Timothy Yordy

I’ve posted a detailed description of the construction of our chicken coop. Also we’ve got six more chicks now. For details on both please visit this post: The Chicken Coop.

I have finished major construction on the chicken coop, which means that there are some smaller details that need completed but it’s finished enough for the chickens to move in. In case any of my readers are interested in building their own coop, I wanted to give a step by step of how I made mine.

I figured on four square feet per bird which is a bit generous but I figured it would give me a little extra room if we ever wanted a few more birds. So I made the coop 4 ft x 8 ft but that what I didn’t think about was that that would be the outside dimension and the finished inside dimensions would be a bit less. Not a big deal though.

This was the location we chose. It made the most sense as far as the trees and the adjacent building providing some shade in the summer time as well as serving as windbreaks in the winter. It was certainly not the easiest location to work with though.

The first step was to put in a level foundation. This was probably one of the most frustrating aspects of the entire building process. Working with uneven ground, having to chop through tree roots and using a tiny little level was not fun at all. The blocks are not mortared together and not not concreted in the ground. I wanted to be able to move the coop with relative ease should be decide on a different location at another time. Eventually I got all four corners mostly level, and came to a point where I said, “It’s just a chicken coop.”  This phrase would be uttered many times as construction continued.

The floor was made up of 4 x 4’s around the outside edge and as a center support and 2 x 4’s in the interior. I cut the ends of the 4 x 4’s with 2 inch deep and four inch long grooves so that each piece would fit into the other. Not completely necessary but I think it adds a bit of strength to the building.

Framing was relatively easy. The front wall is 6 ft high and the back wall is 5 ft high. The coop certainly didn’t need to be this tall but being able to walk inside of it should the need arise is going to be nice. The rafters are 6 ft long, so they stick out a foot in the front and back. This is for a little bit of weather protection. Had I thought of it I would have had the roof stick out a foot on each end as well.

This is a view of the back of the mostly finished coop. Eventually there will be a hatch in the back that can be opened to reach in and get eggs from the nesting boxes. Eventually there will also be nesting boxes. The metal on the roof was leftover from 25 years ago when the metal was used for the sides of the adjacent building so it matches nicely.

The window is slightly off center. That is because we decided to use a different sized window after I had already framed the building and had to move a stud to accomodate the new window. The smart thing to do would have been to move the studs on either side an equal amount, but it’s just a chicken coop. The nice thing about this window though is that it opens outward. The lines of white stuff on the walls is silicone caulk. As you can see I started using thin strips of aspenite on the wall as I started to run out of wood. Not all the cuts were completely tight so the silicone is to fill in the gaps. The foamy stuff up at the roof line is that stuff that’s meant to fill in small gaps in houses. I was at the end of my construction knowledge and didn’t know how to do soffit properly so we just filled in the holes with that stuff. The result is a bit ugly, but it’s just a chicken coop.

This is the interior. I have a low temporary roost for our little chickens. Once they’re bigger I’ll build them something proper. I have chicken wire over the window on the inside to prevent escapees and to keep predators out.

And there’s our chicks, complete with six little ones that were given to us. The large ones are our buff orpingtons, the little ones we don’t know what they are. I also put chicken wire in front of the door so they don’t run out when we are taking care of them.

There you have it. That’s my chicken coop. It’s far from perfect but it was fairly cheap compared to some others I’ve seen and it was pretty easy to build. A coat of paint and a few things like roosts and nesting boxes and it will be complete. I hope this is helpful to others who are starting their chicken journeys. Don’t worry too much about perfection and try to keep in mind one thing: It’s just a chicken coop.

It’s a great time to own an Xbox, Playstation 2, or Gamecube because the games are dirt cheap on the internet, and to some extent in local stores though you need to search harder for bargains when buying locally. Four years ago I bought an Xbox. At the time the price was $150. I then bought two games at $45 each and an extra controller which I think was about $30 at the time. All told I spent more than $250 initially. Those first two games were Star Wars Episode III, which is pretty terrible, and Madden NFL 2006, which I have played extensively.

That was the end of my video game buying though. I couldn’t afford any more games and my disappointment in the Star Wars game made me leary of investing more money in the Xbox. And so it sat barely used until recently when I discoverd that Xbox games were being sold for next to nothing on sites like Amazon. Sure the games might be four or five years old but they are new to me.

So I’ve compiled a list of the best Xbox games available for the cheapest prices through Amazon. And if you don’t have a system yet those are cheap too, going for about $50.

The Best Xbox Games for a Fraction of the Original Price

1. Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge - great flight sim game. Best Price: $0.49
2. Elder Scrolls III Morrowind - an epic RPG. Best Price: $1.71
3. Halo: Combat Evolved - the shooter that defined the Xbox. Best Price: $3.38
4. Evil Dead: Regeneration - the best mindless zombie thrashing game you can find. Best Price: $4.08
5. Fable - Another good RPG. Best Price: $4.43
6. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - This is an RPG set in the Star Wars universe and unlike so many other Start Wars games, this one is actually good. Best Price: $10.50
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – This the best game in the GTA series. Best Price: $5.87
8. Far Cry Instincts - Another great shooter. Best Price: $1.71
9. TimeSplitters 2 - Shooting things and blowing stuff up across time, what’s not to like. Best Price: $1.83
10. Mercenaries - Sort of like GTA but with slightly less dubious morality involved. Best Price: $3.94
11. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3 - This is a good port of the PC version of one of the best tactical shooters. Best Price: $0.01
12. Lego Star Wars - Good lego fun in the Star Wars universe, what’s not to like? Best Price: $4.94
13. Half Life 2 - It’s like Half-Life but with a 2 in the title. Best Price: $0.25
14. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - One of the best RPGs on the Xbox. Best Price: $2.20
15. Burnout 3 Takedown - Had to include a racing game and what better than one with ridiculous crashes? Best Price: $2.60

There you have it, you could add 15 of the best Xbox games to your collection for $47.83. That’s what one game would have cost you a few years ago but now those of us who just aren’t cool enough to own a new system can get endless hours of gaming pleasure for a fraction of the original cost. Go buy yourself some cheap games and enjoy your outdated video game system, I know I’m enjoying mine.

I finally got my peeps yesterday, eight Buff Orpington chickens. They all appear to be healthy and are pretty fun to watch. Our son really likes watching them too. Now comes the hard part, I’ve actually got to build the coop. Once I get started on it, I will post pictures of the design and my progress.

In other news we got the garden planted today. This is year number four of our attempts at gardening. I’m thinking that this one will be our most successful yet. And since every previous year has been a near disaster, it won’t take much for this year to be an improvement.

This video was in response to someone telling me I ought to bite the head off of a real chicken…obviously that’s not something I would do.

Best Buy announced Monday that they would be making changes to their in store compensation for sales associates and effectively halving the income of 8000 employees. This move has drawn comparisons to Circuit City who two years ago made a similar move in firing higher paid sales staff and replacing them with lowered paid employees. That move drew public criticism and resulted in lower sales due to having stores staffed by workers who cared little about customer service anymore. Everyone knows how that story ended of course, two years later and Circuit City is out of business. Someone at Best Buy thought to themselves, “Wow that seems like a really great way to save money!” and so the cycle begins again.

            However I don’t think things are that simple. Apparently everyone thinks that things will just be peachy because of how much the employees like the new CEO. Seriously? I work in retail so I’m no stranger to corporations being completely out of touch with what it’s like to work in a store and what the employees in stores actually care about. But how can they be so naïve as to think that the employees love the CEO, who already makes about 1000 times as much as them, so much that they won’t care that he gave the order to cut their pay in half? If this past election cycle taught us anything it’s that the Democrats did a wonderful job of leveraging the idea of class warfare to get votes and right now is not a good time to be seen as a big CEO that is treading all over the little guy.

            There is of course more going on here however. This is about saving money sure but not in the way that they are describing. This move by Best Buy is being driven by fear that the so-called Employee Free Choice Act might pass. If it does then workers will have a much easier time unionizing. Best Buy knows this and so they have made the decision to cut wages so drastically before the bill passes so that if it does pass, then they will be dealing with union employees starting out from much lower pay scales. The flip side of this of course is that those 8,000 employees are now much more likely to be disgruntled and join a union. The execs at Best Buy must have reasoned it out though and thought that that was an inevitability either way if the Employee Free Choice Act passes.

            If the bill doesn’t pass then Best Buy has saved themselves some money but only time will tell if they suffer the same drop in sales productivity and public backlash that Circuit City encountered.

            For you employees at Best Buy that this has affected please call your Democrat Senators and Representatives and thank them for bowing down to the big union lobbyists and pushing this bill. The Employee Free Choice Act hasn’t even passed yet and it has cost you half of your income.

For those of you who have found this website through links on various websites  or through search engines, welcome and  I hope you stick around for a bit and enjoy the articles I’ve written.

If you’ve come here from one of my other websites then much of the content here is already familiar to you. Timothyyordy.com is an attempt to simplify and streamline my web efforts and gather all of my content into one place. My hope is that doing in doing so I will be better able to focus my efforts into things that are more impactful than perhaps some of my websites have been in the past.

All of my archived articles from other blogs have been copied to this new domain but some of the content still needs to be created so bear with me.

Thanks for stopping by

-Tim

I’ve been a fan of the pop/rock group the Newsboys for nearly 15 years. During that time period there have been a few lineup changes but none quite as important as the latest one.

Frontman, Peter Furler, the only original band member remaining, is stepping down as lead singer. Taking his place will be Michael Tait. Most recently a solo artist and previously a member of the vocal group dcTalk, Tait will certainly take some getting used to for long time Newsboys fans.

It was just about two years ago when bassist Phil Joel left the band and was replaced in concerts by programmed bass rhythms. I’m not sure if Joel should feel honored that they couldn’t find anyone to replace him, or insulted that he was replaced by a computer. Joel’s absence left a pretty large hole in the form of some really great backing vocals which the other members were never really able to duplicate.

Now Peter Furler has decided to hang up his touring boots and be a studio only band member with occasional stage appearances. I can respect wanting to stay at home with your family after 20 years of touring but I have to wonder what is in it for the other band members? Furler intends to stay at home and collects royalties from the songs he writes while the others spend several months a year on the road doing the hard work of the music business. I should note though that Furler’s excellent songwriting is what has fueled much of the band’s success.

To me, the timing of this decision just feels all wrong. The band is in the middle of a tour, which fans have already bought tickets to, and now they are going to be getting quite a different concert than they expected. Tait has a much different vocal style and stage persona than Furler. I saw Tait in concert a couple years ago and walked out halfway through. He’s not bad, he’s just not interesting on stage. Also, if Tait was able to successfully fill concert venues on his own, then he wouldn’t be looking for a job as another band’s lead singer. I’m just not sure what he brings to the table.

The Newsboys have a new album that is releasing on May 5th entitled, In The Hands of God. Furler sings every song on the album. Again, the timing of all of this just feels wrong. Why do this now? Why not wait until the album is released? Or better yet they could re-record a couple of the vocal tracks with Tait singing lead so that he could be introduced to the fans. With Tait being absent from this new album it will likely be a full two years before anything is recorded in the studio with Tait’s vocals.

All of this makes me wonder if this is the beginning of a fast downward spiral for the Newsboys or if fans can expect several years of mediocre albums and tours before the end finally comes. I hope that neither situation is the case. I hope that somehow they can pull this off in a way that will be enjoyable for the fans but I think it will be a tough sell.

I’m just beginning to put this new website together. So bear with me as I gather all of my articles from my various sites into one. You could say I’m downsizing a bit but really becoming a much more efficient machine in the process.

This is a song I wrote for my wife for Valentine’s Day. I hope you like it.