reached the end of 2023 but I doubt we’ve seen the end of the warming climate’s effects.
Like we always do, I expect we’ll cope one day at a time and respond to whatever 2024 brings with as much love as we can muster.
Celebrate safely tonight all you wild and crazy people! Happy last day of 2023!
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Camera Progress
The testing phase of adding a WiFi surveillance camera to view the horses was completed successfully yesterday. Julian figured out that I needed to get a newer version of the camera software that would recognize the serial number of our new camera. After we installed that fix, the rest of the process went pretty smoothly.
With a cable strung out of a cracked open window in the den and the repeater lying on the roof, we set the camera on a step ladder by the paddock fence.
Swings appeared to supervise the strange activity of us setting up boards teetering in the ladder and stringing extension cords for power.
It worked! Julian selected a camera with pan and tilt features so we will be able to adjust the view to monitor the waterer and portion of both fields as well as the hay shed and driveway. He also used his coding skills to demonstrate a potential option that Cyndie exclaimed would keep her endlessly watching from the comfort of our bed.
We’ll be able to watch the horses on our televisions. The sound of snorting horses reverberated through our subwoofer to our great delight. It’s almost like being there!
Now if we could feed and clean up after them remotely, we could stay in bed all day! Oh, except we also have a dog.
Never mind.
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Relative Something 