Been truck shopping ...

I am one of those guys used car salesman detest. I'll stumble through used car lots for months just looking around when all the sudden I'll get in the mood and buy the second thing I see. I'm just about in the mood. Local dealer has exactly what I want. Late model Ford Ranger with 30,000 miles, 4WD extended cab bright red ... just pretty close to perfect except for the $17,000 price tag.

Did I mention I'm cheap?

Anyway, other dealer in town has a 2001 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab, 4WD, fibreglas cap, also bright red. Good looking truck, only problem is a lot more miles. Looks kind of like this stock photo only with a cap



I'm probably going to be driving it a while if the dealer and I can agree on a price tomorrow. Yeah, I know, fancy truck for an old guy. Just remember the part about being cheap.

Couldn't mount my new radio in an old truck...

Well, I learned something today ...

WW (Wonderful Wifey) and I spent a couple days in beautiful Collinsville, Illinois at training for Farmworks software (www.farmworks.com). It was a spur of the moment thing. They had a class that didn't have a very large attendance, and Scott offered us a chance to be a part of it. That was Monday afternoon. So 5:00 Tuesday morning we headed out for the Collinsville Holiday Inn.

Anyway, on the way back we were talking, in traffic, amongst a bunch of trucks, etc. I learned that when you are coming up I-70 and discover you are at Litchfieldyou have missed the I-55/I-70 split and took the wrong road.

But anyway, it was a good class. I've had Farmworks software since 1996 or 97 with FarmTrac.

In fact someplace around here I still have the NAVMAN GPS sleeve that fit on an iPaq 3950. Long time before handheld GPS was common. I upgraded to FarmFunds,

their accounting program a few years ago and never did get it going. I had version 9. They recently released version 12. It has cleared up a lot of the issues I had when I tried to use it, and the training helped a lot. The basic problem is still GIGO (garbage in garbage out). If we don't put the effort into entering the data needed, it won't give us the information we need from it. It's well worth looking at for a farm wanting to use a better record keeping system.

Happy Birthday to me ...

Well, my family went and did it. They spent way too much on a birthday present for me. I think they got tired of me beating on my old Kenwood 2 meter radio trying to make the display work. Anyway, they all went together and bought me a Yaesu FT-7800R dual band mobile
It's a great rig. It's probably just what I would have bought myself. But they shouldn't have spent so much on the old guy.

Thanks everyone.