We had a brief dry spell which allowed the well company to clear a
path to the well on the back side of the property. No luck locating
the 140' well which the previous owners said they had cased for
possible future use.  This well tested out at ~ 7.5 gpm.  Not bad
for a shallow 14' well.  The next phase of the project is to clear
a proper road to that location and then decide how we want to run
our infrastructure back there.  I would like to go solar with this
well, but it would be tricky at best since the well head is in a
gulch with hills rising abruptly to the east and west and lots of
trees obscuring the sun.  Most likely for now, we will probably
have to trench and run electricity along with the water lines.
Since the rainy season is upon us, I think we'll have to take the
project in phases.  Phase one will be to properly develop the road
back there since it was rendered inaccessable to vehicles by a
landslide many years ago.  There is never an end to the projects.
:-|

* The Venerable Slide Rule *

Now that the rainy season is in full swing and I am confined to
mostly indoor projects, I have been taking up the use of the slide
rule probably for the minimalistic nerd appeal.  The downside is
that I have come to understand how rusty my math skills have become
over the decades as I have relied on the electronic calculator and
later ther personal computer.  Consequently I am having to
reintroduce myself to math skills long forgotten or in some cases,
never learned at all.  During my school years, our group fell
between the cracks in that electronic calculators were introduced
in 1972 and the last slide rules were manufactured in 1976.  In high
school, the students were not taught how to use the slide rule, but
at the same time, were not permitted to use electronic calculators.
Pencil and paper was "it."  Perhaps it is a good mental exercise at
this stage in life.

Some months ago I was able to locate a cheap Acumath 400 slide rule
on Ebay for USD $5.  Interestingly, many slide rules such as the
Pickett have become collector items fetching a hefty price.  I felt
that since my needs were relatively simple, a slide rule with the
basic S, K, A, B, CI, C, D, L and T scales would be sufficient to
perform multiplication, division, squares, cubes, square roots,
cube roots, recipocals and basic trig.  It is amazing that these
ingenious devices were used in a wide range of tasks from
construction, HVAC, aeronautics and even getting us to the moon!  I
will not bore the reader with the details on the use of the slide
rule as there are plenty of resources on the internet.