Hacker News: rickypp

New comment by rickypp in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

rickypp — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:06:06 +0000

We're in the very early stages, but the short is that we're raising highland cattle and starting to board horses. We started after my wife bought a horse and we realized boarding costs in a HCOL area are pretty close to a rural mortgage in a LCOL area. So we moved and bought a farm property. Then we bought a couple highland heifers because they're very cute and fluffy. We're working towards growing that herd up to have a few calves to sell each year for pasture pets / meat. The property is also well suited for horse boarding with a sand arena and lots of trails accessible from the back woods. These first few years will be pretty scrappy. Mostly getting all the pasture acres fenced properly and rebuilding the forage quality, plus setting up all the other infrastructure to keep things running smoothly longer term. My wife handles the day-to-day on feeding and caring for the animals, she is a trained farrier and a licensed veterinary technician so we have a big advantage there. I step in for the project work and infrastructure planning. And anything that's an excuse to run the MF135 (snow plowing, moving manure and dirt, grading the driveway, post hole digging, dragging, mowing, etc...)

New comment by rickypp in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

rickypp — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:16:38 +0000

If you're mechanically inclined, the compacts of yesterdecade are still out there. Popular brands like Ford or Massey Ferguson have amazingly good supply chain for 50 year old models. I run my hobby farm with a 1975 MF135, and I just sold a 1947 Massey Harris Pony that ran like a top doing pasture/arena dragging duties. I've put a ton of hours on the 135 and only done basic maintenance like replacing a few hydraulic lines and changing fluids.

New comment by rickypp in "Home Assistant waters my plants"

rickypp — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:25:30 +0000

I'm worried that my writing is unclear and is being misinterpreted here.

The HAOS ISO cannot install itself onto a machine. That is my minor complaint.

New comment by rickypp in "Home Assistant waters my plants"

rickypp — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:49:14 +0000

"self-installing" being the key point. Those instructions require you to use some other piece of software to write the image onto your boot disk. In my case I used an Ubuntu livecd to download and write the image to the machine. It's obviously not a showstopper but it is slightly annoying.

New comment by rickypp in "Home Assistant waters my plants"

rickypp — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:58:29 +0000

I have no problem with them offering a ready-to-run hardware solution for Home Assistant, but I am annoyed that it's probably a motivating factor for why there isn't a self-installing image for HA on BYO hardware...

New comment by rickypp in "Home Assistant waters my plants"

rickypp — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:51:16 +0000

Yeah, I ended up buying a dedicated mini PC ($100 refurb) to install HAOS on. HA is pretty much useless without being able to run add-ons. I run everything on k8s in my home server, I don't have a VM system set up and didn't want to bother just for HA. It's funny, the pattern of a central application that uses docker containers to add plugins seems like a perfect fit for a Kubernetes Operator. I suppose it still misses out on some of the advantages of running everything "on metal" for integrating with physical components like USB dongles.

New comment by rickypp in "Simple screw counter"

rickypp — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:03:11 +0000

I've often thought about this when assembling Ikea furniture. I have never been shorted. There's got to be someone at Ikea with the job of calculating the target acceptable ratio of over/under supplying small hardware pieces. I figure they can probably give out thousands if not tens of thousands of extra little screws/dowels/plastic bits before it exceeds the cost of missing just one. Between the cost of a support call, maintaining a supply of spare parts, labor and shipping to send out replacements... not to mention the less tangible to calculate loss of reputation to the brand. Quite interesting to think about at scale.

New comment by rickypp in "Tractor"

rickypp — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:38:31 +0000

Right, that's why I mentioned nabbing one without a working gas engine and converting it to electric as the focal point of the project.

New comment by rickypp in "Tractor"

rickypp — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:36:35 +0000

Were it me, I would have started with a pre-2000's Craftsman mower as a base. They have a 6 speed transaxle with a differential (which solves the steering problem mentioned) and a built-in brake, and examples with broken or missing gas engines can be had used for $100 or less quite often. They have that boxy sheet metal look of old tractors too. It would also be possible to adjust the pulley ratios to slow it down or just block off the higher speeds until the kids get a bit older.

Granted, I understand that the purpose of a project like this isn't just in the end result. Depends what crafts you want to practice and what's just necessary work around them. There's still quite a bit of fun project left in converting an existing mower to electric and refinishing it to look more like a classic tractor.

New comment by rickypp in "Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect"

rickypp — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 14:23:42 +0000

The muffler in your car weighs a fair bit more than an entire leaf blower. The noise reduction is also aided by enclosing the engine in a compartment with sound deadening, and having 15ft of exhaust piping (and a resonator, and usually multiple catalytic converters). It just can't be done effectively for small engine tools that you have to physically carry around.

2 stroke engines are even worse (chainsaws, weed wackers) because the exhaust has to be tuned for resonance at specific frequencies in order for the engine to make power.

As an owner of some land and many pieces of small engine equipment, I will say that the difference between _no muffler_ and the little mufflers they typically have is still substantial.