Chicken Laying an Egg – Chicken TV

It’s beginning to get hot but still nowhere near the potential temp… that comes later. In this video you get to see Miss Cloud lay an egg and enjoy a little chicken tv. At the end of the video I try to get them to perch outside because the coop is way too hot… fail!

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Watering Trees at the Nursery

In this video I am watering trees suffering from the hot weather in my area. They’ve been neglected for a time so I have been tasked with watering them thoroughly. Some of this will be featured in the chicken video called Fanning a Chicken’s Butt (to be published later).

Sometimes you just need to pop in the earbuds and enjoy the sound of water.

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Chickens and Bananas

The chickens spend time in the yard and waddle on back. I tried giving them a banana and they turned their beaks up at it! They also get hot again and hold their wings out and then I trick them!

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New Dirt Bath for the Chickens

This is really the first day the chickens experience some heat and it’s only the beginning. It’s really not that hot but they aren’t used to it yet. Made a new dirt bath location and tried to get rid of some ants. PK sneezes!

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Day in the Life of Chickens

Just a sweet day with the chickens. We dug a few holes to plant a few trees and the ladies decided to help us… so very helpful!

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Chickens Love Dandelions

Check out this video of the ladies and their love of eating dandelion leaves. Also, it snowed in April and the ladies do not love that so much!

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Cutting Down Trees With Friends

We decided to take down a couple of trees in our back yard believing it would be fairly easy based on what we know and the size of the trees. Well, we were partially correct. For some reason the chainsaws would not cut the trees and we had to volunteer one of our neighbors who asked the all important question “have you sharpened the blades?”. Uh… no…

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Flock Update & Chicken Bititch Police

I decided it was about time to do a video update on the lives of the chickens to this point. We go over they why’s and how’s and take a look at the chickens today. I also threatened to call the Chicken Bititch Police… and it’s a real thing… believe me?

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Pecking Order Finally Established!

In this video, I observe the pecking order being established over a few weeks. Miss Cloud thought she would be number one but someone else had other plans!

In the second video below, one of the chickens gets injured during the pecking order process. She’s okay but not happy about it one bit!!

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Lethargic Chicken and Hawks Circling

The hawks have found the chickens! Well, maybe they are getting their first glimpse of them. One afternoon I was working in the yard and looked to the sky to find two hawks circling and circling; looking for whatever food they could find.

In the second video, Trinity is very lethargic and it worried me for hours. Watch to see what ultimately happened and what I learned.

Video: Hawks

Video: Lethargic Trinity

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Chicken Curtains & Training Chickens to Use Them

In this first video, I created curtains out of jeans for the small coop door. It’s getting hotter and I don’t want to close the door if at all possible. The first set of jean curtains were a bit too flimsy so I cut into my husband’s jeans and gave that a shot.

In the second video, I train the chickens to use the curtains. To them it simply looks like another barrier they cannot cross.

Video below: Making the curtains

Next Video: Training chickens to use the curtains

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Multitasking in Today’s World

The video for this post is at the bottom of the page… please watch, like, and subscribe.

I am extremely impressed by anyone who can multitask. My resume for the last several years states that I can multitask, which is a true statement, but not to the level I’ve seen in others.

Multitasking has always been something that I associated with the working world, something done in employment and typically in an administrative role. The reason I see it that way is because I don’t hear a lot of people talking about multitasking when they speak of their every-day life or being at home or outside of work.  

That said, I realize multitasking can be seen in several areas of life. For instance, if I am baking a cake, I can measure ingredients, mix them as instructed, set up the oven, clean the utensils while I wait, and have the tv on in the background.

But that’s not multitasking is it.

That is taking advantage of those moment when I’m doing nothing but waiting for the next step. I’m not going to stand around in the kitchen waiting for the cake to rise.

To a small degree you could say it’s multitasking but it’s really just doing multiple things in an allotted amount of time. I’m not literally doing them at the same time or in such a way to confuse the process.  

Moving on to the example of administrative jobs. The reason I put multitasking on my resume is because I can switch gears and move to another task easily. I do not need to finish one task before working on another.

Some people have a hard time with that because they have the need or desire to finish what they are working on before doing anything else. This type of person may find it difficult to work in an environment where there are several duties to achieve in a day and might not be considered a multitasker.

During moments when I became overwhelmed with the quantity of work or the differences between the task, I would sometimes stop what I was doing and briefly walk away. If I could refocus and acknowledge that I can and will achieve as much as possible, then that time away from my desk wasn’t very long.

There have been moments when it was just too much and I needed more than a ten-minute breather. Maybe that’s the day to take an hour-long lunch or a walk around the building. Getting away from the source can often lead to new ideas and a necessary distraction.

In my last place of employment, there were some people who could work on the computer while also having their phone propped up playing a tv show. They could ‘sort of watch’ the program while doing their work. Now I often wondered just how well they did their job while listening to and watching something unrelated, but they seemed to do alright. In other words, they weren’t fired for poor workmanship.

I will say this, when any of them needed to truly focus on a project or deal with a very delicate situation, they turned off other distractions.

Were they truly able to multitask or were they just able to have other sensory input without disrupting their work process?

When I wanted to get a lot done in a day and focus deeply into something like data entry, I would put an earbud in and play rock music. It did not distract at all; it actually helped me focus. It jacked me up, pumped me up, got me working harder and faster and often better. 

But if I needed to actually think about what I was doing, distractions were eliminated.

Again, this is not considered multitasking at all because the act of working and listening to music does not compete with each other (usually). Perhaps those watching a tv show and working feel the same way or perhaps they are not actually watching but instead just casually listening.

I remember one person in particular who could have a personal conversation on the phone while also focusing on their computer work. There is no way I can ever do that! What ends up happening is that either I have no idea what the person said, or I just typed what they said onto the computer screen.

I would have loved to have been able to quiz that person to determine just how much they remembered of the call vs. how much quality work they got done.

So the question is, can a person truly multitask? Can you do two things at the same time?

In order to truly multitask a person would need more than two hands and probably another set of eyes. When working on things that require the same type of attention, it’s impossible to do more than one and give the task your full attention.

Perhaps we have changed the definition of multitasking to simply doing several chores or duties in the same day. You still don’t do them at the same time.

I can already hear the people saying ‘ya but’ and perhaps they would be right. A person can eat and watch tv at the same time but again, those two things do not compete. You do not need to hold the tv in order to watch it and you do not need to watch or listen to your sandwich.  

Can you eat your meal and clean the toilet at the same time? No, no you cannot. Now I suppose there’s some smart ass out there who will say they most certainly can that but there’s a difference between saying ‘challenge accepted’ and sticking a bite of sandwich in your mouth while scrubbing the toilet, and actually doing it on a regular basis.

If you can work on five things throughout the day and get them all done adequately and on time, that’s called good self-management.

Okay, so yes, you are doing multiple tasks in a day, that is true and it’s also why people say they are good at multitasking. But that’s true of a many people in many situations; it’s called living your life.

Let me give you my definition in the administrative world. Multitasking means that you can do several types of tasks or duties within a given time frame with the added ability to jump from one to the other whenever necessary and not lose your further ability to go back to the previous task without missing a beat.

That is as close to real multitasking I believe a person can achieve before things get messed up. Each person has a threshold of abilities. One might be able to finish five separate tasks in a day switching back and forth. Another person may need to focus on one task at a time with a possible break before going on to the next.

Yet another person might be able to get ten tasks done while talking on the phone to their friend in another country, texting someone else and watching the latest episode of their favorite show.

The real question in the end is centered around quality of work, deadlines met, and how long the person will last in that position before they can’t do anymore. Stretching beyond a person’s capacity before breakdown is another subject for another day.

I believe if we use the definition of multitasking, I gave earlier from an administrative standpoint, there are many people who can achieve this skill. If we use the definition wherein a person literally does more than one thing within the same category at the exact same time, that is not plausible.

And there you have it… multitasking in today’s world. This is Phenix JiRa and I’m done with that thought!

See this video at the following locations

Utreon – my preferred platform – BLOOPER VIDEO & main video shown below

Odysee – adding here but may not stay on platform – Blooper Video Only

Rumble – adding here but may not stay on platform- Blooper Video Only

YouTube – 2nd preferred platform due to popularity – BLOOPERS and MAIN VIDEO

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Turtles by the Bay by Mary Lou Healy

A very cute poem about turtles!!

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Weekend Chickens May 7th & 29th

In this video you get to hear Parkour Chick and Miss Cloud talking to each other in a way I’ve never heard before now. They are imitating each other and clearly discussing the condo situation!

In this next video, well, you need to check out the entire process of washing, drying, and fluffing Miss Cloud’s butt. I literally wash the butt of a chicken!!

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Frustrations with YouTube Ads

The video for this post is at the bottom of the page… please watch, like, and subscribe.

As a viewer I am getting extremely frustrated and irritated at the amount and length of the ads on YouTube. People have complained about the ads for some time, but the amount of complaints have gone up primarily for two reasons.

The first reason is from a viewer’s perspective. Lately I started keeping a log of the amount of ads popping up on the videos I watch. I did this out of curiosity and then as research for this video.

During my research I watched several videos of varying lengths. They were between 12 and 90 minutes and the genres fell under documentaries, podcasts, old tv shows, news, humor, DYI, and others.

Please note that my information is all approximate as I did not literally write the exact time stamp of when the ad popped up.

In one of the 14 minute videos, there were two 15 second ads before the video started (both could be skipped). At the 4 and 8 minute mark, there were two 5 second ads.  Then around the 12-minute mark there was a 30 second video that could not be skipped with two ads at the very end when the video was over.

That was about 110 seconds (2 minutes & 20 seconds) for a 14-minute video. That is around 13% of the video dedicated to ads which is a lot when the video is only 14 minutes long.

Most of the videos I watched that were under 15 minutes had at least 4 ad interruptions (about 8 ads of varying lengths). Usually there was an ad break at the very beginning and then two or three in the middle with another at the very end.

Here is something interesting. The longer I was online watching videos, the more the ads came up. For instance, I watched a series of videos and the longer I watched, the more frequent the ads appeared.

In one case I was watching a video that was an hour long and every four or five minutes an ad appeared. In another example, there was one ad at the beginning and two ads about five minutes in with no further ads until the very end. This was refreshing but not the norm.

Some of the ads are 5-seconds long and I’ve always felt that wasn’t a big deal but when there are two 5-second ad every few minutes, that’s a problem. Lately, however, there have been a couple 5-second ads and then several 15-second ads that you cannot skip and even 30-second ads that you cannot skip.

One of the hour long videos I watched contained numerous ads and at one point I tried to back out of the video to see if I would get a shorter ad after several 30-second ads came up. I back out of the video and went back to it and the system pushed me back to an earlier point in the video and I believe it was about 5 minutes back in time.

When I finally got to the point in the video where the 30-second ad came up previously, a new 30-second ad popped up and sure enough it was one I could not skip. Every time I tried this, it tossed me back in time and made me watch a new ad.

A few ads here and there is fine and understandable because that’s apparently how they make money but when I’m trying to watch a documentary or even a TV show and it keeps getting interrupted by ads, I get extremely irritated. The absolute worst is if you are watching or listening to a nice video with pretty music and pretty sights and up pops an ad completely destroying the mood you are trying to create.

The second reason complaints have increased over the ad content on YouTube is from the perspective of the video creator.

If you are a creator and post videos on YouTube, you already know about this problem especially if you have any videos over 100 views.

In order for a creator to be monetized on YouTube they must have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 public watched hours. I am a very small YouTuber who has a handful of channels and none of them are anywhere close to 1000 subscribers.

Here is where someone like me gets upset. I have a phone gaming channel that has a handful of videos over 100 views and as soon as they hit that mark, YouTube started putting ads at the beginning of my videos. I have no say on the type, quality or quantity. The ads may be throughout the video, but I haven’t checked into that part of it. So far I do know they are at the beginning.

So here I am a small channel owner on YouTube who posts pretty consistently and doesn’t get a lot of people viewing but if any video is watched over 100 times, YouTube gets too take advantage of any revenue while I get nothing.

Their answer of course will be that the creator needs to market themselves and get the 1000 subscribers and the 4000 views, but I’ve heard from some creators that even when they hit those marks, some don’t get very much in return. You need to have tens of thousands of subscribers and views off the charts.  

Overall my primary complaint is from the POV of someone who watches videos on their platform. One or two ads here and there is no big deal but right now they actually have more frequent ads than if I were to watch regular television. When those ads pop up, they are intrusive and interrupt whatever I’m watching in the most inappropriate or frustrating times. Their ad breaks are not 5-minutes long like what you might find on television but they are more frequent and extremely annoying.

There have literally been some videos I simply stop watching which is highly frustrating to me because I’m watching it so that I can see and hear the message being conveyed.

It’s highly frustrating to the creator when they look at their analytics to find that people are leavening their videos and probably associate it with their content and not the ad frequency.

It’s as if YouTube are trying to remind us that they are still there in background hovering and don’t want us to just enjoy ourselves watching a video.

Thinking about it, I do not know how often people click on ads and then purchase a product. The frequency up-tick makes me think everyone is skipping them out of frustration and not buying anything through a video ad.

As a creator, I post my videos on three other platforms of which at least one of them monetizes me regardless of how many views or subscribers. It’s not a lot of money but it can build up over time. I’m not saying that YouTube should follow that exact model but they should reconsider their policy of putting ads on videos when a person cannot make any revenue from it.

As a viewer, I’m beginning to look at these other platforms to see if the creators has chosen to post in multiple places. In this way, I can support them on the other site and not be bombed by ad after ad after ad. Maybe with all of the competition and various monetization policies, YouTube will reconsider their policy. If they do, they may gain more loyalty from creators and more watch hours from people like me.

The other platforms I am currently on are Utreon, Odysee, and Rumble. For my type of videos, Utreon is the most favorable. Hopefully YouTube will reconsider their policy but I’m not very hopeful they actually will.

This is Phenix JiRa and I’m done with that thought.

See this video at the following locations

Playeur – preferred platform – easy to find videos, 5-second ad at start but no other ads interrupting the message. Customer service is outstanding and they are working to incorporate newer features. Hopefully, fingers crossed, they will not get so big that they become more like yt.

Odysee – hard to find videos; creators must promote them before they are seen through a coin system (lbc). It seems a good place for those already established and able to transfer from yt. None of my last 7 videos show any views at all. I will add my vids there but may leave the platform in the near future.

Rumble – not easy to find vids; seems more political than diverse in genres. They display other types of videos but the big players are those who have left yt due to being censored or other factors. I may or may not remain.

YouTube – easy to find vids but not creator-friendly and way too many ads. My hope is to leave this platform entirely however it is the main go-to for viewers and, if I want to be found, it’s a place to start.

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