This should be interesting

I've been talking about getting some chickens for a long time.  We have the perfect space for them and I love eggs.

The available coops are either absolutely beautiful and very expensive or made of wood slightly more sturdy than balsa.  One piece of advice I read over and over is to have a coop bigger than you need.  I'm thinking about getting maybe 3 chicks.  What I found that I could buy outright was over $1K.  So I found a build yourself set of plans put together by a woman on the Home Depot site.  The plans are clear, complete and look pretty straightforward.  It does require me to buy a couple of tools.  Damn.

I intend to add covered runs but we've got a fenced in area that they can free range in most of the time.  The runs for when we're not around.

And a bonus.  We're replacing the forward dropcam in our building with an exterior real time camera.  Which frees up a dropcam soon to be renamed "Chickencam".

And, by the way.  I've never even had a conversation with a chicken since overhandling the green one that I got for Easter at probably 4 years old (how things have changed).  I know absolutely nothing about raising them.  So, yeah, the perfect situation.

I'll likely get the chicks soon.  Motivation to get moving on their home.

Cranky Customer Day

For no particular reason we've had two customers already this morning (both a holdover from last week) who are NOT HAPPY with our service and/or the prices.

One of them is fairly new and has already moved on.  Not a big deal.  It happens.

The other has been a customer for years.  He runs a jewelry store and always seems to call on Fridays with an emergency.  Sure enough he called this Friday and needed a replacement computer.  We did what we could but could not get it back to him until this morning.  We called the vendor who owns the software that runs his Point of Sale and did what we could with them to get things working then delivered the computer.  As it turned out there was nothing immediate to do as the computer was delivered since the vendor rep was in a meeting.  Our standard business charge if we roll a vehicle is $130 (the norm for our industry).  We had not charged for anything but the comptuer.  Not the half hour to migrate data and complete the set up nor the half hour + to get through to the vendor and get things rolling.  The customer went ballistic over the $130 charge and even after I offerred to drop the delivery charge and just put together the charges as they accrued and invoice him when he was done he berated my tech on site and gave him a check for $130.

He also went out of his way to complain about a $45 charge he had to pay when he brought his computer in a couple of weeks ago with a mail problem we tracked down to his mail provider. After running down the problem and documenting what he needed to do about it (and offering to do it ourselves if he wanted to pay) we give him his PC back.  Then he said today he had to pay us when we did nothing.

Other than the negative energy generated by the two experiences it is not a big deal.  The jeweler would not be the first we've not had a tech available when they continuously call with emergencies and bitch about paying.

No time for negativity.  

Zoe has three new friends

Cost of eggs

Adding it up.  Next will be the cost of the coop.  Big trip to Home Depot for materials.