January 01, 2016 Happy New Year --------------- Worked on my computer doing year end file management. At 11 I watched the Rose Parade which is always enjoyable. Watched it on HGTV commercial free which is the best way to watch the parade. As usual, it was amazing and enjoyable. We were going to go to Star Wars but stayed in instead and watched the Martian that I downloaded on a torrent. IT's an excellent suspense filled and funny movie. I loved every minute of it. After the movie we made mustard glazed chicken together. I made the rub and Libbie made the BBQ sauce glaze. She cooked them on the grill while I basted each side with BBQ sauce. Delicious. We had the leftover wine from last night and the night before, a Shiraz and a Cabernet along with steam fresh mixed veggies. ~ January 02, 2016 expired certificate --------------- Today I spent a frustrating day trying to get my compiler to work. I deleted the bridge app and tried recreating it with no success. I rebuilt the keys but nothing. Eventually I found out that my certificate had expired on Jan 1. Once I created a new one on Apple I was able to proceed and built the bridge again. This was a whole day wasted. I went to Kroger to get Salmon because this is what Libbie wanted for dinner but they had nice looking shrimp on sale for 4.99. I bought a pound which we had with peas and a bottle of Shiraz. Yogurt for dessert. Libbie had peach cobbler yogurt and I had dark chocolate raspberry brownie yogurt. Went to bed happy that the compiler is working again although I essentially lost the day. ~ January 03, 2016 ios --------------- Had a very successful day working on the IOS program. All major functions except for updates and user database seem to be working. I believe it will make the beta testing this month. This is great news. Lib and I took a walk around the pond in back this afternoon. Need to do this more often. We had the wonderful pizza from scratch today for dinner. The leftover sausage from the NYE party went onto the topping. It was great. Libbie couldn't see in her closet today while looking for material. I donated my LED closet light that I have not installed yet. Got it mounted to the ceiling, now I need to go into the attic and tie it in tomorrow. It's too dark today to do that. ~ January 04, 2016 Light --------------- This is a busy day! First thing this morning I went into the attic after turning the upstairs lighting power off. Wired up the LED light and it's bright and looks great! Yeah. Found out that the new First Class update is available so I went through the process of packaging the update and making it available. This time I documented almost every step. I also heard from Amt that the new website password was "invitation" so I went ahead and did the update. This was different this time since the module had changed in the December update of the website. I located the new line number and documented it when I changed the PW. Next I heard from Mary Corondan that the board directory update was available. There is no break! I went out to the greenhouse to look for survey markers and saw the grass was mowed around the sign. We took the birdhouse down and brought it home and also picked up the mail. Once home I hooked up the bike rack to the car and also pumped up the bike tires and charged the batteries. I may get a Pedego since Libbie's bike is obviously more sturdy, has disk brakes and doesn't have a ginned together battery pack like mine does. After the outdoor activities I came in and fed the spreadsheet into the board directory. It went pretty well. Libbie wants me to scan a quilt pattern book that she borrowed. What a busy amount of stuff to do. Filled out the Medicare reimbursement forms and put into an envelope with stamps for mailing. It's cold outside tonight! My light coat wasn't enough to stay warm although the temp is 35. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with spicy Marinara and hot Italian Sausage. Need to finish packing tonite. ~ January 05, 2016 drive --------------- We left at 7:12 AM after a quick breakfast. Stopped just before Florence for gas at 1.65 and a bacon-egg-cheese biscuit. The drive was easy but the car was loaded and gas mileage suffered. We stopped in Brunswick for lunch and more gas. I had a big mac and small fries. Went around Baldwin then down 301. We stopped at 2 Orange fruit stands looking for Honeybelles. I picked up the best OJ we ever had at the Orange shop in Citra. Took the route which almost takes us to Ocala before cutting over to I75. The trip was easy until we got to Tampa and got stuck in rush hour traffic with multiple accidents. IT was pretty slow going through there. We had to get gas again in Bradenton since the gas gauge was showing empty and I didn't want the chance of running out. Got into the condo at 7:30 which was a bit longer than normal. It was just over 12 hours. We went out to dinner at the Italian Grill and had a pizza and beer. Their pizza is very good. All in all, this was a pretty good day. I'm going to try to point out some beauty every day. Today it was an old 2 story house visible through some Oak Trees covered with Spanish Moss. We saw it as I drove by on 301 below Waldo but above Ocala. The other beauty is of course the Georgia wetlands with sawgrass. ~ January 06, 2016 First Day --------------- We had no coffee this morning so i went out to Walmart to pick up a can before 8. Later Lib and I went to Walmart for groceries. On the way back we noticed Victoria's car. We stopped over to Bldg 3 and asked her to visit when she's done there taking a listing. She stopped over and we chatted a while about keeping the condo for ourselves next year, and the fees associated with Stoneybrook Golf. The Arbor section of Highhouse Ridge is social only, no golf, but the fee is $2400 instead of $3600 plus the palmer ranch and stonebrook street maintenance fees. We got a call from Joy Wrenn that there were surveyors on the Jessie Dr property. Good news! Closing may happen after all. Later Libbie and I took a walk around the block, something I'm going to do every day. I'm badly out of shape. My beauty for today was the sunset. while there wasn't much of a sunset, just before it a slit in the overcast clouds had a bright sun shining through with the upper and lower clouds glowing pink. We had wine and cheese at sunset then went to Pub night at 6. The place was very crowded but we got parking in front and a table in only 20 minutes. I had the citrus salmon as well as the endless salad and bread. For a drink I treated myself to a gin martini. They made too much and gave me the extra in a glass of ice. Yum. We topped it off with Lemon Meringue Pie which was in a little round shell. Quite good. ~ January 07, 2016 ribs --------------- I spent almost the whole day indoors getting re-aquainted with the IOS program. I made a lot of progress getting the inventory part of the program functioning. Now I will move on to the updates program. This was a function I set aside because it was too hard to do. Now I'm going to tackle it. We went to rib night at the clubhouse. I had a yummy 7 oz prime rib with wine and baked potato. Very nice. ~ January 08, 2016 Selby --------------- This morning we met Bill and Barb over at Selby at 10. Bill joined and was able to get in free. We had renewed our membership in November. We had a nice walk around looking at flowers and plants before having a sandwich in the Selby House. We stopped by the Pedego dealer on the way home. Bill stopped also inquiring about a rental for Barb. It turns out he doesn't do rentals anymore. I asked about a trade in. He said he can do a deal. There is a nice selection of Pedegos and other bikes in the store. He expanded into the storefront next door since last year. I'm interested in a new bike and so tried Libbie's out once around the pool then drove mine. There is a huge difference in comfort. The Pedego is much more comfortable, mainly because it is a bigger bike compared to the Walmart bike I own. I have a lot to think about. For dinner we stayed home and had chicken salad sandwiches as well as wine and cheese. ~ January 09, 2016 Pedego --------------- I loaded up the DIY eBike and took it over to the bike shop on Osprey. He gave me $400 towards a Demo Pedego Cruiser. I was pretty happy with the deal and was able to get rid of the DIY eBike which was good. This is a much more comfortable bike. We took the bikes to the Venice Train Station and rode the Venice Waterway into the wind. I initially had some problems. The seat needed adjusting and the tires were flat. We went to a gas station and found an air dispenser that took credit cards. There was only 15 pounds in the tire! I pumped them up to about 45 pounds and we were good to go. We sat at the end of the paved trail for a while and chatted with a guy from MN who was interested in the eBikes. I saw a trim and fit young lady in short shorts while we were sitting there. nice. For dinner we went to the clubhouse and had a delightful evening. I ordered Crabcakes with potato wedges which I had with 2 glasses of Cabernet. A very nice evening was had by us! ~ January 10, 2016 windy --------------- We woke up to it being wet outside. I like to stay in anyway and watch the Sunday morning programs. After that we went for a bike ride to the North end of the Legacy Trail, about 4 miles round trip. I took the battery out and charged it for the first time. I heard from Barbara about the website - she asked about the search box and the colorbox. I stopped the IOS work and worked on the website to get that working properly. The colorbox doesn't work at all and the search box has a white rectangle planted in it that is not a text box, just a white annoyance. We watched the Golden Globes and the Red Carpet and at the same time I worked on the website but had no success. For dinner we ordered a large cheese pizza from the Italian Grill on the corner of Tamiami and Sarasota Pkwy. Prior to the pizza we had wine and cheese at sunset. ~ January 11, 2016 cool out --------------- It's cooler today. I spent the first part of the day getting the search box on the avsa website displaying properly. I ended up deleting a php routine that was displaying a white window in our blue border messing up the looks. In the afternoon we got on the eBikes and did a 5.3 mile ride to the front wetland trail and then down MacIntosh to home. It was a nice ride. I had to renew the builder hosting with Anywhere Software so I could continue using their hosted compiler. I tried the timer in IOS to kick off the next download job and it seemed to work. I still have a minor problem with a crash that I need to debug. Dinner tonight was wine with cheese and crackers and then a salad with grape tomatoes. ~ January 12, 2016 Oscar Scherer --------------- I had a lot of success this morning on the IOS program. Now the updates are working well and the date is updating on the screen. All I need now is a progress indicator. I'll see what I can do for this. We did a shopping trip before noon. Libbie needed thread so we went to the quilt shop on Clark & Honore then continued on to Albrittons for fruit. We had a side trip to Walmart and found more Apples that Libbie liked as well as bobbins and toothpicks. After a lunch of corn chowder I mounted the mirror that I repaired onto the handlebars. It's wonderful. We took a 10 mile bike ride today to Oscar Scherer and back. It's only 65 but the ride was enjoyable. For dinner we went over to the clubhouse. We both had Fish and chips. I had a gin Martini which was excellent. Came back and started working the user database. ~ January 13, 2016 Myakka --------------- Heard that we may get the closing papers today for Jessie Drive. Left around 10 for Myakka. Met Bill in the parking lot with Cort and Barb. They rented 2 more bikes for the day. We drove along in a very cold park to the bird platform. We met an incredibly talented Audubon volunteer who talked about binoculars. lightroom, birds, spotting scopes and his job in Boston. He had Swavarski binoculars which are outstanding but over $2,000. Wow, expensive but probably worth it. We biked all the way to the end. Left the park around 3. The closing papers came around 4:40, too late for a notary. Dinner was pub night at the clubhouse. We had the yummy salad and bread then I had the blackened redfish with 2 glasses of Cabernet, topped off by a cheesecake with blueberries and coffee. Very nice night. I got the printer hooked up and the drivers installed and printed the documents that have to be notarized. The driver install went remarkably well. I even scanned our driver licenses which was requested by the attorney. ~ January 14, 2016 Notary --------------- We went out to the UPS store off Honore next to Publix at 9:30. We signed the documents, had them notarized and then shipped them overnight to Don Grimes, attorney in Cary. Total cost was $45. Our part of the land sale is now complete. Anne will deposit the check tomorrow. It's still cold but not raining but it's supposed to rain tomorrow. Now I can get back to the IOS program. We went to Rib night and had a delightful dinner of Prime Rib, baked potato and the trimmings. Libbie saved half of her prime for dinner tomorrow. After dinner we sat with our neighbors downstairs and chatted a while. They were at the table next to us. They are Carol and Dan and own 2108. They go back at the end of Jan to Ill. ~ January 15, 2016 Closing --------------- Closing is set for 2:30 this afternoon. I protested the tax rate and the buyer relented and agreed to use last year's tax rate which saved us $83. Anne had to call in the afternoon to get our social Security numbers from the Attorneys office for the 1099 form. After all that went well she deposited the check. We are now done. I need to download the final closing statement. I had to call the Credit Union to get the money transferred cause she put it in checking. It should have gone to savings but she messed up. Because the check has a hold I couldn't move the money online. I found a nice credit union person on the phone to help me and move the money. We went to the club for lunch today. We split a delicious grilled ham and cheese and a cup of very, very hearty clam chowder accompanied by a Yuengling. This did me in but we did a little bike ride in the neighborhood later in the afternoon. I had a salad for dinner with one of the rolls from last night. ~ January 16, 2016 Pearl Fishers --------------- I worked on file upload to the ios program unsuccessfully in the morning then left for Bradenton at 11:45 for the Met Pearl Fishers at 1. We enjoyed the Opera. Bradenton is new at carrying the Met HD. We got back at 4:30 after mailing a Jessie Rd change of address form at the Bradenton Post Office on Rte 70. It was a beautiful day out but we didn't get to enjoy it because we were in the theater all afternoon. Oh well. For dinner we went to the clubhouse where I ordered the Seafood Gumbo. It was one of the best meals I ever had there. Lots of shrimp, scallops, redfish, rice and okra and probably other stuff in the mix. Yum. I had it with a glass of wine. ~ January 17, 2016 tornado --------------- We woke this morning at 3 AM to severe wind and lightning. There was a tornado warning and a tornado that hit Siesta Key, ripping the roof off the Excelsior condo. The LSAVC website is severely broken. None of the CSS will load. Playing around with it I found that disabling the color module will load the CSS but of course I lose all the site colors. After spending the day on this I decided I will probably have to rebuild the site. This is a lot of work but I will have a chance to reorganize everything and do the site correctly. When it was originally built I was just learning Drupal. I had the leftover seafood gumbo for lunch then we went out to the Italian Grill and picked up a pizza. I had the pizza while working on rebuilding the LSAVC website. ~ January 18, 2016 Bradenton --------------- I continued working on rebuilding the website all day. It's coming along pretty good. It's too cold to go out bike riding so this is a good alternative although I would rather be working on the IOS project. At around 3:15 we left for Bill's place in Bradenton. We had a nice evening of tacos and wine with Cort, Bill, Barb and Corrie and Shane with their two little ones. It's a bit chilly but OK. We left there at 8:30. At the table after dinner we compared bird apps. Bill has Sibley, I have iBird. There are more features on iBird. I also noticed the bottom menu can be scrolled right to left to reveal more choices. I like this as a future feature for First Class. ~ January 19, 2016 LSAVC --------------- The LSAVC website was finally launched this morning. Marjorie had some updates for me. I set her up as an admin. I basically took the day off from IOS and web site stuff and watched some Moteino stuff on YouTube. I think I'm going to order the gateway and a mote to play with at home. The package looks pretty attractive. We left at 3:08 for a 3:55 performance of Star Wars at Hollywood 20 downtown. Found out there is a parking garage next to the theater and parking is free with a movie receipt. We parked at the far end on Level D then walked a long way to the front of the theater. Watched a bunch of previews that were awful but the Zootobia one is very funny and I would love to go see it. The Star Wars movie was absolutely great. We saw Star Wars 1 in 1977 in San Diego over thanksgiving week when we were in Calif. That was 39 years ago. Wow, time flies! After the movie we went to Bangkok Thai. I had scallops Pad Thai which I didn't like as much as chicken Pad Thai. We had spring rolls and a glass of Cabernet with the meal. Later in the evening as I was going to bed i got an eMail from Winston that he was ready for the Convention files to be copied over. I'll do it in the morning. ~ January 20, 2016 things --------------- I got the convention pages enabled on AVSA. I studied the pinch and zoom but got no where. I still don't have a good solution for pinch-zoom. Maybe I'll take a look at what I implemented in the B4A version. We took a walk in the morning thinking it was cold but half round the neighborhood I took my jacket off. In the afternoon we rode our bikes to the community gardens but turned around just short at Palmer Ranch Rd because there was emergency vehicles ahead on the trail. We didn't want to be looky doos. For dinner we went for pub night. It was pretty crowded, we took a high top and enjoyed the dinner. I had a glass of Cabernet with stuffed flounder and veggies. Since it was pub night we had a family style salad and garlic bread to accompany. Our server was a heavy set girl, Tomi. Today's beauty was a very nice sunset since there were a few clouds on the horizon that lit up when the sun went down. Nice. ~ January 21, 2016 Ride --------------- libbie and I took a bike ride today while i also spent some more time trying to understand pinch and zoom. i have two techniques, a class called zoom image and the webview which natively allows pinch and zoom. We went to the Vine and Dine tonight. We were seated at a table of 3 other couples. The food was over the top, the wine was exquisite. I ate and drank too much. I was sick when I got home from the overeating and overdrinking. One couple was Mike and Lupa from SF-NJ, another couple from Nova Scotia and the couple directly next to me was from Illinois. Only Lupa and Mike were owners. We had Hors D'oeuvres with Rose, sea bass with a Chardonnay, sliced apple with baked tomato and gouda with Zinfindell and finishing the meal with a prime rib cap and Cabernet. Dessert was cheese and chocolate pate with a port. I tasted but did not drink the port. Total for the night was $180. ~ January 22, 2016 winter --------------- Back to IOS this morning. Much frustration and no solution on whether to use a webview or the imagezoom class. I'm having trouble getting this stuff sized onto the screen. It won't stay in one place after I compile and run it. I guess I have to learn more about laying out screens in IOS. After dinner I decided to redo the screens and use the webview control. I heard from a user named poison alchemist who did a mockup of an android screen and she also had some suggestions on what the screen should look like as well as suggestions for icons. For dinner we stayed home and had salad as well as cheese and wine at sunset. We watched the snow up North, monitoring our cameras on the house. I wish I could turn up the heat in the greenhouse to melt the roof because the temp is being reported by our thermostat as being 58 degrees. It looks like an ice storm is in progress in Apex. ~ January 23, 2016 Lake Mary, Mad Moes --------------- i don't know why I signed up to do this but I left at a little after 9 to go to Lake Mary to visit Jack and Tod about the NCID display. It was incredibly windy, my little car was getting blown around. I did 2 hand driving to control it. I got onto Lake Mary Blvd around 11:30 and stopped at the Marathon where I bought gas and also did a pit stop. Had a nice visit with Jack then Tod arrived. He's a pretty brilliant person with degrees in both engineering and marketing. We have a lot in common including Smoking Ribs in the backyard. Cynthia popped in briefly with 3 dogs that she is sitting then left. I got a demo of the new NCID software. Tod wrote some HTML that runs in a server on NCID. Very cool. We went to lunch at Cici's Pizza where they have a buffet of pizza, salad, pasta, drinks and dessert for 5.99 What a deal. We stopped by Cynthias to say goodbye then I left the Forest at 4 PM and texted Lib that I was on the way home. Arrived home at 6:30 after talking to Libbie near exit 245 on I-75. We decided to look for a pub for dinner when I get home. There was a beautiful sunset going on as i was driving. The wind which was terrible this morning was still present but had subsided a little. We went out to Mad Moes down Tamiami which was pretty good. I had the italian sausage with onions, pepper on a bun with Marinara sauce and an Amber Boch. ~ January 24, 2016 Taming of Shrew --------------- I'm still struggling with the ios screen layout. We left at noon going to Taming of the Shrew by the Bolshoi in Bradenton but by the time we got to Clark I asked Libbie to see if it was in Sarasota. It was so I did a U turn and went to the Sarasota Mall where we bought tickets and had a Subway sub for lunch. The theater was pretty crowded but it was a thoroughly enjoyable performance. Today's beauty of course was the beautiful Katerina in a red dress with big zipper down the front. The ballet was intense, erotic and fast paced. The Music of Shostakovich made it special, one of my favorite modern composers. During the sex scene in the bedroom they did the Shostakovich 101, one of my favorites and I've only seen Pilobolus dancing to it. Loved it. The Bolshoi has some talented dancers. We had pizza from the Italian Grill for dinner. They make this stuff fast since we left as soon as we made the call and when we got there in less than 10 minutes it was ready. ~ January 25, 2016 --------------- More IOS struggles with the image zoom. I'm also having trouble getting the compiled screen layout to match the layout I did in the designer. We took a ride down the Legacy Trail as far as the Oscar Scherer park. Dinner was leftover reheated sausage slider from Moes Saturday dinner (this is Monday). I also had a nice balsamic salad. I made my annual doctors appointment this morning. it is for April 7 which was earlier than I expeced. I got on the scale and saw I was at 235 which means I have around 13 pounds to lose to match last year. I would love to take it down 15 pounds. Let's see how that works. ~ January 26, 2016 Almost the end --------------- The month is slipping by too fast. It's warm today, over 80. The majority of the snow in the yard has melted as viewed by the web cam. I finally got a good handle on the pinch to zoom as well as the layout problems. if I use the webview with the url mode instead of html mode I get a normal sized image that can be zoomed. With html mode the image is shrunk to a tiny little speck on the screen, not acceptable. We took the bikes to the Venice train station and rode the waterway. Unfortunately we did not recharge the batteries all week. I used the throttle to just keep the middle or yellow light on. the green one was totally off. I ran out of power about half a mile before the train station on the return which wasn't bad. We stayed on one side of the waterway to conserve power by not having to go up the hump on the bridge over the waterway. We felt that would use too much power. Dinner was a salad after the wine and cheese on the Lanai at sunset. I listened a little to Turandot but went to bed for the 3rd act. ~ January 27, 2016 tire rotation --------------- This shouldn't be as good a day as it is because it's pouring rain out. It's around 70 degrees. I had lots of success moving forward on the IOS program. The icons are nice looking and I have most of them working. Still need to implement a few more features. I made an appointment for tire rotation. Tire Kingdom offers this service free if you bought the tires there but it took an hour. The good news is the job is done. We went over to pub night where I had the vegetable torte which was eggplant, squash and portobello in layers with a beurre blanc sauce. it was chocolate cake day so we had chocolate cake for dessert. The cake was a rich chocolate with chocolate mousse filling and coated with dark chocolate chips. it was the best chocolate cake ever. ~ January 28, 2016 rain & ribs --------------- Still raining today but it's warm. It's Richard Nicholas's birthday. We had a long talk with them about videos and grandchildren. I got the camera app working in IOS but haven't figured out how to save it yet. It needs copying to a program folder then added to the database. Lots to do. Libbie started deep cleaning the condo for our exit on Sunday. This month went by too fast. For dinner tonight we went over to the clubhouse for rib night. I had a half rack of ribs with baked potato. Saved half of the half to take home for lunch tomorrow. We met a Canadian couple who bought in forest Circle 2 years ago. They said they were on #4. They needed a table for 3 but their third didn't seem to show up yet. ~ January 29, 2016 Wisconsin --------------- I washed all the mouldings today with a brush. This wore me out. Libbie continued with scrubbing all the floors. The place is looking good. On the IOS program I switched the main list over to a tableview that can handle very large lists. It works well. I also finished up the icons on the results page with icons for tap, wish, wish report, inventory edit and inventory report. It looks great, I'll probably remove the menu for these items. We didn't have time to get out today since the Wisconsin party starts at 6. We were seated at table 2, a table for 6. One couple from ILL and one from Wisconsin. The other couple were a guy and his younger blonde date. The buffet was excellent, my favorite being the trout with a cherry glaze. Also a nice medium rare prime beef. Buckeyes for dessert along with a sugar cream pie that I never had before. ~ January 30, 2016 turandot --------------- This was non stop cleanup day getting ready to vacate the place tomorrow. We left at 11:45 for Turandot in Bradenton. We bought the tix when we were there 2 weeks ago. The Sarasota theaters were sold out. We stopped on Clark at the Subway for a turkey sub before we got on the Interstate. The performance was wonderful, the tenor not so wonderful. The lady next to me decided to use the entire first act to unwrap gummy bears in crinkly cellophane. The guy next to Libbie decided he would join in on the choruses. ugggh. We stopped at Albrittons on the way home to get Honeybelles. We bought a bagful but they turned out to be not so good. They are overripe. I have always liked Navels better and will stay with my Walmart Navels for 50 cents each. For dinner we had our last wine and cheese at sunset then had a balsamic vinegar salad. I am going to start my weight loss program Feb 1. I need to lose 20 pounds before April 7. ~ January 31, 2016 drive --------------- We got up at 6 and started cleaning the condo. I made many trips to the car with our stuff which really wore me out. We had a breakfast of shredded wheat and then out the door at 8:15. We stopped for biscuits at Mickey Dees in Lake Mary. Libbie met an interesting old lady who told her they have cookies 13 for $4 here and you get choose between oatmeal and chocolate chip. She said she comes here a lot and also buys $10 gift certificates for presents and people think they hit the jackpot. Too funny. We had a little traffic slowdown around Lake Buena Vista then got going again full speed. There were a number of speed traps out. We saw one in Georgia that caught 4 speeders at once. Gas stop at Brunswick byut the Mickey Dees had a long line for lunch so we drove to Darien and had a Wendys lunch. I had a single. There were about 20 young girls there ordering for lunch, they were a gymnastic team. Next gas stop was exit 170 in Florence, SC where gas was 1.49. Wow! I didn't think it could get any lower. We got home around 8 which was longer than normal, probably because of the number of stops. Once home we ordered a pizza from Annas in downtown Apex. It was pretty good, not as good as NY Pizza but not bad. It was thin crust NY style. I originally wanted a CiCi pizza from McGregor Village but Libbie couldn't find them on the map. Maybe they're gone by now. ~ February 01, 2016 back --------------- First day back home! I wrote a check for Esquires and put it in the mailbox. We ran over to the Jessie Rd site and checked the keys before putting them in the mailbox as well. We were going to take the mailbox but found out the new owner had a power bill in there so we left it behind. It has our name on it. I spent the day getting the Huzzah working. Soldering headers was straightforward. The issue was configuring the Arduino IDE with the correct version of the WiFi manager and with support for the Adafruit board. Got it all working after working on it all day. Dinner was a salad with Balsamic. ~ February 02, 2016 low power labs --------------- The Garage Mote from Low Power labs came today. Studied a lot about the Mote gateway, watching You Tube videos about this. Libbie found a problem with changing the values of the inventory. She consistently gets a crash. We had a salad again for dinner. ~ February 03, 2016 rain --------------- Left at 6:30 am to take Libbie to RDU for 8 AM flight. Later it started raining while I worked on taking the door opener apart. I'm figuring out how to mount a garage Mote to monitor garage door closure. The drive gear is falling apart. Found the part number for a gear and ordered it from eBay. The whole kit has the drive gear, a worm gear, various washers and O rings and some grease. It was $14. A new opener is $200 from Home Depot. I built the garage mote and discovered I ordered a 433 Mhz unit. I put a 915 Mhz antenna on the mote which I need to change to a 433 unit. I found code on github to run the TH02 temperature-humidity sensor that I'm also going to mount on the garage mote. I finally lost a few pounds when I checked the scale this morning. Down to 232 from 236. Continued to diet by only having an orange and a slice of pineapple for lunch I went out and bought the ingredients for a bean burger using black beans but was too lazy to make them so I had the butternut squash casserole. It was delicious and was 140 calories per serving. I had 2 servings. ~ February 04, 2016 real weight loss --------------- Yesterday I reported I was at 232 but that was today's reading. I updated the journal today and got the date wrong. Yesterday was only 234. This morning I did my first over the air update of the NCID Display. It went fast, I was impressed. Did a little looking at the web code for the Huzzah. It looks straight forward. I think I can build a WiFi remote control for the thing relatively easily. I also set up the Arduino tool chain and libraries for the Moteino clones (Anarduino) and was able to burn a test program into one of them. Put FTDI headers on a second and a 433 Mhz antenna but did not burn it in. Will do that tomorrow along with testing the garage mote. Dinner was a bean burger using the cooking light recipe and grilled outside in the rain. It wasn't bad but kind of thick. I had it on a sesame bun with onion and ketchup. I had the last slice of pineapple for dessert. It was all pretty filling. ~ February 05, 2016 Weight --------------- Updated the AVSA website with the current AVM and also uploaded a family pic to CVS for Libbie in Tiverton. My weight this morning was 230 even. That's 6 pounds since Feb 1 which is about right for the early part of this process. I expect the loss to slow down to about a pound or two per week but at least I'm in the groove. Weight at the Dr office last year was 222 with clothes so I need around 217 nude to equal it. That's 13 pounds in 7 weeks. It will be a challenge but a good challenge. Tried to get cereal in Kroger but once again they were out of shredded wheat. I had to go to Walmart to get the cereal. Worked the rest of the afternoon on temperature conversions for the garage Mote. I finally have it converting from C to F and then converted to a string for sending in a packet. Now I have to configure a receiver to see if it makes it across the room. For dinner I had a bean burger with tomato and onion. I also had a salad with the meal. ~ February 06, 2016 Garage Mote --------------- Last night I got the Anarduinos sending packets across the room. My node was the garage mote sending temperature and humidity data that I previously added to the platform and worked on the software to packetize it. This morning I wired up the hall devices to the Anarduino and successfully got it transmitting door sensor status to another Mote which will be the gateway Mote. This is happiness. Next step was to locate a project box and mount it on the door opener. So far everything is going along smoothly. I'll have to disassemble the garage motor when the new gears get here since the old nylon ones are disintegrating. The opener is 10 years old. Weight loss is stuck at 230, same as yesterday but not unexpected. The first 6 were pretty easy now it will slow to a pound or two per week. Why did I let my weight get away like this? Dinner once again was a bean burger along with a salad. ~ February 07, 2016 Door motor --------------- After the CBS Sunday Morning programs at 10:30 I went into the garage and started working on the garage door motor. Fortunately I have a step by step disassembly guide. All went pretty well but took a long time, especially with adjusting the open and closed stop state. I also hooked up the magnets to the Moteino and enabled the gateway transceiver in the house. The door worked well reporting the open/closed state as well as the temperature. I'm pretty happy with the results. I didn't put the cover back on. I'll reserve that for tomorrow. Dinner was a Trader Joes frozen italian gnocchi entree which was a pasta and spinach in a tomato sauce. It wasn't great from the microwave and would probably be better if cooked conventionally. The Superbowl was on tonight but I didn't watch it. I spent some time upstairs at my desktop computer instead. ~ February 08, 2016 finish garage motor --------------- I put the cover on the garage door motor today finishing that job. Now I need a Pi gateway to talk to the thing as well as talk to many other sensors that don't exist yet. I have lots of plans for this and am spurred on by watching YouTube videos. I tried a pre main banner but it didn't work. I think the best ocurse of action is to start main, call a banner page and do the unzipping, then return to main. This is beginning to make the most sense for me. Did a Walmart trip to get an SD card for the Pi. I couldn't read the card from the outdoor sprinkler controller so I needed a replacement. i eventually found out the problem was the Dell computer Bios. Once I installed a Bios update the card reader worked perfectly and allowed me to write tow images, one for the Mote Gateway and one for the outdoor sprinkler. I didn't need the new Walmart 8 Gb SD cards I purchased but I certainly can use them on future Pi projects. Dinner was a treat. It was raining so I didn't want to cook on the grill so I took the leftover frozen shrimp in the freezer and combined it with the Mexican cooking sauce I got once free at Kroger and made a delicious shrimp dinner which I will repeat with some veggies next time. Maria Stuarda was live from the Met this evening. I don't care for this opera and probably won't do the HD performance. ~ February 09, 2016 depressed --------------- I took a look at Energy Transfer pricing as well as SPH today. I am pretty devastated at the potential losses in these two holdings of mine. I dread to see the rest of the portfolio. I had too much energy exposure and need help. I studied the Backup battery board from Moteino and decided they need a new case before I can mount the battery and controller. The plant room may be OK since there's room inside for the backup. On the porch I may need an external battery pack. I saw the FB post about Lori. She is in bad shape with broken arm, broken leg, broken ribs and broken vertebrae. She seems to be in high spirits. Added an external case to hold the battery on the porch. Got everything mounted and wired, awaiting a flash card which is in another Pi in my office where I configured it. I got the gateway working for the Motes. It's reading the garage sensor but not the temperature, only the humidity. It also is not polling the status. Dinner was the last bean burger. i had that with some Lima Beans in Mexican cooking sauce which I really liked. Picked up another jar of that stuff today in Kroger. ~ February 10, 2016 --------------- It's cold today. i continued on the Mote to garage interface and discovered that after the F: of temperature there is a space. The gateway treats a space as a delimiter so it wasn't picking up the temperature. I fixed with a routine that removed all spaces from the character stream representing the temperature number. I also go the router configured with fixed addresses for both the NCID display and the gateway by entering the mac addresses in the lan setup. When it sees those addresses it assigns specific IP addresses. This works. Melanie called asking for my dance lesson to be moved up to 2:45 from 3:30. The lesson went well, I picked up quite a few tips on the waltz. On the way home from dance I picked up a bag of mandarin oranges. They didn't have cuteys. this is the best orange ever. What flavor. I continued working on the gateway and discovered that the atmega part has trouble doing 115kbaud at 3 volts. I bumped it to 5 volts and it worked better although it risks the Pi I/Os since they are not 5 volt parts. I ordered some Moteinos from Low Power Labs since they seem to think their Moteinos do OK at the higher baud rates. I'll give them a shot. They seem to be running them at 16 Mhz but I can't confirm that anywhere. The Mega versions do run at the higher speeds. Dinner tonight was a salad and a bowl of beans in Mexican sauce. This morning my weight was at 229 which finally moves the needle off 230 all week. Got to keep going with the program. ~ February 11, 2016 change hot tub water --------------- Tried working on OSPi today on the porch. The fuse seems to be blown, I may have had something to do with this while cabling the external battery and battery manager. I left for the airport at 2:30 to pick up Libbie but stopped by Kroger first to get gas. I made an earlier trip this morning to get Lima beans and salad dressing but forgot to get gas. Her plane was early. We went home where I continued to do the IOS program. Libbie decided to change he hot tub water which involved me a little. We made shrimp and green beans with Mexican Cooking sauce for dinner before trying to turn the tub on again. While we had the dinner the tub was filling. Unfortunately it didn't start up with the new water. I'll deal with this tomorrow. ~ February 12, 2016 --------------- I spent the morning breaking the original 5 zip files into 10 of them to do a better job on progress indication. I made pretty good progress on this then went outside to work on the hot tub. Even with the overhead heater it was cold outside so I dug up the kerosene heater. We used all the kerosene in the Fall when we started a fire at the greenhouse to burn scrap lumber. I first went to Sheetz and then DQ but could find no kerosene. I next went to the old NAD on 55 but the kerosene pump was gone so I used my smartphone to find kerosene. It said Jordan Oil so I went there. The very nice lady said that there is a pump at the Marathon on the corner of 55 and Salem. I went there and found an old pump next to the building. I picked up 4 gallons which cost 12.09. Started the heater on the back porch and diagnosed the hot tub. Indicator is showing a bad hot tub temperature but I found a chart of the thermistor readings vs temp and measured ours. IT showed 52k which was about right. The motor is good because I manually pressed the relay and it worked. The only conclusion is a bad controller board. I ordered one from CA. A few minutes later I got a text from Capitol One telling me there were suspicious charges on my card. Three gas stations in Orlando had $65 charges on the card. I wish I knew how the card got out. Had a dance lesson with Melanie covering waltz. We did extremely well, I really have the waltz down pat. After a dinner of salad and Lima beans we went to the CBC party. Esquires was postponed tonight because of the threat of wintry weather which never materialized. At the party I tried to Waltz with Libbie but for some reason she wouldn't move. It's so frustrating. ~ February 13, 2016 chapel hill dance --------------- Continued the day trying to split the IOS program up to do a better job on the progress indicator. Listened to Trovatore this afternoon while reading online. Libbie is cleaning her sewing closet. We had a light dinner of salad and lima beans. It's just what I wanted. We went out tonight to the United Church of Chapel Hill. Gary couldn't use his tickets os he gave them to us las night. We had a great time eating chocolate and dancing to a 13 piece big band. The music wasn't too overpowering even though it was a small room. We danced quite a bit and sat at a table with an older couple, Raleigh and Betsy Mann. He was the band announcer and singer. They were a delight. We had a great night. It seemed easier to drive back than going there. Total mileage was around 27 miles which wasn't too bad. The chocolates were delicious, especially the mint fudge brownies. ~ February 14, 2016 house cleaning --------------- Did a little housekeeping in the workshop, spurred on by Libbie's sewing room project. She needed plastic shoe boxes and I had them available. I freed up at least 8 or more which was good. I finished the program and tried uploading it but got an error. I put a query out on B4X forum to see if others had the same problem. Libbie made her pizza for dinner which was yummy. ~ February 15, 2016 Presidents Day --------------- Still no good answer on what's wrong with the uploads to Apple. Will keep trying. This is Presidents day so not much going on except we had some light frozen rain this morning which is melting as it warms up and turns to all rain. Dinner tonight was chicken curry with green beans cooked on the stove top. It's delicious. ~ February 16, 2016 Controller --------------- My new credit card was supposed to come today by 10:30 but it didn't come until 5 PM via FedEx Priority. Oh well. The Jacuzzi controller did come today by way of UPS Blue 3 day service. Excellent. It went right in. This definitely was the problem. The motor started right up with the new controller. Now the long process of heating water begins. Today was grocery day so in addition to the groceries I added the ingredients for meatloaf muffins, a Cooking Light favorite. We had this was Lima beans and a salad. It was delicious. Instead of wine we had water. The package from Moteino was sent back by the post office because of some kind of addressing problem. I'm going to try to fetch it in the morning if it's still there. ~ February 17, 2016 dance --------------- Made a trip to the Post Office when they opened at 9 AM. Had to visit the window at the side door to look for my package. The guy said it was sent back, he never even looked at the tracking number. He just went to the shelf and came back and told me that. That place needs to be shut down, lazy inefficient employees. The hot tub is slowly heating up with the new controller card. It's up to 90 when we went to bed. Libbie jumped in anyway, she came out cold. I worked on a separate download function for the FC IOS app. For dinner we had 2 each of the meatloaf muffins along with lima beans and a salad. Next time I would eliminate the beans and only have the salad. I ordered some more Huzzah processors from Adafruit. I'm going to use one on the gateway function to send and receive serial through an Anarduino to the sensor network. This would interface with a Pi. I possibly could replace the Pi with enough software in the Huzzah but I doubt it since the Pi Moteino framework has nice graphing and tracking functions. The Huzzah would do serial send and receive and do HTTP GETs to the NCIDD. Libbie signed up to stay with Lori tomorrow since this is her first day back from the hospital. In dance today Robert straightened out our forward progressive twinkle. I have to take small steps and make sure I step to the side. Libbie has to take a big second step back. When I'm doing the reverse progressive twinkle I need to take bigger steps back while Libbie smalls down. ~ February 18, 2016 display --------------- The driver chips came today. I removed the old chip from the NCID Display and put the new one on without any problems. The display came to life immediately. This is happiness since it allows me to continue pursuing putting environmental readings on the display using the gateway or equivalent. I'm still splitting off the large zip files from the IOS program into separate downloads. I may have to use a separate screen and user button to kick this off. Dinner was the last of the meatloaf muffins which we had with salad and Lima beans. ~ February 19, 2016 --------------- While having lunch on the porch we heard the doorbell ring. It was our Postal carrier questioning the letter I left in the mailbox because mail for this house is on hold. We told him it is not on hold, Jessie Drive is on hold. We went to the Post Office and got all our old mail including the parts from several days ago which was good to see. I also got a check from Victoria which was the rent check. The CU camera deposit app would not accept it because it was too much money. Will deposit tomorrow. We had a dinner of hamburger and Lima Beans then went out to the studio party. Had a hard time dancing, nothing went well. Our waltz was a disaster. I signed up for a waltz showcase. We went out to the Mexican place where Chilis of Cary used to be. This was after dance and we went with Anne and Paul, Anita and Ken and Terry and Harry. The food there is fantastic. I had a beer and we split an appetizer with cheese, poblano peppers and other stuff in it. It's served with Tortillas. I was able to get two way communication working on the Pi Gateway for a change. I'm guessing the problem was a combination of bad software and improper powering of the Anarduino. The Bridge PCB by Tod also was in the mail today from OSHPark. I need to add headers and get it working tomorrow. ~ February 20, 2016 shriners --------------- I put the connectors on the wrong side of the OSHPark board. I chose to populate a second board instead of trying to deal with removing the connectors. The Mote-Pi gateway works very well. It is two way communicating with the only sensor on the network for now. My next sensor may be a crawl space humidity sensor although we went to Lowes today and picked up some epoxy for me to glue down the RJ5s and power connector on another perfboard to make a sensor for the greenhouse. We went to Shriners for the 8 PM dinner which was one hour later than normal. It was a fun evening. We brought a bottle of wine and had pork chops and beef at the buffet. The food was cold but tasty. Our table had Ken and Anita, Paul and Anne, Harry and Terry and Nancy and Art. It was a fun group and we had a nice time. We didn't stay to the end which was supposed to be midnight. We went home at 11 PM which was late enough. ~ February 21, 2016 test flight program --------------- Got the post hole digger working and hauled it out into the woods where I drilled a hole for the new birdhouse. After lunch Libbie helped me install the house into a very wet hole. It filled with water when I drilled it. When we were all done tamping the mud slurry into place a pair of bluebirds showed up and were checking the house out. Wow, that was only about 10 minutes. We have a daffodil blooming in the garden. It's a little early. Crocuses are also blooming. Paul sent the links to the Alaskan cruises he is considering. This looks interesting if we can go along with them on the trip. After Libbie's delicious dough from scratch pizza tonight I got to work on IOS Test lfight. I got my first pass of the program into the test flight but it needs review which may take a few hours or days, unknown. We shall see. The bottom line is that I finally got the app completed enough to release to Apple for beta testing. ~ February 22, 2016 approved --------------- The app was approved by Apple so I went through the motions to get it listed and get the notices sent out. This was a big relief since it's been a long time in development, almost 2 years. I heard from John C that the pictures are not there and also from Bob Clark that the yellow search box on the front screen is not working. I found that the search box doesn't clear. I started work on the next photo album mainly because a voucher I have is expiring. It's been hard filling 80 pages. The Open Sprinkler came today. It's different since the Pi plugs into it instead of using ribbon cables. This is a problem since I want to splice into the supply line for battery backup. Stayed up until midnight working on the album. Dinner tonight was a chicken and french cut green beans in Mexican cooking sauce. I had a salad to accompany the meal. Weight loss has come to a flat line. At least I'm staying down but I need to get back on the losing curve. ~ February 23, 2016 --------------- I finally finished up the photo album and submitted it to MyPublisher. I also used the $30 voucher to buy a phone for Libbie from Republic Wireless. Hopefully we can activate it after March 1 when our Verizon plan runs out. Spent some time on the phone with Un-Cruise and arranged for our trip to Alaska. We reserved two trips, a pre-cruise on the Denali railroad and overnight in the park then the Muir trip on the Safari Endeavour. This thing is pricey at almost $20,000. We still need to get plane tickets. Dinner tonight was salad with some tuna over the top. ~ February 24, 2016 storm --------------- I posted that First Class was in beta for IOS. 50 people liked the post and over 16 commented they couldn't wait for it. I added 2 ladies as beta testers from the AV facebook group. The lady from un-cruise reserved some cabins for the three couples. I sent the invoices on to the Cain's and the Kretchmans. I also checked trip insurance with a few other providers and found it cheaper at John Hancock. We had a great lesson with Robert who started our choreography and had us pick our song. We settled on Nuit A Paris by Antoine Simone. It's a nice mellow slow waltz that sounds like a night in Paris. I love the music. We have a sever storm passing through the area this afternoon with strong winds and tornadoes. We got a call from Heather that she is stranded in RDU with a canceled flight. We finished spaghetti and salad for dinner and had we known that Heather was coming we would have waited. Got to RDU at 7 PM and picked them up. It was a joy to have Heather and Nate here. ~ February 25, 2016 --------------- I tried hooking up the outdoor sprinkler and had a disaster. The booster board got fried when i shored the output leads. Meanwhile the Pi and sprinkler board got very hot. Something is very wrong. I shut it all down. I studied flights today to Alaska and I think I picked out some winners. We mos likely will go the day before to avoid hassles of being late for the cruise start. Dinner tonight was Lima beans and salad. Very nice. ~ February 26, 2016 Pay money --------------- This was a busy day. I packed for our trip tomorrow, worked a little on some bugs in the IOS program and also paid the 5K deposit for our cruise. I also took a look at flights but didn't book anything. After a busy day we went to dance a little after 8. The party was noisy and I had a chance to talk with Sharon Hammill about signing up for New Orleans next Mardi Gras. It sounds great, I want to do it. Libbie is neutral. We will bee in Florida at that time. Dinner tonight was Lima Beans and a salad. I put too much Tapatio sauce in my beans, my mouth was burning. Libbie's Republic wireless phone arrived today but we won't activate it until we get back. Had a nice night at the studio party tonight. Talked with Paul and Anne, Libbie apologized for hijacking their trip with Anita and Ken. Earlier today Anita sent an email saying they couldn't afford an Uncruise and ended up booking with Princess. Paul was glad we signed up since we "rescued him" from a large ship cruise. We did not go out after the party, choosing to go home and resume packing. ~ February 27, 2016 travel --------------- We left home at 7 AM which was the plan. It was an easy drive down, the sun was bright in the sky but it was only 30 when we left. By the time we got to Georgia we had the AC on. Stopped at Florence to top off gas and get a bacon-egg and cheese biscuit. Next stop was on Commerce Ave in Jacksonville for a Wendy's single and to fill up again. Arrived at our BnB run by Pam and Charles at 6:15 PM. It was a good trip. Later in the evening we went out for dinner at Casey Key Fish House where we had fish and chips with a Yuengling. Very nice. ~ February 28, 2016 Aida --------------- Pam our host cooked us a nice simple but adequate breakfast. Libbie had a bagel with an egg and I had a bowl of cereal with fruit. The strawberries and blackberries were a nice touch. We tried to go to Selby this morning. Traffic going there of course was horrible. Once we got there was a line directing traffic into the parking lot. We found it was an orchid show and some kind of dinner. Too bad. We made our way to Osprey and when we got to Mortons Market we parked and went in looking for a cafe. We saw Libby's Bar and Cafe across the street so went over and had lunch. Yumm!!! I had a spinach and beets salad with pear slices surrounded by roasted beets accompanied by a piece of grilled chicken. What a taste treat. Also on the salad were blue cheese and sesame vinaigrette dressing with some granola crumbles over the top instead of croutons. it was a nice touch. Returned to take a walk of the neighborhood before settling in to programming. I fixed a few problems in the app which was happiness. We left for the Opera at 4:50 but had way more time than necessary. We were going to meet Bill and Barb at 5:45 at the Parking garage but arrived on Palm at 5:15. We found street parking and stayed in the car listening to Anna Netrebko live on Sirius. We found a little pizza place across the street called Patellini which was pretty good. We each had a slice while Bill and Barb split a sandwich. The performance of Aida was over the top. Sarasota is the little Opera house that can! They actually staged a wonderful performance of Aida complete with a ballet and a nice triumphal scene featuring 4 ceremonial trumpets which they played well. It was a fantastic but long evening of grand opera. ~ February 29, 2016 leap day --------------- Last day of the month. I got a lot of the issues solved on IOS, i'm ready for an updated version to go to the store once I learn how. We took our bikes to the legacy trail and rode to Sharkeys pier. I had a nice lunch of crab cakes and fries with a yuengling. Came home and took a nap. Did not go dancing tonight. We went to dinner at a sandwich shop called PDQ qhwew I had a chicken cali club with bacon and avocado. It was a long but satisfying day. ios ~ March 01, 2016 selby --------------- After breakfast we went to Selby Gardens which was beautiful since there was an Orchid show. We had lunch inside of Selby gardens. Took a ride out to Siesta Key. We got stopped at the light on the bridge. Went down to Turtle beach to find info out about kayaks then walked the beach. i saw lots of lovely bikinis. It was a treat seeing so many up close. For dinner we went to our traditional Bangcock Thai place. It's always good. Took a ride around the Cove today and all the way out to Stickney Point Rd through the houses without going out to Tamiami. I like it back there. ~ March 02, 2016 drive home --------------- Pam made us breakfast at 8 as usual. We left shortly after breakfast and started the long 11 hour trip back. I chose to take I-4 which seemed like a good choice until we got to the St John's river and spent 1 hour and 4 minutes with all lanes stopped due to an accident at the DeBary exit. An SUV crashed and caught fire. After that we stopped at Ormond beach for a Big Mac lunch and gas. Next stop was just over the SC line for gas. Stopped at the Pilot on Exit 170 in SC for dinner at Wendys and more gas which was 1.49 For dinner I had a salad with crispy spicy chicken. It was called a half salad and cost around 420 calories. I also had a few of Libbie's French Fries. It got dark in Florence, the rest of the trip home was made in the dark. We got home around 9:30 which was longer than normal due to the delay on I-4. Our mail was waiting in the mailbox when we arrived. Everything looked great except the bike rack two bikes slid closer together due to the rails on the thule rack sliding on their support. I will separate them and drill a hole for a pin to stop them from sliding. ~ March 03, 2016 dance --------------- Researched portable travel cameras with long lenses today. Winston sent a surprisingly long list of items for the app which i appreciate. It shows a number of things wrong or features absent. While I was at it, I updated the website password and also the scholarship section. We had our 3:30 lesson with Robert today instead of Wed since we were traveling yesterday. Melanie was at the studio doing a dance with Evan. Very cute! We added more minutes to our routine rather than review what we have done so far. I taped the next part of the choreography. Dinner was a salad with tuna over the top. I'm back to eating light in anticipation of more weight loss in march. I hope so! The My Publisher album came today. It's quite a synopsis of the last part of the year with lots of Paige pictures. ~ March 04, 2016 party --------------- I worked quite a bit on the app using Winston's list of problems. I made lots of headway, even finding out how to share a list. We went to Lowes and bought stainless bolts to repair the bike rack. The bike carriers slid towards the end on the carrier tube. I move the inside one back towards the car where it belongs and drilled it with a 1/4 inch bit and then put a 3 inch stainless bolt into it with lock washer and locknut. This is a double fix to make sure the bolt stays in. I may buy a second 3 inch stainless bolt to pin the outer one. The reason i didn't was it slid against the stop screw so it wasn't going anywhere. Took this opportunity to blow the driveway off. It was littered from the storms of the last few weeks. We had a salad and french green beans for dinner. Went to dance at 8. Ken arranged a surprise party for Anita after the dance. We went over to the Kretchman's house and waited in the dark house for Harry to drop Anita to the front door. It was a nice party - Rebecca and Lisa, their daughters, helped Ken to set up the drinks and the food on the dining table. It was 2 of her friends from the dental office and Harry & Terri, Lana, Anne and Paul. We hid our car on the other Cul de Sac. Stayed until 11:45. I had lemon meringue pie, some finger food and several glasses of wine. ~ March 05, 2016 Manon Lescaut --------------- I looked at cameras some more this morning and worked a little on IOS with some progress on sharing. Thank goodness Libbie decided not to go to the Roadhouse tonight after the opera. I'm tired of not being home all the time. I need some time to work the issues on FC4M. I did a Kroger run and got my free Lindt chocolate egg which I split with Libbie and also picked up bread rounds for our sandwiches. We went to Manon Lescaut at Crossroads. I loved the opera, the duo of Alagna and Opolais was spectacular. I enjoyed every note of this opera. We got home at 4:45 and then had shrimp, lima beans and Zinfandel for dinner around 7 PM. This was a big meal but I have to get back on the program since I was still at 226 this morning. I'm going to be 200.0 by the time I turn 70 and 216 by my physical on April 7. ~ March 07, 2016 magnolia --------------- Did a little yard work today removing some trees that had fallen in the pathway. We then went to Fairview and purchased a tulip magnolia, variety Betty. I continued to work on IOS solving some more of the problems on the list. This thing is getting close. Dinner was a salad with tuna sprinkled over the top. ~ March 08, 2016 malware --------------- Spent a lot of time on the website looking for malware that Google said the site had. I found it in the footer by scanning the SQL database for the siteclean.us URL. Used the HTML editor in Drupal to remove it. Also found someone had created an admin account which is probably how they got in. Cut up an Oak that had fallen but did not move it onto the pile. Dinner was a salad and a bowl of Lima Beans with hot sauce. ~ March 09, 2016 cameras and dance --------------- Worked some more on the App today - got the camera object working. Now I need to get the refid numbers somehow. Sent an eMail to Joe Bruns and he called this evening. He nicely sent me the REFids for all the plants in the MVL. Now I need to put this into the SQL database for lookup. Libbie and I practiced our Waltz choreography before going to the studio and getting the last of our choreography from Robert which I taped. I also got the music from him. Now we're set. Dinner tonight was Curry chicken and green beans. We had gone to Trader Joe's today and got more Curry Sauce as well as the usual supplies. ~ March 10, 2016 sql day --------------- This morning I was tying up loose ends. We located Libbie's Score Card account which has 18,000 points in it. She can trade that for a gift card. Yesterday I paid the 8,000 dollar Visa bill which was our deposit for the Alaska trip. We probably are spending too much for this one trip. I imported the MVL refids from Joe Bruns into an SQL table, now I need to write a program to incorporate that into the existing database. During the afternoon I wrote a sub to populate the database with the refids. Some of the refids didn't match up to the names thanks to european characters and also the species. I made up REFids for the species. After the database was populated I used iTunes to fetch the file so I could include it in the assets. Dinner was a salad and lima beans then we went out to the Elks at 7 PM for the 7:30 PM dance with Rollin and the tune swingers. We had a very nice night. The dance floor was not crowded but the orchestra was unbelievably loud in that low ceiling room. The dances were mostly foxtrot but we had a very nice evening. It was over at 9:30, we made it to the end. During the day I used an online service called homeadvisor and was contacted by Louis of Carolina Contracting. He said he would stop by Friday or Saturday to give me an estimate for scraping the ceiling in the back bedroom. ~ March 11, 2016 nice day --------------- It was a nice almost 80 degree day today. Did not work outside since I wanted ot rest up for the dance party tonight. For dinner we had Salmon and broccoli then went to the studio for the dance party. We went out afterwards to Brewsters with the gang. I had a Sam Adams seasonal and we split some Nachos and queso cheese sauce which didn't have much flavor. Jennifer had Mac and cheese bites which she said also was lacking flavor. ~ March 12, 2016 ceilings --------------- Finished up this version of the IOS app, version 1.0.4. In addition to the bug fixes, this uses the camera to add user photos to the mix. Luis showed up today to estimate the popcorn scrape job. He will do the bathroom and the downstairs bedroom for $950. We gave him the go ahead. He said he could start as early as Sunday or Monday but Tuesday looks like a day he will be free. Submitted the fore mentioned IOS app to iTunes for approval. They probably don't work the weekend. Dinner tonight was shrimp, broccoli and Shiraz. ~ March 13, 2016 furniture --------------- We moved all the furniture out of the downstairs bedroom and into the front room today in prep for removing the popcorn ceiling. The app still has problems with inventory and the camera. I'm working on trying to fix those. Libbie made her great pizza from scratch for dinner. The broiler was on so the crust cooked soggy while the top was done cooking. it was very good none the less, especially when i have been cutting back like the last few weeks. Weight is down to 122 and holding. ~ March 14, 2016 roadhouse --------------- Put in an extra effort on the app today trying to wrap up inventory and camera issues. We went out to the Roadhouse in Pittsboro tonight for dinner and dancing. Bill called us that we could sit with him this evening which we took him up on. We split a salmon BLT sandwich with coleslaw and sweet potato fry chips. They were yummy and the right amount of food, accompanied by a craft beer. Total bill was $32 plus $6 tip. I put the app into testing when we came back from the roadhouse since I took a look and Apple had approved it. It was submitted to Apple in the afternoon. After submitting to Apple I then took some time and worked outside moving some more of the cut up logs on the side of the house cleaning up the woods. While i did this Libbie worked in the front yard picking up pine cones and branches. ~ March 15, 2016 ligthing --------------- Tried to work on the problems with the inventory for the app but I got nowhere. It wasn't going well so I put it aside and worked outside on the outdoor lights. I also need to get the Sprinkler system working again. I had salad and Lima Beans for dinner while Libbie had the other half of her Sub sandwich she had for lunch when she was out with Laurie taking her to the doctor today. ~ March 16, 2016 dance computer --------------- Decided that I would have a separate entry and exit for the results screen in IOS. This means that all I have to store are the name and hybridizer and look up all the other stuff each time I enter the page. This may work to solve the problem of page not refreshing or the wrong page displaying. We went to dance today but there was no music because Robert's computer had crashed. The lesson was good anyway. We picked up a few pointers for our waltz routine and ran through the first two parts without music. I took Robert's computer home and put the hard drive into an external case. It was still good and readable. We dropped it off at the studio around 7. On the way home we decided to do La Cocina for dinner. I had a Yuengling and a Quesadilla La Cocina, my old standby. I need to get back to the diet again. ~ March 17, 2016 ceiling --------------- Luise came today around 9:30 and started the popcorn job. Amazingly they were done a little after noon. He said he would be back tomorrow to sand the job. In the meantime I was able to build a good version of the IOS code and distribute it to everyone on the Test Flight beta team. Dinner was light again with salad and Lima beans but I had some crackers and misc stuff throughout the day today. I will get back on track tomorrow. I set up the heater in the downstairs bedroom to make it warm all afternoon to help with drying. I booked the Albuquerque and Juneau air tix as well as 3 nights in an Air BnB in Juneau extending our vacation a few more days. ~ March 18, 2016 --------------- Luis came around 9:30 this morning and sanded and plastered the two rooms. He and Juan were done around 12:30. I did some research on fans and then wondered how Robert made out with the laptop drive I put in a box for him. We had some Salmon and Broccoli then went over to the studio. Robert greeted us at the studio happier than ever. The hard drive worked out for him! He announced it at the studio to everyone and then again at McGegor Tavern afterward. We had a good night of dancing back to Robert's old music that he had been copying onto the new computer for the past few days. It was a nice night of dance. Afterwards we went to McGregor with the gang. I had a beer and split 8 wings with Libbie, 4 each. I sat between Libbie and Butch with Anita at the end of the table. Nice hats about everything. Had to change the Anchorage to Juneau flight this morning because I had the wrong day. Uncruise gave me the wrong date. Paul got a different one from them so I called back and found they gave me the wrong one. I changed the reservation from July 24 to July 23. ~ March 19, 2016 --------------- After doing some more research I determined that the fan I wanted was a 52 inch with enclosed light, 2 lights in the globe enclosure. Libbie said white, the only place with white was Fuquay.We picked up a Gazebo II by Hampton Bay and bought a universal remote as well as a 10 inch plate to cover the ceiling hole. At home I placed the plate against the ceiling and determined that it was the perfect size to shift the fan to the joist and to also cover the hole. Next I need to study how to control the thing with a Moteino as well as still allow the Remote to function. The fan was $99, the remote $31 and the plate $10. When Luis finishes the ceiling on Monday I will start the fan installation when the paint is dry. The Moteino will need programming first and the support hardware such as a relay and power supply need to be identified. I had a number of issues with the beta test ladies that I resolved on IOS. One was a repeating inventory function and another was a search that didn't work the second time. Fixed these but it took Apple 36 hours to approve the file for testing. Dinner was pork chops, sweet potato, peas, salad and a bottle of Shiraz. Big dinner. I'm afraid to look at the scale tomorrow morning. ~ March 20, 2016 weight --------------- The weight was not terrible but not great this morning at 222. I need to be 216 naked to clock in at 222 with my clothes on to match last year's weigh in at the doctor. My appt is April 7. ~ March 21, 2016 ceiling finished --------------- Luis and Juan finished the ceilings in the bedroom and the bathroom. They really look great but there is a lot of dust on everything in the house. Louis said they will come back when the weather is warmer to do the ceiling on the back porch. Libbie went right in there and started working on the trim paint. After a weekend of eating and not losing any weight it was time to get back in the groove. We had Lima beans and salad for dinner. I'm now at 223 which is the wrong direction. ~ March 22, 2016 flooring --------------- Libbie went out to care for our friend Lori this morning while I spackled the bedroom and ripped up the carpeting. I also programmed a Moteino but had trouble driving the relay that is going to operate the fan. I found that the port pin, D2, on the Mote is hooked to the transceiver and could not be used for general purpose IO. Moved the connection to D3 and now all is well. I need to program this thing to operate the fan on a timer and also to have it controllable from a gateway. Need some script work for the gateway as well. Dinner was chicken tenders on top of salad greens. I really liked this combo, probably because I was really hungry. This afternoon we went to Home Depot and got the flooring on order. I lost the 10% off coupon but was able to use the 18 month free financing coupon for the purchase. The sales guy was nice, friendly but clueless. He didn't know the correct amount for the glue, told us the bottle did 400 sq ft. It really does 400 lineal feet. Need to buy more glue. ~ March 23, 2016 dance --------------- I put the second coat of spackle on in the corners after sanding the first coat on the downstairs bedroom. I also scraped quite a bit of the carpet off the concrete. I'll finish in another day. We went to our dance lesson as usual with Robert and learned the tricky parts of our routine, taping the tricky parts for study over the next few days. Because of Libbie's trip next Wednesday we scheduled another lesson with Robert for Monday at 3:30. Dinner was eating light once again. We had chicken tenders over salad greens for dinner. I really like this combo. ~ March 24, 2016 Thursday --------------- Did some more sanding and scraping of the carpet pad in the downstairs bedroom Vicki called for our anniversary tomorrow. She's putting in new counter tops in her kitchen. I picked up a bouquet of Roses for our anniversary tomorrow and also a chocolate bunny for Libbie for this Sunday which is Easter. Dinner tonight was a ham with yam, broccoli and one glass of Rodney Strong Cabernet as a special celebration. I finished scraping the carpet padding off the concrete floor in the spare bedroom. This was harder than I imagined it would be. ~ March 25, 2016 anniversary --------------- Libbie posted the roses to Facebook today. We got a lot of comments and congrats. At the dance tonight Mitzi announced it was our 44th anniversary. We enjoyed the dancing and went out to the pub afterwards. We shared a plate of wings and had a glass of Sweetwater beer. Before dance we had a ham sandwich. We visited Costco this morning and joined but did not buy anything. The quantities were too big for us on many items. Wine had a good selection and pricing. Not so sure about soap and other things. After the Costco trip which wasted the morning I loaded up the car and took the carpeting to the dump. It was crowded over there but I'm glad the yard is cleaned up of this stuff. ~ March 26, 2016 Gateway --------------- It rained on and off today which was good since it washed off a lot of the pollen which was accumulating. I got the Moteino and the gateway working sort of. Having trouble getting a button to display. I'll keep trying. Dinner tonight was the Ham with the last glass of the Rodney Strong and also broccoli and a yam. ~ March 27, 2016 Easter --------------- This is easter Sunday. After the morning CBS Sunday Morning show we started the paint job in the back room. We have a light pink which is called Bermuda Shell. Libbie did the cut in work while I painted with the roller. It took about 1 1/3 gallons of paint which was what I calculated. It looks pretty nice. The push is to get this work completed before the flooring arrives this week. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza. We tried practicing our waltz routine because we have a lesson tomorrow instead of Wednesday. Libbie is going to RI on Wednesday so can't be available. ~ March 28, 2016 --------------- We practiced our waltz some more this morning. Libbie touched up the paint job and I changed all the outlets in the bedroom to the new white ones. We had a good lesson with Robert. He worked on fine tuning our steps. After dance we went to Kohls where I dropped Libbie off and went to Home Depot. I picked up the wood for the floor in the Corolla. Eleven boxes just fit into the trunk with the seat down. Libbie helped unload it at home into the back foyer. Dinner was a salad with Julienned ham slices over the top. It was a light dinner night. Weight is around 220 or 221. I need to get to 216 by next week to weigh in and be the same as last year. It's going to be a tough goal to meet. ~ March 29, 2016 fly --------------- Left at 6 AM to drop Libbie off for her 7:30 flight. I finished up wiring the fan and think that it works. The timer cycles the fan but the timer off mode doesn't seem to be working. I laid out the padding and taped it down at the seams. It fit fine using up the rolls exactly. I put the starter course down after ripping down the first course making them 3 inches each. The click and lock isn't as easy as it sounds. It's not going well on the first 3 courses. I checked online and found the rest of the floor will weigh down the initial courses so it won't buckle as bad. I'll see how this works. I've been studying OpenHab and interfacing to it through MQTT. I can see my home automation system eventually including the big LED display into an OpenHab environment along with NCIDD. This will be fun. Took a spring drive to Sanford. It's a beautiful usnny day with the spring flowers on many of the trees. Dinner was a salad with Lima beans. I was still hungry so later on I had a bowl of cereal. ~ March 30, 2016 blood --------------- Wired up the fan today in the downstairs bedroom and got the Moteino working cycling the thing. It's not functioning exactly as planned, the disable timer is not working. The fan still cycles. Need to fix that. I have a new saw blade and a multi cutting tool to cut the door jambs. I'm ready to start the flooring. I watched some YouTube installation videos on click and drop flooring. It looks easy but I know better. Dinner was a salad and a bowl of lima beans. i have blood work tomorrow and proudly i have hardly had any meat this week. Can't wait to see the results. ~ March 31, 2016 --------------- Blood work early this morning with a 7:30 appointment. I met Bill over there from our dance friends. Logged onto Verizon this morning and saw I can make all the changes to the account without involving a person on the phone. Will do that tonight. Worked on the floor some more. this isn't going too well - the boards are not clicking together and I have large gaps in some of the boards. What a nightmare. I started reviewing Openhab for my home automation system because it interfaces with everything on the market. Much to learn about the terminology. I finally logged into Scott and retrieved a 1099 form as well as made a funds transfer to checking in order to avoid account non activity which i got an eMail for. Weight is promising at 218 this morning. Dinner was a hamburger on a bun cooked on the grill. i decided i needed some protein even though it was red meat. Changed the Verizon account. Tomorrow it transitions over to Frontier. Wanted the changes logged before the transition. ~ April 01, 2016 depressing --------------- This is a depressing day. I'm not happy with our stock account balances, they are quite low. In addition, the flooring job is not going well. I pretty much stopped the progress on the floor and ended up with tearing it all up. I wasted probably one or two boxes of flooring in scrapping the job. I'm going to try to do better. Checked into the Frontier account, our new ISP in Florida and they got none of the changes removing the sports and downgrading the service. I'm not happy with them. Dinner was a hamburger on a bun. I also had a bowl of Gnocchi from Trader Joe because I was still hungry. In addition to my crummy day, I found i left the BBQ grill on all day since dinner last night. At least it was clean when I went to use it. What an awful April 1. The weather wasn't so great either. It was warm, windy, rainy and cloudy. Yuck. While I'm miserating over the shitty day one more i can add is my order for 3 size XL shirts came from King Size. Wouldn't you know it, two polo shirts were XL and the other was 2XL. Crap! ~ April 02, 2016 better --------------- Today is better. I feel less depressed than yesterday and seem to be alive again! It's sprinkling outside so I can't set the saw up but the great news is I have a clue on the flooring. the first 3 rows I put down look great. The secret is to use the mallet to tap the grooves into place and to not worry about the curl in the first few rows. This will flatten as the floor progresses. Weight was just a hair under 218 this morning. My goal is around 215 on Thursday morning when I visit the doctor. It will be a struggle. I chose not to go to Butterfly in HD this afternoon. Glad I did since the sound went out on both Sirius and WCPE during the first act. I made a hamburger for dinner once again to have with a salad. It's a good protein meal and provided I don't junk it up with other stuff, it's low calorie. ~ April 03, 2016 --------------- The floor is really going well although slowly. I have mastered click lock flooring and want to do my office this year. Went to change the oil on the Corolla this afternoon and found that the jug I thought I had is short about a quart. I do have 5w30 and debated mixing this with the 0w20 but online forums recommended against this so I went to Walmart and bought a jug of oil. Also picked up some mandarin oranges and bananas. I tried Kelloggs Crave cereal as a sanck. It has double milk chocolate in it and is sinfully good, not great if you're trying to keep the weight off. After my hamburger and salad dinner I decided to do more siding, this time cutting away the closet door jamb bottom and fitting a board in under the jamb. It looks great! Libbie requested a check in for tomorrow morning at 6. I told her I'm up anyway so will do it. I tried getting the IBM RSMB broker for MQTT but it doesn't like the version of the MQTT broker, either the pubsub one or the Adafruit version. I stumbled upon a version of Mosquitto that runs on the yun. This is a good use for the flawed Arduino architecture. It basically runs on DD-Wrt router firmware which is Linux based. Since the YUN has a Linux based image someone created a version of the Mosquitto broker for it. I'll try an install on my YUN. ~ April 04, 2016 busy day --------------- Up at 5:30 and after my shower and bath routine I went downstairs and checked Libbie in for her 6 AM flight tomorrow morning. I put out a big push on the floor today and finished it except for the last row that needs to be ripped to make 3 inch wide boards instead of 4 inch. There was a power glitch today and the cameras are out as well as the NCiD server - both the Pi and the Huzzah ssem to be reset. On the good news side I managed to get the Mosquitto MQTT server running on the YUN. YUN runs DD-Wrt and there is a version of Mosquitto from the repository to install on the YUN. I did it and got the broker running. I ave not flashed the Huzzah to try it yet. The Huzzah is the MQTT client that failed when I tried to run it against the RSMB server from IBM. Hopefully Mosquitto is more up to date. Dinner tonight was a salad and Lima Beans. ~ April 05, 2016 flight --------------- Libbie's plane was on time this morning. I put the last of the boards down in the downstairs bedroom then left at 9:15 to pick up Libbie from her 9:20 arrival. She left RI at 6 AM this morning. Later in the morning we both went out to the grocery store for the Tuesday groceries then a few hours later after getting some measurements of the baseboard we went to Lowes and picked up 8 sticks of 3/4 inch quarter round and a box of nails. I may not need the nails because I have a brad stapler for the air compressor. For dinner Libbie made chicken Curry which was chicken with green beans and curry. We had this accompanied by a salad. ~ April 06, 2016 dance lesson --------------- It's very cold this morning, 30 degrees. We covered the irises last night and uncovered them today. They seemed to make it OK but more freezing weather is coming this weekend. Libbie took her car out to get a flat tire looked at. While the garage was empty I set up to paint the cove mouldings for the bedroom. i laid down the drop cloth and got the saw horses out of the shed and arranged the cove mouldings and also turned the heater on in the garage. Libbie painted the wood. We had a good dance lesson this afternoon, fine tuning some of our steps for the choreography. I was able to load the videos onto the Android tablet to use for learning. i installed NCid again on the Pi thanks to Jack's hints via email. It is setup now but I can't get the Huzzah in the display running correctly. There always seems to be something wrong! Dinner was lobster ravioli with sundried tomatoes we had sampled in Trader Joe's after dance today. Wellness physical tomorrow! I missed my weight goal by about 1.5 pounds. Currently I'm around 216.5 which probably translates to 223 with clothes on. I as going for under 222 which was last year's result. ~ April 07, 2016 dr visit --------------- Had my physical today. My weigh in was 220 which isn't too bad. My clothes weighed 4.5 pounds which really means I was at 215.5. After this I went on an eating binge but not too badly. Dinner tonight was a tuna sandwich. I spent the afternoon crawling around on the floor spackling the nail holes from the cove moulding installation. I'm happy with the progress. ~ April 08, 2016 banana oudding making --------------- Today i sanded the spackle and Libbie cleaned the floor then painting over the spackle. This concludes rebuilding the downstairs bedroom. Yeah! For dinner we had tuna sandwiches but with banana pudding desert. We spent the later afternoon making the Paula Dean recipe for banana pudding which includes cream cheese and evaporated milk. It wasn't too bad. We went to dance at 8 and had the usual fun time. We went to Spirits afterward but Paul and Ann couldn;t be there because Atlanta heard noises in the house. She is staying in their place. We went home instead and got to bed relatively early because we have to drive tomorrow morning at 5:30 to judge the Richmond Violet show. I finally got a Pi up and running with NCID. It has been a struggle but I'm there! ~ April 09, 2016 party --------------- WE left at 6 am to drive to Richmond for judging at 9. One stop at exit 4 in VA for biscuits and bathroom for Libbie. We arrived around 9 at the arboretum. It was a cold and windy day. The violet show was pretty small. I enjoyed judging designs with Pat Knight and Sue Hoffmann. Afterwards we had a salad and crab soup in the cafe. We then walked the garden in the 46 degree cold windy weather before getting in the car around 2 for the drive back. Had to get gas on State Hwy 64 in NC about 60 miles from home. Once home we took the banana pudding over to the Oyster Roast at the Rumleys. There was quite a large crowd there. The food was yummy. I had lots of Oysters as well as the veggies indoors. The pudding went over well, it was all eaten. We drank a bottle of 3 buck chuck while there that we brought to the party. Left at 8 PM after a nice party. Our clothes smelled like smoke because we stood around the firepit to get warm for a while. It was fun anyway and I didn't mind. ~ April 10, 2016 study --------------- I spent a lot of time today looking for the files from our old computer for the tax returns. I need the old Turbo files to make the job easier. Ended up manually starting the tax returns instead of transferring everything over. Wheat a pain. I also spent a lot of time studying investments to make for getting started putting the land money to work. Libbie made her delicious pizza for dinner tonight. I was hungry and it was good. ~ April 11, 2016 LED Display --------------- I continued working on the taxes and also tried to talk to the MQTT server I put on the YUN. I had no luck doing this. All my sensors will talk to MQTT for display on Openhab and also the LED display. I had to rebuild the NCID caller ID pi because it stopped working after a power failure. This thing needs a battery backup. The Adafruit LED modules arrived for a second display which I will use to debug an MQTT version. I made quite a few purchases on Scottrade investing a lot of money in preferreds. The account is down quite a bit thanks to the MLP meltdown that occurred. Dinner tonight was lima beans and a salad. ~ April 12, 2016 mqtt --------------- I finished the threshold for the bedroom by drilling it and screwing it down then patching the holes with wood filler. It looks great. I also mounted the remote control on the wall. Dinner was salad and lima beans. I got the NCID running again and also managed to switch the MQTT server over to the same Pi running NCID. It works fine on here and I was able to get a Huzzah talking to it OK. Louis called about the back porch. He will be here either Thursday or Friday depending upon when he finishes his other job. We did quite a bit of practice of our waltz routine today. Libbie won't be home tomorrow thanks to a commitment of taking Lori to the therapist. ~ April 13, 2016 dance --------------- I was home alone today so I built the LED display partially, mounting the modules on aluminum rails and also worked on the software to run in the NCID display. This thing is shaping up. Left for dance at 3:15 and met Libbie there. We continued to practice our waltz routine. Dinner was spaghetti with Marinara sauce and cheese. Very good. Afterwards i did some more study of preferred issues and also looked at bonds. I was woke up at 4 AM the next morning by a loud screeching downstairs. I got dressed and took the flashlight outside and looked under the house but didn't see anything. I looked on the porch and also turned power off downstairs but nothing. Eventually i found that the laptop had gone into a feedback cycle while doing an update, the speakers were howling very loudly. ~ April 14, 2016 --------------- As mentioned yesterday I was woke this morning by the loud howl from the computer. I managed to stop the updates at 47% which stopped the howling. Plugged headphones in and let it finish the updates then found the control to turn off the microphone which stopped the howling. The update took about an hour which I didn't really want but had no choice. Luis didn't show up, maybe tomorrow to paint the porch. We went out at noon looking for night stands and found some at Peterson Consignment after visiting the one in the old Cary News. Returned at 3 and bought the tables in Petersons. Stopped to get 2 blue lamps we saw in the Piece Shop consignment but they were sold. The tables work perfectly next to the bed since it matches the bed frame. I rubbed down the pork shoulder I bought Tuesday and wrapped it in plastic and put it in the refrigerator to steep in the rub spices. For dinner I "cooked the cover" of Cooking Light and made a chicken salad which was spinach with a balsamic strawberry vinaigrette and grilled chicken and strawberries. Half the strawberries were marinated in the balsamic, the other half as is. It was delicious. I found our Beecher Hill House for sale. They installed hardwood floors, rebuilt the kitchen and added a bedroom and a pond. The price is amazingly low at 244K. After enjoying the pictures and listing I put the roast into a pan, made a criss cross pattern in the fat on top, covered it with foil and put it into the oven at 225. It will take 8 hours to cook, I started at 11 PM. No additional liquids were added. It will be done at 7 AM. ~ April 15, 2016 dance --------------- Louis called this morning. He said it will be tomorrow or next week for the porch. I told him next week would be better. Libbie helped as we shredded the pork which was done at 7 AM after cooking all night. We started at 9 AM and finished by 9:20. We packed it in 2 one gallon bags for the beach and one 1 quart bag for tonight. We had the pork bbq for dinner with a glass of leftover Rodney Strong and homemade slaw. Dance at the studio was a black light party which was funny. Mary taught me West Coast Swing. Fun!!!! Afterwards we went over to McGregor Tavern where I had a glass of Samm Adams and shared a plate of Quesadilla's with Libbie. ~ April 16, 2016 esquires --------------- I did a little tax work today. Got so involved I forgot the Saturday Opera was on. Joined it later at 1:30 while we sat on the porch and had lunch. Got ready for Esquires and took some pics of Libbie's new dress and me in my tux in the driveway before we went. Also took pictures at Esquires but it was too dark. We really enjoyed the dance. It wasn't very crowded. I had the fried catfish with a salad and the squash casserole. Very good. We left a little after 10 in a very nice evening of dance. ~ April 17, 2016 trip --------------- Libbie left this morning a little after nine. She texted me around 11:30 that she arrived while I was on the phone with Anne. Anne spoke for over an hour talking about her younger brother who passed away. I found out about the education fund for her brother's kids which we will contribute to. Dinner tonight was a hamburger on a bun with a salad. I built the housing for a second LED display I'm building and spackled the nail holes. When the spackle dries I'll sand and paint it black like the first one. ~ April 18, 2016 finished taxes --------------- I spent the morning finishing the K-1s for our taxes. I had 4 K-1s from Breitburn to enter. This completed the federal return. Pushed some buttons and did the state return. I also had to enter some credit union numbers and Libbie's Scottrade numbers. When done I electronically filed the federal taxes and then printed the forms to mail to the state. I oculd have done both electronically but they wanted $25 to do this so I chose to use 2 stamps. Marinated my first batch of wings this morning using the baking powder and a seasoned salt and pepper mixture. They came out way too hot to be edible. I like hot food but these had too much cayenne. The crispiness was ideal. Will do again but I will modify the pepper content a little. Dinner was the wings with a batch of homemade slaw. ~ April 19, 2016 --------------- Louis came today about noon and started caulking the porch. Not sure what he was caulking but he spent the day doing that. He left at 5 and said he had another job somewhere to finish up tomorrow morning. I'm used to this behavior. I need to next focus on the outdoor sprinkler. Both Open Sprinkler boards are shot. Will probably have to order another one but I'll try some more. The roll of black mesh fencing arrived but I'll wait for Libbie before dealing with this large unwieldy roll. I made wings with cumin and ginger this evening for dinner. I'm not happy with the results. Will try a basic recipe tomorrow. The wings were crispy but I'm unsure of the cumin and ginger flavor. Oh well, back to the drawing board. ~ April 20, 2016 --------------- Louis called today and said he won't come at all. This was great news because I have a lesson with Robert. I spent some time memorizing the routine then went to meet him at the studio, This was a different lesson but pretty good in that he showed me a few things about how to lead. I need to memorize more of the routine, especially part 3. Tonight I perfected wings!!!! I'm happy with the simple flavor of garlic, pepper, onion and salt. I found that SIP, formerly OSPi, has a plugin to use relays instead of the Open Sprinkler hardware. I started wiring a cable for my 8 relay Chinese board I bought a while back. After blowing up 2 hardware boards I'm going to carefully wire the relays to the Pi. I also got NCID configured correctly. The alias file is case sensitive, I saw the errors in the log which helped me debug the file and get it working. ~ April 21, 2016 --------------- Luis came around 11 today with 3 other guys to paint the porch. They stayed until 7 PM working in the dusk but with the porch lights on. When they left I noticed some watermarks still showing through the paint. Not sure if they missed some paint or if the paint is too thin to cover them. I'll touch this up myself. I got the power management for the Pi working outside the controller box today. Now I need to test the relay wiring and button it all up. Dinner was the good wings recipe again. I was going to saute' some onions to have with garlic and other ingredients in a sweet and sour sauce but ran out of time so I had the wings like yesterday's, straight from the overn. Betsy Blake called yesterday offering 2 tickets to Toppers this weekend. I called Libbie then called Betsy back and told her we would take them. I put a $60 check into the mail this morning for the tickets. ~ April 22, 2016 Rain --------------- At long last we had rain! It got dark in the morning then started raining big time. i did the relay test on the box on the family room floor and everything seems to be wired correctly. I had to search quite a bit for a 24 volt AC transformer but finally located one with my outdoor lighting stuff in the garage. Mounted it on the wall and wired up all the sprinklers. Ran a one minute test on 2 zones in the greenhouse and the correct solenoids activated. I'm very happy with the results. I ended up in the pouring rain at 3:30 in the afternoon on the beltline which was all jammed up. Took some side roads to avoid the beltline. What a mess. Dinner was a salad and I previously had a hamburger for lunch so i had protein today. Left for dance at 8 and was shocked when I got there. It was prom night, I totally forgot. Danced with Mary, Luann, Anita, Lana and Anne. It was a fun night. We went out afterward to JDs tavern on the corner of 55 and the Peakway. I got home around 11:30 PM. A great night except I was wearing a golf shirt and jeans while everyone else was dressed up in tuxedos and gowns. ~ April 23, 2016 toppers --------------- Early this morning I made a shortened extension cable for the 5 volt supply inside the controller box so that I could close it up. This went well. I then got out the ceiling paint and touched up the water spots. They still show through after the touch up. Libbie acme home from the beach at 12 with a quart of fresh picked strawberries today. We won't have dinner here because we have Toppers tonight which includes a sort of dinner. Got dressed up and left at 6:19 for Toppers which was a little early since the food doesn't go out until 7 PM. We sat with Charlie, Jim, another couple and Andy. Andy had a beautiful date, Camille, who was an excellent conversationalist and a ballroom dancer in a gold gown. She was quite nice and definitely a keeper. We struggled trying to do waltz but did OK on the other dances. The food was as expected, some salads and wrap sandwiches with an open bar. I only had one glass of wine and a chicken salad wrap which had a lot of lettuce in it. We stayed until 10:40, the dance lasts until 11. It was a nice evening. ~ April 24, 2016 --------------- I heard from Mary about the AVSA website. I had not answered her for a week so I need to get busy on this. I attempted to do an update to the IOS program but ended up putting it off and did some reading on the porch with the music streaming from my tablet to the bluetooth speaker. This did OK. I researched more bonds on Scottrade and am interested in the PSEG bond. Libbie made her pizza again which was excellent after not having it a while. ~ April 25, 2016 bonds --------------- I got all Mary's issues with the AVSA website resolved this morning. Started researching displaying data on the NCID display using MQTT. This is something I really want to make happen!!!! I need to get off my ass and make this happen instead of talking about it all the time. I ordered a professional recorder on eBay this morning. I finally decided on a Tascam DR100 Mark II. This is for AVSA as well as recording Operas and other stuff where an audio recorder is needed. Hopefully I can take the MP3 files off this thing unlike the Olympus device which doesn't allow this. For dinner tonight I made wings with the sweet and sour sauce which we had with a salad. I only coated 4 wings at first but they were good enough to use the sauce for all the rest. This afternoon I purchased the PSEG bond after talking to a broker at Scottrade to see if I was missing any red flags with this bond. ~ April 26, 2016 wings again --------------- Did a minimal grocery trip with the biggest purchase being another 4 lb bag of wings. I'll use up the current bag tonight. I spent a lot of time researching income issues and ended up doing a lot of purchases and sales on Scottrade. The IRA wasn't in too bad of a shape. This is the first time I have looked at it in a long time probably almost a year. There was 42k in cash sitting there which I did some purchases with. I also sold some turkeys such as Gastar. I may also have to dump Kinder, KMI, since they have seemed to lose their way with borrowing and the downturn in oil. I also made some CEF purchases since they seem to be stable with 8% yields although stocks such as SO and O which only have 4% yields seem to be doing better in total returns. I made classic buffalo sauce this evening for dinner but it came out salty. The recipe said to use unsalted butter and I made it with salted. Will pick up unsalted butter and try again for the party. ~ April 27, 2016 dance --------------- Libbie started painting the porch while I finally started to work on the updates portion of the IOS program. We went to dance today and tried to go through our whole routine but kept screwing up the releve' and the dosey doh. I'm determined to make this work! I did some rearranging of the 401K this morning, getting rid of KMI and picking up the CEFs I was looking at. The portfolio probably still needs tweaking but for now it looks OK. Dinner was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on. ~ April 28, 2016 work --------------- The month is almost over. Where did April go? It's amazingly almost all gone. Cynthia posted that her cousin passed away. This lady was still running Manatee Technical College and planned to retire in June. I posted the obit on my Life Bits. This was the first time I have used the new dokuwiki to post an article with a picture. I like it a lot better, the user interface is much easier to use. Libbie went to quilt group and a massage this afternoon. While she wasout I struggled with the map encryption but after 3 or 4 hours I found a German post with an easy to use wrapper around the encryption library. Kudos to Google translate for the capability of translating the comments in the program that allowed me to understand the flow. Under the covers he uses stringutils and the byte converter to take a text string and encode/decode it. It works on both B4A and B4I. WooHoo! We had a nasty storm around 5:30 that Libbie was out in. Quite a bit of hail came down covering the ground and destroying our rose bushes and the iris blooms. Lots of foliage has holes in it but other than that, no major damage. Dinner tonight was a sesame bun with tuna salad, celery and lettuce. Yum. ~ April 29, 2016 party --------------- Tonight is the studio party. I prepared 4 lbs of chicken wings this morning after they thawed overnight. Put on a rub and put them in the refrigerator for cooking tonight. Worked on IOS and got the decryption algorithm working. It was crashing and found out the password was incorrect on the upload yesterday. Now I need to figure out what to do with the decrypted password list. Went onto the porch and spackled, taped the sink, and put Kilz on the water spots on the wall. While I was at it I also used Kilz on some spots on the ceiling. I will paint the side porch wall tomorrow. Cooked the ribs and prepared 2 dishes to pass. One was the sweet and sour ribs which i thought were the better and the other was classic buffalo style with butter and hot sauce. This one won first place. We had a nice time. Lana and Janet were single tonight so I danced with both of them. It was a fun evening, probably made more fun by our first place win. ~ April 30, 2016 elektra --------------- Painted on the porch this morning and did the wall with the furnace and stuff on it then finished the roller off on the other wall. the job is almost complete! Went to Elektra at 12:15. Really enjoyed this stirring emotional opera. i know the music so it was nice to see how it melded with the story. the opera as sung by Nina Stemme was intense. After the opera i stopped at Kroger and got shrimp and wine for dinner along with some new selections of Birdseye steamfresh Southwest rice. I liked it all. Dinner of course was the shrimp with Southwest Rice and a bottle of Malbec from the Kroger wine sampling. ~ May 01, 2016 pizza --------------- Tried writing the part of the software that decodes the updates file. Kept downloading an incorrect file. Went to the desktop and tried uploading the file on the server again, it was not the issue. A few days later I discovered the problem was a typo in the file name I was receiving. Libbie made her yummy pizza again for inner. ~ May 02, 2016 --------------- We had a hail storm this evening. I continued working on the IOS program through the day then at 5:45 we left for the Roadhouse in Pittsboro. The Tuneswingers were playing, Bill Moore had made reservations for us. We sat with Sharon and David Raymer. It turns out their son Ryan was in Joe's class. They had a younger son, Carson, who died of heart failure in his 20s. David was the guy we always saw in the cool clothes at the various dances. Fun night. We split an order of Salmon BLT which we had with 3 Yuengling bottled beers. We stayed until around 10:20. The roads were clear on the way home. We seemed to have picked the correct times to go and return in between storms. ~ May 03, 2016 hail again --------------- I worked more on the IOS program and finally got it to do an update! Now I need to store the user supplied password and display it on the updates page. We had another wicked hail storm with twisting winds and tons of rain. the power actually went out which was an issue with NCID since I couldn't easily get the display to run again. Eventually it rebooted when I connected to the hotspot it sets up. The power went out and we ended up having tuna sandwiches. The generator kept the TV and the table lamps running as well as our can opener. ~ May 04, 2016 hash tags --------------- Struggled with SQL saving and retrieving. I'm a little fuzzy on SQL but eventually got it working. We had a good dance lesson at 3:30 with Robert and signed up for Fridays at 3:30 as well. After the lesson we went to Trader Joes. I enjoyed Yeti today since I discovered the hash tags. There's a lot of college kids having sex on there and posting photos. Dinner was chicken drumsticks using a cooking light recipe, Spicy Honey glazed Drumsticks. It was OK but not terrific. We had it with Lima beans and Shiraz that we picked up in Trader Joe's today. ~ May 05, 2016 Alexa --------------- Another cold and rainy day. I was going to plant the grow boxes but opted out because of the rain. The Amazon Alex device came today so I spent some time getting acquainted with it and giving it commands. I used IFTTT to control the Honeywell Thermostat but I was not impressed with the lack of control available. My best bet is going to be to use my own server to do this. i have an outline on a blog of how to talk to Alexa. I finally got the IOS app doing updates using the password file. Next step is import and export of User db files. Still more to do. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on. I continued to read about using Alexa to issue MQTT commands. This is what I need for general purpose Home Automation. I also spent some time converting the old Nashville powerpoint into jpg files so I could easily pick and choose which ones I will use at the Richmond meeting on Saturday. ~ May 06, 2016 Dance --------------- Lots to do today. Tried the IOS program but I screwed up something and now it won't compile and won't show me what the error is. Worked on sorting and weeding out slides for tomorrow's program in Richmond. I made the wings recipe for dinner tonight but used the remaining Chicken drumsticks. They were excellent. We had this with lettuce for dinner. In the afternoon we had an additional lesson with Robert. It was a great review of the dance routine for our waltz showcase. We sort of made it through a few times, we are beginning to remember the routine. Sadly I am finding that I can't remember a lot of the steps. I'll just have to work twice as hard. We left for dance at 8 and had an excellent night. There was a group of young people here from an NC State dance club. They were quite good. We also met a couple of newcomers - Karen and somebody. This was their first party. I have the slide program for tomorrow pared down to about 90 slides and also packed the lights, cloth, cameras, monitor and extension cord for Richmond tomorrow. After dance we went out to Sprits in Cary and only had a beer, no bar food which was good. It was a great time. ~ May 07, 2016 Richmond --------------- Up at 6:00 this morning. I was incredibly tired and didn't want to get out of bed. We had breakfast and took a thermos of coffee for the road and left at 6:43. Our target was 6:30. It was an easy drive with a stop at exit 4 in VA for gas and McDonalds biscuits. We got to the meeting a little before 10. The meeting was way behind, mostly because of the 3 boxes of plants that Libbie brought. I gave my program after the break at 11:15. All went well and we eventually went to a Mexican restaurant, La Plaza Aztec which was outstanding. I ordered the Chile Rejeno which came with a beef taco that i didn't need. Chip and Salsa complimented the meal.. It was a nice afternoon, we ended up leaving the restaurant at 2:30 PM. We got to Apex non stop by 5:20 PM.. A quick change of clothes later and wash my hands and face and we left for the Roadhouse in Pittsboro to meet up with our dance friends. What a fun evening. The band, Graymatter, were 3 siblings and a spouse. They were nice, mellow and played songs from the 60s and 70s. We had beer with our dinner. I had a Sweet Josey which is a dark beer and then a Yuengling. For dinner we split an order of salmon BLT. The group ordered some appetizers consisting of fried green tomato, potato patties and flounder bites. Joining us were the Cain, Nancy and Art and the Rumleys. There was a large group of 14 next to us celebrating a birthday and a large cardboard cutout of Donald Trump. At one point Anne Cain decided to dance with Donald while Terry took pictures. We left shortly after 10 ending a long day. ~ May 08, 2016 Gardening --------------- After the morning programs I went out into the garden and prepared the grow boxes. I then planted the cucumber and zinnia seeds. I tried to get fertilizer in Home Depot but only got an expensive bag of organic crap for yuppies. Took a trip to Walmart and found plain old garden fertilizer which was 6-10-4. I put my seedlings in the shade to get hardened off before I put them into the garden. While i was at Home Depot I also picked up some hooks for the BBQ tools and a case for the NCID Pi server. The case is big enough to hold the modem, the Pi and battery backup stuff. It's a little pricey at $31 but I feel well worth it. It does include an outlet in the box that I could plug the 5 volt wall tap into. Libbie made her traditional pizza from scratch for dinner. While the pizza was in the oven Joe called for Mother's day. She put it on speaker and continued with the Pie. It almost burned in the oven but rescued it in time browning the pizza on top. Joe was making pizza for a Mother's Day party for the Lapworths. The whole gang was going to be coming over. ~ May 09, 2016 Mr Wonderful --------------- I did some work on the First Class May update and got it released to the server. When i installed First Class on Libbie's phone I had a chance to test the May update. It went well. Libbie's phone has First Class and the database is up to date. After lunch we went to the Farmer's Market and purchased plants for the flower garden. I found some zinnias in flats and dwarf French Marigolds. Libbie got her Salvia, Basil and other stuff. We also found Amy, the little Asian girl in a hat. We bought a planter from her loaded with a nice arrangement of plants. Left at 5:45 for the roadhouse. We ended up before dinner taking a dance lesson in WC Swing from Andy who was the substitute instructor. The other guy couldn't make it so Andy drove out. We split Salmon BLT for dinner. I had 2 Sweet Josie beers with dinner which was too much, I shouldn't have had 2. We helped close the place and danced to the last song. It was a fun night with lots of foxtrot. Andy taught WC Swing and then during the band break conducted a cha cha and foxtrot class. It was fun. ~ May 10, 2016 gardening --------------- After the groceries today I went into the garden and fired up the tiller to prepare the planting bed for geraniums. The downhill slope and the proximity of the fence made controlling this thing hard. It really took a lot out of me to the point of exhaustion. I ended up taking a shower and laying on the bed for 2 hours reading in order to recover. I productively used the time to read about performing the integration of Alexa, OpenHab and IR Remotes. Basically, Alexa interfaces to a bridge which interfaces to OpenHab. The correct URL is activated which then activates an IR LED on a YUN which spits out the code to perform TV activities such as power on, change channels, etc. Dinner tonight was the balsamic strawberries on a bed of lettuce with some chicken strips in it. ~ May 11, 2016 IOS calendar problem --------------- Solved the calendar problem with the IOS app. The calendar wouldn't close the second time it was activated - the app ended up under the title bar. Now I set the target beforehand then call the Show routine. Next feature is keyword tags. I found an icon and added the code to add a column to the database. Next is to develop the search routine based on the tag. We went to dance this afternoon and did pretty good with our routine. Robert helped us quite a bit with the releve'. When I came home the Phillips Hue starter kit was here. I was also studying how to setup Alexa with Openhab. This will control the Phillips bulbs among other things. For dinner I decided to make Christa's Enchiladas. Picked up some corn tortillas and enchilada sauce in Kroger and made it in a casserole dish. ~ May 12, 2016 hash tags --------------- I nicely have the hashtag search working in IOS which is a plus. I use the front page screen to do iterative hashtag searches allowing the user to drill down into the tag. I went out at 9 to get a haircut at Great Clips when they first opened. My stylist was Francine who is pretty nice and also fast. While I was doing this Libbie went to take Lori to the therapist. I planted the grow boxes with the peppers and tomatoes as well as a grow box of Zinnias. While walking to the shed I noticed the maple tree next to the shed had a huge split diagonally and the tree was leaning over the shed roof. I immediately got a chain and come along out of the garage and hooked it up, jacking the tree back to vertical. After a Kroger run for dinner ingredients I used the chain saw and took the tree down. I hauled most of the crown back to the tree pile in back but left the trunk laying there for more work tomorrow. On the IOS app I managed to implement hash tags and get the search for them working off the front page. This is great. I tried it with a nude photo I put on a plant and called the hashtag #nude. IT works well. ~ May 13, 2016 dance lesson --------------- Outside I moved the trunk of the tree I took down yesterday. This was not too bad of a job - one cart load of wood to the wood pile did the job. I did a lot of reading about openHAB today. I tried getting a Pi 3 ready for openHAB but had a few problems. Still need to understand this stuff. We had a pretty good dance lesson with Robert today. I got a few things straightened out going into the releve and also the runaround. His suggestions were pretty good. We went to Jessica from the studio's graduation party today. We picked up a $25 Amazon gift certificate for her and put it in a card. There was food and drinks but I suspect most people didn't know there was food. The party ran until 10:30 but we left at 10 because we were tired. Dinner was leftover penne and chicken from yesterday. ~ May 14, 2016 Roadhouse --------------- I spent a good part of the day working on the Raspberry Pi. I found that the Jessie Lite image does not have Java runtime installed. I chose instead to get a full Raspbian image and start the process of configuring it and adding FTP. I learned a thing or two about FTP and CHOWN. I used CHOWN to set the ownership to Pi which allowed me to FTP with a write into the directory. Last night we decided to get together tonight with the Carlsons to go to the Backbeat concert which is Beatles music at the Roadhouse. The Carlsons arrived a little early at 6:15 instead of 6:30 but we toured violets of course then left at 6:30 to get to the Roadhouse at 7. The place was very busy. the band was great as usual but very loud. I enjoyed the two young girls flashing their panties. One in a short red dress sat at the table next to us and another in a black dress kept kicking her leg up on the dance floor giving a wonderful view. I had the Fried Flounder sandwich with a Yuengling. Libbie had the Mac and Cheese. We stayed until 11 and left tired but happy. It was a fun night out with Gary and Janet. During the day I called Uncruise and paid the 14,000 balance with a credit card. They amazingly took it! I get $282 cash back for this. ~ May 15, 2016 Apple upload --------------- I worked on the IOS program today, finalizing the hash tags and removing the import menu item. This afternoon I took a bike ride around the neighborhood when i returned I spoke with Anne on the phone for a while about ALBQ planning then went out again with Libbie. We went around Buckingham then into Vintage Grove into Seagrove before returning home. Libbie made her excellent pizza again for dinner. It came out perfect this time. I managed to upload IOS 1.0.8 into the Apple Test Flight. This one has database updates and also the hash tag function. This will be the version that is released to the public this month. ~ May 16, 2016 Dress Rehearsal --------------- We did quite a bit of practice today for our waltz. We had a light dinner of spaghetti with cheese then did the rehearsal at 7:30. Our routine went well, we had a few rough spots that need fixing. ~ May 17, 2016 day off --------------- Today is a day off. We don't have to be anywhere or do anything. I need the time for my apps but I spent too much time learning about telecine machines. Dinner was a shrimp and ceasar salad with homemade dressing. The dressing was terrible. It was too salty probably because of the anchovies. ~ May 18, 2016 Fiinal lesson & Esquires --------------- We went over to the studio and had a pretty good final tuneup for the dance on Friday. We're starting to bring this whole thing together. We went out to Esquires at 5:45 and made good time. It was lightly attended but we enjoyed it. I tried a waltz but the dance floor was too crowded. The mahi Mahi and the beef were really good. I ate too much dessert. ~ May 19, 2016 --------------- I researched bonds quite bit and ended up buying 25 units of Goldman Sachs for $29,000. This will yield 4.8% which isn't great but it's super safe. We had tuna sandwiches for dinner on some of the bagettes from Tuesday. ~ May 20, 2016 Showtime --------------- We practiced a few times today while I worked off and on doing the new screen colors for Android. We left for the party at 5:45 and did a few run throughs of our routine. I think we have it down OK for now. The party started at 7:30. We chose a table with Ken and Lana and their two daughters as well as Anita and Beth and Steve. We had a few misses in our waltz. Libbie started off on the wrong foot. The turns were a little out of sequence but acceptable. Something happened during the Chasse and Lock, I'm not sure what. We had too much wine but the food was good. We had BBQ, small fish things and crab quesadillas. Various cookes for dessert finished the meal. ~ May 21, 2016 --------------- We woke to rain today. I spent a good part of the day working on the Android screens trying to make them equal the new IOS app. After a dinner of BLTs we went out to the Symphony for a night with the Rat Pack. I didn't care for the vaudeville routines. Love the symphony music but amplified singing is not foro me. They were singing and shouting too loud into their mikes to be pleasant. ~ May 22, 2016 artsplosure --------------- I worked on bringing the FC4A app to the same standards as the IOS version. Around noon we went downtown to Artsplosure. It has been moved to Fayetteville Street which I don't think is as great as it used to be. It could be just that it was a cold gloomy day and rained when we got home. On the way back we stopped at the Farmers market for tomatoes, strawberries and blueberries. We also bought some plants from Longwood gardens. At Kroger this morning I bought a 50 percent off Clematis. Libbie made her yummy pizza for dinner today. ~ May 23, 2016 Rain and tires --------------- Libbie went to a Dr appointment this morning and texted back that her tire was at 15 pounds. She topped it off at Capis Exxon in Regency park and came home. Since the front tire has 3 plugs and this now is the back tire we went over to Costco and bought 4 new Michelin Defender tires. Total price was $475 including new pressure sensors and mounting and balancing. This should solve the tire problem she has been having. Beth reported a crash on user db entries and repeating pictures. I fixed both issues and submitted the app to Apple for review at 10 PM. This is version 1.0.9 Dinner was spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. ~ May 24, 2016 --------------- Did more work on Android today. It still needs more debugging. I tried something different. In the afternoon I rode the eBike to Kroger for the first time and picked up baked beans, hummus and triscuits. I had already done the Tuesday groceries this morning. The ride to Kroger was easy. One issue is the bumpy sidewalks along Shepards Village. This is too bad, they're 20 years old. We had Andouille sausage with onions and peppers on a baguette along with baked beans. Yum! I managed to call CBC and push our dance lesson out to 4:15 tomorrow. We have the Segway tour at noon and I wanted a little more time. Temperature today was a perfect 75. It won't be so great tomorrow but the weather will at least be sunny and good for our Historic Oakwood tour vis Segway. ~ May 25, 2016 Segway --------------- Cleaned up a lot of the Android crashes but still have more to do. Left at 11 for the Triangle Glides Segway tour. Found parking in front of Woodys on the cobblestone streets near Moore Square. While I was receiving my training one of the quilters, Nancy, fainted. They called EMS and took her to the hospital. The tour was great. We got a lot of Raleigh History as we toured old homes and then went into the cemetery. The cemetery is beautiful, my item of beauty today was a large Magnolia which I tried to get a photo of a spent blossom seed pod. My point and shoot would not focus. I need to read the manual some more. After the tour we got an ice cream cone at the local shop which had 10% off with our Segway coupon. The line was long because they were getting an ice cream delivery. I got an Italian Ice which was excellent. Stopped by the Farmers Market for Blueberries, peaches and strawberries before going home. Went to our dance lesson at 4:15 which was excellent. Robert deconstructed our Showcase and picked out pieces we could use. I appreciated this. Dinner was Cajun Andouille with peppers and onions on baguette bread and some Baked Beans. Libbie made strawberry shortcake for dessert. ~ May 26, 2016 bike ride --------------- Got some more of the Android cleaned up in the AM. After lunch I got on the bike and went around Buckingham then returned on Old Raleigh Rd and continued into Vintage Grove where i went out onto 1010 then into the condos and through Seagrove, returning through our woods. It was a nice drive on a warm day. The item of beauty was the Daisys and Coreopsis of the lady across from the Pinnix house. In addition, the lady was out in a nice red polka dot mini dress and blonde ponytail. The garden is beautiful, I may return with a camera. Ideally I would love to take a picture of the woman with her flowers. We went out to dinner at La Cocina. I had a 32 oz mug of beer which was huge but cost only 1.99 on Wed and thursday nights. It was Thursday. I had the traditional Quesadilla La Cocina. When I got home there was a note from Anne requesting the YouTube video to be put on the website. I created a video content type and then a design section of the library. The library is a mess and needs reorganization. ~ May 27, 2016 Full Day --------------- This was an active day. I worked a little on Android and made progress adding country and gessy to the advanced search and to the user db. I went over to Kroger to get the Friday freebie which is a Quaker breakfast bar and also a free donut in honor of National Donut Day. Kroger donuts are not great. They're not fresh and taste like preservative. Last night I made a rub and put it on the ribs. This morning I unwrapped the ribs and started the Smoker around 12:00 which is later than I wanted but OK for a 6 PM dinner. I used the 3-2-1 smoking which is 3 hours of smoking, 2 hours wrapped and 1 hour basting/carmelizing. I missed the 3:00 wrapping because we were still out on a bike ride. Wrapped the meat at 3:30 instead. We went out the front entrance of Buckingham into town then walked our bikes through downtown returning down 1010 through some old Apex neighborhoods. Turned in at the condos on 1010, went through the Seagroves Park and back through vintage grove to Buckingham. We went up Buckingham way to see the garden opposite the Pinnix home. We met the homeowner, Glenda Mooney who moved in 3 or 4 years ago. Their gardens with a wall were beautiful. She's a really nice person. We chatted for a while then went home to tend the Smoker. I had to make the BB sauce to do the basting. Took the ribs out at 6 PM. Libbie made Lima Beans to complement the meal which we had with Ravenswood Zinfandel. After dinner Libbie served a homemade strawberry shortcake which used up the strawberries we picked up at the Farmers Market this week. It was a full and satisfying day. ~ May 28, 2016 --------------- Good effort today on IOS, found a few issues that are in the release version that somehow slipped through in the Advanced search of the User Database. I worked a lot to get the Genus as part of the search, now I need to do the same for the "Country" field and it should be done. i mowed the front and back lawns with the tractor because we're going away and it's going to rain tomorrow. Also repaired the electric fence in the back where it broke. Dinner tonight was the other half of the rack of ribs, reheated on the grill. We had this with Lima Beans and Woodbridge Cabernet. After finishing our wine on the porch we went over to Brewster and each got a waffle cone. I had a Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream cone. They seem to make their own cones, it's quite good. ~ May 29, 2016 pack --------------- Released the Android version of the FC app today with the new screens, icons and tags. Now i need new Help screens. Ran to Walmart for Bicycle chain oil and did our bikes. While there I picked up Zinnias and planted them in the GrowBox that was empty. Libbie made her excellent pizza once again then I packed for our ALBQ trip. My suitcase is extremely heavy with the camera and the audio equipment. ~ May 30, 2016 travel --------------- Left home at 10:15 am for the airport. TSA Pre made it easy, we had no waiting. Our flight left at 12:25 PM. We had a short pleasant flight to Baltimore then the same plane went to ABQ. We got the exit row which was outstanding. On the flight to ABQ the wine was free because it was Memorial Day. We had Southwest peanuts and some Kind Bars that Libbie packed. Arrived in ABQ early at 4 PM. The flight was rough for the last 200 miles. The ABQ airport is beautiful with lots of paintings and sculpture decorating the place. I enjoyed it. Picked up our Enterprise car rental and went a short distance to the Crowne Plaza which was at the intersection of I-40 and I-25. Nice hotel. In the evening we went out with the Texans, Mary Corondon, the Ramseurs, Anne and Marjorie and others and had a very very good meal of corn enchilladas with carne avocada and a Corona beer. it was a nice treat after a day of no real food. ~ May 31, 2016 Old Town --------------- I was up early and did some work on the AVSA website including the 2017 Convention page and the library You Tube videos. We had breakfast in the hotel - the coffee was quite good and the food was reasonable. I had the buttermilk pancakes with syrup. Total price was $18. We tried to get on the 11:00 trolly at Old Town but it was full so we bought tickets for the 1 PM and walked around Old Town. Found an artists coop of 40 artists which we enjoyed and also toured a gallery of a Taos Indian painter, RC Gorman, who has passed away. The painting go for big $$$$, starting at $12,000. Prints alone were $2,000 to $3,000. Libbie liked some tiles that were $50 each. We had a Fritos Pie for lunch which was a layer of Fritos covered with chili, beans, sour cream, lettuce and tomato. We took the excellent trolley at 1 which included the UNM campus, Route 66, Old Town and famous neighborhoods and architects. It was a great intro to ABQ. Went back and met a few AVSA people before going to an early dinner with John and Judy, Richard and Anne and 2 other ladies. We decided not to do Sandia since it was windy and cloudy. Maybe tomorrow. ~ June 01, 2016 hot air balloon --------------- Up at 4:45 to get ready for getting together at 5:15 in the lobby for our van to the balloon launch. One of the vans locked their keys inside so we had to wait for that before we could leave the hotel. We launched from Mariposa park. Danny and I held the balloon open so that the thing could be inflated with cold air. Once inflated, the gas was turned on and the balloon heated and lifted. We each got in and we were off. It was so great. The lift was smooth and serene. We rose quickly. I looked at the ground and asked how high we were. The answer 6,500 feet. Wow, that was fast. It was so serene to be gliding in the air currents, I loved every minute of it. I'm amazed at how quiet it was and how we silently drifted along. We had a touchdown in a field and were promptly picked up by the chase van. After folding the balloon and loading the basket we were driven back to the park 7 miles away where we had some breakfast snacks and a Mimosa toast which consisted of champagne mixed with Orange Juice. We had a picture in front of the van then headed back. We had the hotel breakfast late which wasn't very good compared to yesterday. Because Libbie's phone had run out of storage I went to Walmart and picked up a 32gb SD card and a sandwich wrap in Walmart for some one stop shopping. The sandwich was quite good. Wednesday evening we sat outside with Linda and Barbara from Philly and ordered a plate of fish tacos at 5:30. By 7 PM we finally had to cancel because Libbie was working classification and needed to get back. We went out at 9 PM down Manual looking for food and stopped into a Sonic drive in. This was our first Sonic experience and it wasn't bad. I had a grilled chicken combo which came with tater tots and a drink. Libbie had the sandwich only with a bottle of water. We shared the tater tots which weren't very good but the sandwich was excellent. ~ June 02, 2016 Los Poblanos --------------- After the Crowne Plaza breakfast we went to the bus at 9:15 and left for the Los Poblanos Lavender Farm. This was a very small old Dairy Farm that has been repurposed into a sustainable agriculture farm. The main crop is Lavender which they harvest and then distill to extract the oil for fragrances and creams. It was quite a beautiful old farm with nice buildings and gardens that we enjoyed walking through for the morning. We returned around noon after which i ran to Walmart for more sandwich wraps for lunch. Had a quick lunch in time for the Library meeting and photography at 1:30 after which we started the show photography. This finished early and then Libbie and I went upstairs and fell asleep for a while. Got dressed and down to dinner at 6PM for the Social hour. We sat with Steve Covollo, Karen my beta tester, Bob Krazuski and wife - the hybridizer of Jersey Snowflakes and 2 other ladies. The meal was a flat iron steak with mushroom gravy and veggies. It was quite good, a surprise for Hotel food. The end of a very long day. ~ June 03, 2016 taping --------------- After a hotel breakfast of eggs and bacon I went down and set up the recording equipment to capture Bill Price for his gesneriad talk. i hope the mike worked. This was my first time and I'm not sure all went well. ll Cenci ran out of memory on his video camera so it will be interesting. At least we will have the powerpoints to see if we can do something with all this. I went to the auction luncheon which was entertaining but not worth $38. each. I watched the Penny Kerker panel but did not do any recording about how to package plants for show. In the evening we went over to the Marriott for the Murder at the Marriott dinner and play. it was fun. I had two guys assigned to me playing movie producers who I introduced to the library group. They did a good job convincing the group they were really producers. The table next to ours were convinced these two were not plants, they were legitimate. Dinner at the Marriott was fish with veggies and a salad. A mousse was dessert. After the dinner we found from Steve that we were bumped from the balloon ride, the basket was full. Oh well, we saved $400. ~ June 04, 2016 recording --------------- After the hotel breakfast this morning I went downstairs and set up to record Jenny and her presentation. She is the entymologist who talked about don't spray and pray. This went well although we had a fire drill in the middle of it all. We then recorded some walkthroughs and interviews before packing up everything and having lunch at the Range. I had a veggie wrap which was outstanding and too much food. We then went to Old Town and found a Mexican Band playing music. We danced salsa and Rumba with the other dancers on the square. It was fun. Returned tired and got dressed for the Presidents reception and installation banquet. They had a two piece band playing which allowed us to dance and njoy drinks. i danced with one of our violet friends from Ottawa who was teaching me Samba. Fun. After the evening dinner of chicken and veggies we went outside by the pool where another band was playing. We danced some more before I passed out tired in our room. ~ June 05, 2016 Santa Fe --------------- This morning we packed up everything and chose not to do the hotel breakfast. We said our goodbys and went to mcDonalds for breakfast. Met John and Judy there then went back to get our suitcases and check out. We had a beautiful leisurely drive up the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe, stopping in Golden and Madrid on the way. We admired silver, turquoise, sculpture and paintings on the trip. We went straight to the condo then took a walk to the Plaza and bought admission to the NM History Museum which included the Palace of the Governors. The History Museum was quite good,, I learned a lot. We talked to John from the lobby of the museum, he recommended starting next door at the Governors and working our way chronologically. On our way to the Plaza we had a nice lunch at Cowgirls Taproom. I had the Carne Avocada which seems to be a New Mexico thing. It is tender pork marinated with oregano and other sauces. It was in Red Chile and accompanied by rice and beans. I washed it down with a Shiner Bock. After we went back to the condo it started raining with thunder and lightning. We went out in the rain and had a Pepperoni Pizza and a beer at Pranza Italian Grill which is a restaurant in a renovated warehouse. The crust was very uniquely thin but flavor was good. After dinner we found Albertsons and bought cereal, bananas blueberries and milk for breakfast. There was a beautiful full rainbow in the dark rain clouds. Of course the sun was shinning as well. It was a full day. ~ June 06, 2016 Georgia Okeeffe --------------- After breakfast at the condo we walked to the Plaza to go to the Georgia Okeeffe museum. Francis and her friend from VA waved to us from the trolley as we walked to the museum. We paid the $12 admission and watched the overview movie of her life which was an excellent movie. She met NY studio owner and photographer Alfred Stieglitz and began a relationship by mail. She eventually moved in with him in NY where he created a series of nudes featuring her. They eventually married in 1924 and spent summers on Lake George in NY before her visit to NM in 1929. She eventually moved there permanently when he died in 1946. Loved the museum and seeing her watercolors and oils in real life. We then walked the palace of the governors and talked to the Indian woman who was selling Navajo sand paintings. She does not take credit cards. Walked to the Shed and had a lunch of Carne Adevada and a Santa Fe Brewing Co beer, 16 oz. Very very good meal of traditional New Mexican fare. We stopped in a few galleries on the return trip then crashed at the condo after a very tiring afternoon of non stop walking. It rained again and this time we drove out to dinner at La Choza against the tracks about a mile south of the condo. I was interested in the indian restaurant, Raagu which is rated the second best restaurant in Santa Fe according to Trip Advisor. I got the tethering app working on my phone reliably hooked by cable to the laptop. ~ June 07, 2016 --------------- Stayed around the condo this morning to check in to Southwest. We had two different confirmation numbers so we each chedked in on a separate device. The tether worked well for me except I ended up buying an extra 1/2 gig of data because I only had 150 megs left. We then took a walk to Nedra Matteucci and spent 2 hours admiring the art. We then walked through the State Govt parking lot across the street and found the oldest house which we walked through. I found the RC Gorman trivets in this place for half the price they were charging in the RC Gorman library. They recommended Angels Bakery on Water St just off the plaza for sandwiches so we walked there and weren't disappointed. I had the BLT on Sourdough with Fries. The sandwich was excellent. the fries were the curly kind. We next browsed some galleries before going to the palace of the governors and picked up the Navajo Sand Paintings from the Navajo woman whose name is Nancy Price of Sheep Spring, NM. We also stopped in to a local trading post that had 2 Indian clerks. I bought more Navajo Sand Paintings there as well. Got back to the condo and began packing and cleaning then drove to ABQ. We stayed at a Comfort Inn by the airport. Just outside of Santa Fe there was a sandstorm on I-25 where we couldn't see in front of us. After checking in to the hotel we went out to Rudy's BBQ and had beans and a half rack of ribs with a Shiner Bock. Rudy's is a cafeteria style BBQ joint with picnic tables. It was popular with families. ~ June 08, 2016 travel home --------------- Up early and down to breakfast in the hotel at 7. They had burritos stuffed with egg and bacon which I had with coffee. Went down the street for gas. The first station wanted $4 a gallon. One block further it was $1.99 at 7-11 where we filled up with 7.5 gallons in our Hyundai Elantra. Went to the airport and returned the car, rode the shuttle and breezed through TSA. No line and we weren't stopped for anything. We were over an hour early at the gate. Picked up an excellent coffee and Cheese Danish at Black Mesa Coffee in the gate area. Our flight was incredibly smooth as we sat in the exit row with no one in the middle seat. The flight was too short. Changed planes in Orlando and loved the new looking airport. We ate at McDonalds in the food court where I had a Big Mac. The flight to RDU was crowded but smooth as we got in on time at 6:20. Our car was first off the Park N Relax shuttle which was a rare treat. Tipped the driver $3 and started home. I-40 seemed to be blocked so we took the Cary Pkwy which was OK. Stopped t Krogers for a Rotisserie chicken and potato salad which we had for dinner. The house smelled musty so I will start the fan work in the foundation tomorrow to help ease the problem on rainy days where the crawlspace gets damp. ~ June 09, 2016 foundation fan --------------- Did some photo organizing and bill pay in the early AM then went outside and gathered my tools to put a hole in the foundation. I couldn't find the drill bit I think I purchased so I went to Lowes and bought a hammer drill bit, 3/4 inch wide. This worked well and in an hour or two I was able to get a square hole into the foundation. Libbie helped me find some foam to cover the hole overnight. I was too sore, tired and crumpled over (yes, it's true) to do anymore on the foundation. The hole is nice but needs some rounding on the high spots to accommodate a round fan in a square hole. Dinner was the leftover rotisserie chicken with beans and potato salad. I ended up going to bed at midnight. I wasn't tired so spent some time on my desktop computer. I unpacked the Navajo paintings. I really like them! Went to bed shortly after midnight. ~ June 10, 2016 dance --------------- Went outside to round the hole so the fan fit in. Used the last of my hydraulic cement then went to Lowes looking for more. Bought regular quick path cement instead of hydraulic because a 10 pound pail was under $7. I also picked up a piece of foam insulation for the AC pipe where a critter chewed up the old insulation. On the way back from Lowes we stopped at the strawberry farm and got peaches and tomatoes. A trip to Krogers got us lettuce and a package of ribs for tomorrow night. I finished the cement job then went back to Home Depot to get some PVC 1x4 and cement anchors. I made a picture frame out of the PVC and used it to mount the shutter and fan assembly. This went really well. I prepared the ribs by removing the membrane and using the rest of my KC rub on the ribs which I cut in half to make 2 racks. I like to rub the day before and let them marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Libbie cooked some hamburgers we picked up today which we had with baked beans and lettuce, tomato onion and a whole wheat bun. After dinner we went to the studio for the Friday night party. THere were 2 nicely dressed black ladies there and also a young couple from BYU trying to dance. It was nice to be back after our 2 weeks in ABQ. Afterwards we went to Brewsters which was great because it's near us. We had outdoor tables since it was a nice night to be out. I had 2 Lonerider Sweet Josie brews with a bowl of nachos and queso we shared. The queso nicely had jalapenos over the top. ~ June 11, 2016 --------------- This morning I painted the frame around the foundation shutter even though it was PVC. Added a second coat in the afternoon then Libbie cleaned my brush for me. In between coats of paint I ran the wire and installed an outlet for the fan. I had to run out to Home Depot to get a utility box and cable clamps for the 12/2 and outlet. This wire was run into the audio closet for control by an arduino or moteino. At noon today I started the smoker with the racks of ribs for dinner tonight. While reading the WSJ I came across a cover story with photos of an ice cream Sundae. I went to Walmart and bought the ingredients to make a Sundae which we had for dessert. I didn't care for it, perhaps because I had too much to eat today and wasn't looking for dessert. Dinner tonight was baked beans, ribs, shiraz and an ice cream sundae for dessert. I had a problem this evening while updating the MAAVS website. Something went wrong and I needed to have Host Gator restore the site for a $15 charge. I let Brenda know about the problem. The original issue is that the views module won't allow editing, something is screwed up somewhere. I was hoping to update the views module but ran into trouble. I'll try again on the restored version but I will back up the site first. ~ June 12, 2016 --------------- Finished up outdoors by cleaning up the brick shards where I punched a hole in the foundation then put some clear silicone sealer around the shutter frame. This concludes the foundation fan outdoor work. I also replaced the chewed up insulation on the AC pipes. It was deteriorated anyway but an animal made it worse by chewing through to the copper lines. i worked on the MAAVS website today. This time I made archival copies of the files and the database which I ended up having to use several times to make the website functional. I ended up erasing the panels directory and the ctools director and replacing both manually using FTP. The replacement was the latest copy. I then somehow got the database updates function to work which enabled the newly installed directory with their files to become functional. Once I got to this point I took a snapshot of both the database and the file structure and saved it onto Traviata. I need to upload this to OneDrive but for now it resides on Traviata. I then performed the convention updates without a problem. Libbie made her excellent pizza using fresh basil which was outstanding. Earlier in the afternoon we had the WSJ Ice cream sundaes but without the caramel popcorn. I then turned attention to the crawl space foundation moteino program. This thing is what will control the crawl space ventilation. I managed to modify the ceiling fan program for the crawl mostly by just changing the address and improving the comments. ~ June 13, 2016 --------------- I rototilled along the front porch and moved the roots and decomposed organic material. I moved 3 wheelbarrows of the stuff and replaced it with 2 wheelbarrows full of clay from the backyard future pond site. This wore me down. We had another of the WSJ Ice Cream Sundaes this afternoon on the back porch. I tried the new Repel non deet mosquito repellent today while tying up the tomato plants. The stuff has no scent and actually works. I had no bites. We left at 5:45 PM for the Roadhouse in Pittsboro. Curtis taught a Foxtrot lesson at 7:15 then at the 9 PM break we had a swing lesson. i learned a few things in the Foxtrot lesson such as walking sideways and some help with the sway move as well as an underarm turn. I danced with Tess a few foxtrots and a cha cha. She has a nice frame and is a good follower. She also was wearing a little dance dress that she swished around a few times showing her black boy shorts underneath. We left a little after 9 since I was very tired. The one waltz of the night, the Tennessee Waltz, was a mess. i didn't make it through it was so bad. ~ June 14, 2016 --------------- Back to the wheel barrow work. I moved 4 more loads of clay into the front area and cleared out a little more around the Maple tree where the soil had formed a large hump which is blocking the water from flowing away from the foundation. it's supposed to rain tomorrow but the job is still not done. We went over to the Whisk store and bought a cast iron grill with ridges to make grill marks in veggies. i have a recipe for veggie wraps which I bought the ingredients for. Can't wait to try the grill on the veggies and make a wrap. I used some scrap 1x4 and made a little box for the moteino and power relay that will control the foundation fan. Took it out to the woods and painted it with aluminum or silver colored spray paint that I had. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with a little sprinkle of cheese and some of the leftover tomato pieces. ~ June 15, 2016 dance --------------- Went out to get the car inspected first thing. They took me right away. As part of their maintenance they checked the battery and determined the capacity was only half of the 550 CCA. They would install a new Interstate battery for $99. Costco sells an Interstate battery for $65, no installation. Online Walmart has a 550 CCA battery for $100. Wonder what the in store price is? I only moved one load of clay this morning so I could be rested up for dance. At 3:30 we went over and had our lesson which was excellent as usual. We ended up doing some tune up work on Rumba which we needed. We did the backspot turn, open breaks, cross over leads and a break for the Cuban. We came back and grilled some veggies and had them over a layer of hummus on a flatout bread which was an excellent meal from Cooking Light. What a nice meal. We had wine with our grilled sandwiches. ~ June 16, 2016 paving blocks --------------- Nancy came over to work with Libbie today. I bought some large paving stones and a frame and laid them down where the water from the garage valley comes down. We had 1/2 inch of rain last night and the water had puddled where I did not want it so I'm going to try the patio blocks as giant splash blocks. We reheated last Saturday's other half of the rack of ribs amd had it with Lima Beans and Ravenwood Zin for dinner. ~ June 17, 2016 dance --------------- I worked on the moteino for the foundation fan. I'm having trouble where it's hanging after reading the eeprom and trying to print a double number. It threatened rain today but didn't rain. I mowed the backyard with the hand mower. The grass was getting long in front of the Irises and Libbie wanted to weed the irises. We made the veggie wrap again, this is delicious. At a little before 8 we went to the studio and danced many dances then went out afterwards with a group to McGregor Tavern. Came home a little after 11. ~ June 18, 2016 shriners --------------- I got a surprise this morning when Bill Spencer informed me that we didn't sign up for the Shriner dinner-dance. Later in the afternoon he sent an email that he got get us in as a replacement for a cancellation. I spent most of the day trying to get the Moteino working as a timer-controller for the foundation fan. I eventually started over again from the ceiling fan Moteino base and had some success. I need to replace the Moteino framework although for now it's functional. I have some choices - I can adopt the OpenHab environment or I can roll my own. OpenHab seems so complex for my needs, however it integrates with Alexa which is what I want. We left for Shriners around 6 and got there when Ken and Anita were arriving. We had it pretty good since we were assigned to table 7 and the gang had table 6. Steve and Beth were also at our table. It was Nancy and Harry's birthday so Terri brought champagne to celebrate. Our gang seems to have the most wine bottles at the dinner. We stayed until 10 and left because I was pretty tired. The DJ tonight was quite good, in addition the food was better than usual although the caterers salad dishes seemed to be quite dirty. ~ June 19, 2016 --------------- I watched Croquis Cafe video and a few others from my subscription and stumbled across Bruce Winter's videos. He is the Mr House guy from years ago. He's an IBM engineer still working in MN but telecommuting. I got inspired by his Smart Things videos in his new house in Alabama. After doing some research I ordered a hub on eBay and also an Arduino Smart Things shield and a GE smart outlet. The GE outlet plugs into the upper outlet of a duplex pair. It reminds me of the old X10 appliance modules sold by the old Radio Shack. The reason for Smart Things was because it uses the Z-Wave standard so i can get it from many vendors and the appliance modules look decent enough to use in a room. It has an interface to both OpenHab and Alexa. I can use Alexa to control it immediately. The weather is fantastic. There is no humidity and the temperature is perfect. I started running the conduit for the outside outlet at the greenhouse that the fence will plug into. Libbie and I also worked on the pond to get the water clear. We ended up going to Lowes and purchased a new 560 GPH pump which is an exact replacement for the old one. I also picked up some glue for the conduit I mixed up the gallon of stuff i need for tomorrow's colonoscopy prep. It has to be refrigerated to make it more palatable. Dinner was Lib's excellent pizza with fresh garden basil. ~ June 20, 2016 --------------- I worked outside in the greenhouse on both the outdoor water spigot and the electrical conduit. The water is complete but not tied in to the main line. The electrical job needs some wood around the outlet to staple plastic to and also needs a hole in the foundation to tie it to the house wiring. I'm on a liquid diet today so i only had a bowl of french onion soup but without the onions. I started the prep today at 4 but had great difficulty getting the liquid down. I spent 6 hours and only got less than half the liter bottle of prep down. I kept gagging on the stuff. One of the issues was the amount of liquid. I had too much to drink today with soda and iced tea mix as well as the soup so i couldn't take any more liquid. I finally gave up around 11 PM and went to bed. ~ June 21, 2016 --------------- No breakfast today. We left at 9:20 AM for the colonoscopy which was running late. I was rolled into the OR at 11 AM instead of 10:45. They couldn't do the procedure because the prep was inadequate. I suspected this because i couldn't get the liquid down. The Dr said they will schedule a recall in 6 months. When I came home at 1 i had a bowl of tomato soup and a peanut butter sandwich. We went out to the grocery store today at 3. Libbie drove since i was still woozy. We bought some ingredients for veggie wraps which we had for dinner. They are delicious as usual. After the grocery store this afternoon we both went next door and had waffle cones. I had a raspberry truffle which was good as usual. ~ June 22, 2016 Rumba --------------- We had a good dance lesson today. Robert took us through the various turns for the Rumba. We learned a lot of good tips and techniques. I finished up the water for the side spigot and turned it on. This will be useful. Dinner tonight was hamburger with onion and tomato on a bun. ~ June 23, 2016 --------------- Libbie was out at quilting all day so I took advantage of the uninterrupted time and worked on the open and close sensors on the garage door. I hung a Hall effect sensor from the ceiling and glued a magnet to the door top for the open sensor. The close sensor is a hall effect device on the wall which detects the same door top magnet. This works well and replaces the magnets which were glued to the belt. The issue was the belt with the open detector magnet would twist over time. Libbie brought home some leftover Pizza slices from her quilting today which we had for dinner. Lunch today for me was a PBJ sandwich since Libbie was out quilting. The Smartthings hub came today. When i tried to activate it I got an error message that the hub had been previously been activated. I contacted support and had them reset the activation once i sent them a picture of the serial number and barcode on the hub bottom. I'm not too happy with the eBay vendor who sold it as new in the box. I'm not sure what to do other than give them a negative rating. Once I got it activated I hooked up the GE/Jasco outlet which also arrived from eBay. The outlet is plugged into the porch tree socket. I can now command Alexa to turn the tree on and off by voice. We did a video with me and then Libbie commanding Alexa to turn the tree on and off. I emailed a link to the video to Joe. ~ June 24, 2016 McGregor Tavern --------------- I wired up some IR LEDs and a receiver to the Smartthings shield. This is going to be a smartthings to IR bridge so Alexa can control the TV and other devices. We tried to get peaches today at the Apex produce stand but they were closed for the summer. Too bad, it was a good source of local veggies. We had eggplant parmesan in a wrap for dinner. Libbie grilled eggplant and onion on the cast iron grill. We heated some tomato sauce and coated 2 pieces of Italian flatout bread, covered it with Parmesan and pizza cheese then rolled it up for dinner. I packaged up the 10 new DVDs I made for Robert then we went to the dance party. Afterward we went out to McGregor tavern where Libbie and I shared a plate of wings and had 1 1/2 Yuengling beers. ~ June 25, 2016 pain --------------- I had intestinal pains today. For a while it was so bad I thought I had appendicitis. I googled this and decided I didn't have all the symptoms. We had a nice bike ride this afternoon and admired the sunflowers lining a driveway down by Laura Duncan Road. We came back via the Shepard Vineyard greenway which was a nice ride. Dinner tonight was Salmon, corn and Rodney Strong Cabernet. I didn't feel well enough to finish the wine which was a surprise. I got the water line hooked up and turned it on without any problems. We now have a spigot outside the greenhouse door. ~ June 26, 2016 less pain --------------- The pain is duller today. I drilled a hole in the foundation and ran the wire through it for the outdoor outlet. This was enough for me for today. I'll hook up the wire tomorrow. Libbie made her excellent pizza this afternoon while I spent most of the day watching developer tutorials for Smartthings. This thing is too complicated to be of practical use. I'll just leave it alone where it controls the porch tree. I won't commit too much to using this system. ~ June 27, 2016 --------------- The 900 Mhz Moteino came today. I'll use this one to monitor Davis weather packets and possibly replace the console and software with something better. I programmed it and received Davis packets right away. This is good news. Now I need a few parts to complete the console build. I hooked the wiring up and now the outdoor outlet outside the greenhouse is live. This is to plug the fence controller into. Dinner was another veggie wrap with eggplant, tomato sauce, onion and squash. it was yummy. ~ June 28, 2016 quickpass --------------- Studied Smartthings some more. I'm convinced it would be less complicated to skip Smartthings for the IR and only use the Alexa to Openhab bridge for the IR Arduino. Went to Quickpass at the airport and picked up a transponder and also made an initial $20 account deposit. The thing needs 24 hours to activate so it won't be available tomorrow if I drive to Sarasota tomorrow. I may go down on Thursday or possibly go down half way tomorrow. My review was accepted at TER and now I have a free account for 2 weeks. I also canceled the Texture account yesterday and they offered my 4 months of Texture for $5 a month. I went for the offer it was such a good deal. Dinner tonight was a flatout bread wrap with eggplant, onion, zucchini and parmesan-mozarella cheeses. This is very good. Afterwards we went to Brewsters and got two waffle cones. During this afternoon I tied up the tomato and pepper plants. For some reason 1 box of zinnia plants is dying. There were nice banana peppers on the pepper plants. I had my first pepper BLT of the season for lunch. It was yummy. I was pleasantly surprised looking at the portfolio values after the disastrous Brexit vote which caused markets to drop. The individual and IRA protfolios hit new all time highs today. ~ June 29, 2016 --------------- Drove Libbie to the airport for a 7:50 AM flight. I went home and continued packing for the trip. The drive was fairly easy. There was traffic in all the usual spots - SC near the border, Savannah and 295 around JAX. I took 23 South but missed the turn off to get to 301 and ended up going South. I pulled over and used the navigation on the cell phone to help. Found a Walmart gas station and tried to buy gas but the card was declined. Tried 3 times and went up the street to a Convenience store and got the same result. Went to Wendys next door and had a single and fries while trying to contact the security department at the CU. No luck at all. My single had cheese on it which I don't like but I was hungry. I had rain on and off through SC, GA and Florida. It was mainly summer showers but heavy at times. The drive was surprisingly easy but long. Stopped at Subway on Clark to get a sandwich for dinner then Publix near Clark for a bottle of Woodbridge Cabernet. Dinner was the sandwich and a glass of wine. The Internet was down so I called Frontier and was surprised at how nice they were. He did something in the office and I was up and running. He called it provisioning the account. I have been paying for Internet service all this time and have not had any the past 3 months. Once this was up and running I was able to tune into Adafruits live broadcast. I got the code for the 10% discount and ordered the parts to build a replacement weather console. I ordered an RTC breakout, a barometer breakout and a power supply. Next issue was calling the credit union and getting the credit card straightened out. This was frustrating because they wanted the account number which their system wouldn't recognize on the touch tone. I also tried to speak the number a few times and then finally got in. What a pain in the ass, the CU doesn't have any customer support. ~ June 30, 2016 Sarasota --------------- I'm disappointed this morning when I saw the Live Oaks outside were cut down. I did some real estate searches to see if I could find a place golf fee free. I like our condo but hate the fees for facilities we don't use. I went to Walmart and picked up salad fixings including the balsamic we can't get at home. For dinner tonight I went to Golden china and ordered a Hujan Beef. It was pretty much flavorless but fresh. I watched them cook it while I waited. The price was right but the only reason for getting it was because Publix had closed their food bar for the night. Sarasota loves rolling up the sidewalks early. I did a 2 mile walk in my new hiking shoes and love them. They are very comfortable to walk in. ~ July 01, 2016 outlet mall --------------- I worked on my computer pretty much all day studying ads. At around 6 PM I went to Ellenton to the outlet mall and got 2 pairs of Jeans, one black and one gray. They are a perfect fit, I really like them. On the way back stopped at Chick Filet on SR 70 had had a spicy chicken sandwich with lemonade. It was exceptionally good. I decided to leave tomorrow for home since there's not much to do around here and I have a lot to do at home. ~ July 02, 2016 drive --------------- Packed up this morning and cleaned up the place a little, throwing out the trash, etc. Left at 7:30 but turned around to fetch the binoculars to use on our Alaska trip. Finally got going for real at 8 AM. I was surprised by the number of cars on I-75 and quickly realized these are people leaving for a weeks vacation including the 4th of July on Monday. Groan. I hit heavy rain just before the Gainesville exit on 75. Went up 301 in light rain and turned off on the 228 shortcut and hit heavy rain again. Turned off onto the unfinished road by accident. Had to back up in the pouring rain about 1/2 mile to get off the road I wasn't supposed to be on. Got onto I-10 eventually and pulled off at the first exit to get gas. While pumping it started downpouring again. I drove in driving rain for the rest of I-10 and up the 295 in blinding rain. Fortunately I had a tanker in front of me with bright lights on that I used as my navigation beacon. Finally North of JAX the rain let up and it was clear sailing up 95 until Savannah where it was stop and go where the road goes to two lanes. It gpt much worse. At Mile Marker 78 I was stopped for about 30 minutes because of some accidents. The drive home was a nightmare. At one time I got off at exit 33 and went up 21 North and 17 for quite a few miles parallel to 95 but moving at 55 MPH. My phone showed that 95 was stopped. When I got back on it was moving along but that didn't last long. I did not stop for food but ate the 4 plums I had with me. They were not bad. I wish they were more tart. At home I went straight to Bo's and got a 3 piece dinner with dirty rice and iced tea for dinner. I got home at 8:30. Libbie was in RI and saw me on the camera. She called and was surprised I was home. Everything looks great around here. The garage smells musty. I will hook up the foundation wall fan on a timer tomorrow. ~ July 03, 2016 IR --------------- I tried to modify the Huzzah code from NCID to turn it into a universal IR bridge but after doing much reading on this device I could not find reference to a reliable hardware timer. There is a timer in the OS stack which will not be consistent depending on tasks in the queue. Dinner tonight was a frozen pizza from Kroger. I heard from Anne tonight. She set a list of needed pictures for the DVD. The list is way bigger than i thought it would be. Much work is ahead. ~ July 04, 2016 dvd --------------- Started working on the DVD photos today around 8 AM. It's not a nice day out, there are raindrops on the pond. Steps are to 1)toss the bad exposure and duplicate entry cards, 2)label each photo using the windows image properties tag, 3)select the target images into the Anne's choice directory and renumber them, 4)crop and adjust lighting, contrast as needed, 5)create album of thumbnails. I got the culling done today. For dinner I went to Kroger and picked up frozen hamburger patties and buns. Fourth of July is not a great time to get burgers and buns. The meat case was picked over and the hamburger bun shelves were pretty bare. I ended up with frozen burgers instead of fresh meat but I did find large wheat burger buns. i already have a vidalia onion in the fridge. Grilled the burger with assistance from Alexa who kept the time for me. I even used it to time the grill clean time at the end, 5 minutes, and it worked! At the programmed time I was surprised when it went off since I was into my burger but thank goodness or else the grill would have been left on like last time. ~ July 05, 2016 IR and DVDs --------------- During GMA this morning I played with the IRKit device. I manged to read the Samsung TV remote for TV on/off and use the codes to control the TV. I also got a code to turn the DVR off but I can't get the DVR on command to work. Finished up the Horticulture photos and put the thumbs in a Jalbum and uploaded it to AVSA. Had a chat with Ann later in the day about the DVD and the movies. Paula will not be working on the design photos. It looks like it's up to me. I have enough to do. During the afternoon I tried again on the DVR IR power command. This time I used the power icon on the remote instead of the one labeled Sat. I recorded it and played it back and the DVR switched on or off. Yes! This was the missing link. Now I can record some of the other commands to populate the web app that is now on Traviata in the www/IR directory I created. While I was at it with AVSA stuff, Amy wanted the password changed which I did and Candace and I exchanged eMails about getting the newsletter on the website. It poured rain last night, I got trapped in a fierce thunderbuster on the way home from a drive to Sanford. Dinner tonight was a grilled burger which was perfect thanks to Alexa timings. ~ July 06, 2016 design pics --------------- Libbie changed her Thursday return trip to next Monday since her Mom and Dad need her at the nursing home. They are going to transfer Mary into a nursing room which means her Dad will have to move to a single room. Major changes are in store for them. I got the rest of the jpg pictures finished for the convention DVD. I sure missed Marjorie's pictures. I used what Paula took which was hard since she took pictures of every design, red ribbons and all. I slogged through it and got it done. When Anne gets the script completed. Dinner tonight was a Kroger frozen hamburger on a bun with ketchup. This was part of the fourth of July purchase where I purchased what they had left in the case. ~ July 07, 2016 foundation fan --------------- I went into the wiring closet and mounted the philips hub on the wall. I also hooked up the Moteino foundation fan controller. It's initially set for 8 minutes on every 120 minute period. I don't know if that's enough. I'm not circulating the air under the house. I have to do a wiring change to get that going. The 8 port switch is full. I found a 16 port switch on Newegg and ordered it. I paid the extra $3 rush charge and got a Fedex delivery date of saturday. This is perfect since it will allow me to further organize the wiring closet. I played around little with the IR software after finding the huzzah would not do the job die to lack of a timer. The old IR Kit device should fill the bill nicely. It has IR emitters and a WiFi chip for internet connectivity. The web based client software will run on Traviata since it is only static html pages sending raw IR commands. Dinner tonight was a box of Bo's chicken. I had 2 of the 3 pieces with dirty rice and iced tea. I put the leftover piece in the refrigerator. ~ July 08, 2016 roadhouse --------------- Took the chain saw and the cart to the driveway and cut up and removed the tree which had fallen across the driveway. When this was all done I came in and did some reading about controlling Hue light colors using Openhab and Alexa. Later in the afternoon I went to Walmart looking for Sawyers mosquito repellent but didn't find any. I also needed shoe laces but forgot to pick them up. My Adafruit RTC clock needs a watch batter, CR1220 12mm diameter battery. Walmart doesn't have that size. Will check on Walgreens. I got cleaned up at 5 and left at 6 for the Roadhouse in Pittsboro. I joined Nancy & Art, Terry & Harry and Anne & Paul for a very nice time. My "date" for the evening was Mary who came alone. I did quite a bit of dancing and enjoyed the evening. I didn't get home until 11:20 PM. A fun evening. My dinner tonight was fried flounder sandwich with slaw. ~ July 09, 2016 IR emitters --------------- I set up the IR emitters on the TV and DVR and then recorded some of the Sony amplifier IR signals. In preparation I bought some parts and built a short outlet box which plugs into the outlet strip behind the TC. I'm using this to power the NCID display, the Philips Strip light and the IR bridge as well as the IR repeater. I built it in a nice metal junction box with 4 outlets and a short but heavy cord. Dinner tonight was a pizza almost from scratch. I used a Kroger premade crust then coated it with pizza sauce, pizza cheese and a slice of Vidalia along with 2 peppers from the garden. Pepper production is slowing in the garden. I need to get out there and tie the tomatoes up. ~ July 10, 2016 shoe laces --------------- I slept until the alarm went off at 6 which is unusual. I grabbed a basket of clothes from the hamper and took it to the washing machine. While i was down there I watered all the violets on wells. The wells were down but there was still water in each one. I hooked up the Netgear 16 port switch in the closet and switched everything over. Unfortunately the Phillips hub seemed to lose it's setting as did the Smartthings control of the porch tree. I scanned for new devices with Alexa while the background light was on. This did the trick. I'm not going to be happy if the thing keeps losing it's brains when the power glitches. I went over to Prince produce stand to get peaches and tomatoes then stopped at Walmart to get shoelaces. I found laces in brown that were made for hiking boots. They are not the tan they're replacing but they will do. Dinner was hamburger, tomato slice, onion slice and baked beans. ~ July 11, 2016 dance --------------- I went over to Great Clips at 9. They weren't really set up yet. Obviously I was the first clip of the day. I didn't like how much hair got down my back and basically covering me all over. I came home and took a shower then went to Home Depot to pick up some electrical parts to build an outlet strip. I got an outlet strip with 14 gauge wire then cut the plastic strip off in order to add a quad outlet in a metal junction box. After picking up Libbie I came home and worked on the outlets completing the junction box and installing it. This allows the horizontal air flow to activate when the foundation wall fan comes on. Let's see how this works. We left at 6 PM for Mr Wonderful at the Roadhouse. I got the time wrong, thinking he started at 8 when he really started at 7. David of Arthur Murray studio gave the evening dance lesson. We learned a parallel turn in Rhumba then during the break we learned some steps for the rock and sway including stepping forward and back as well as a promenade into a turn for the lady. I hope I can remember the steps for the future. For dinner at the Roadhouse we split a Salmon BLT with slaw washed down with 1 1/2 Yuenglings. We left soon after the break at 9 PM. Libbie was tired from getting up early to fly home this morning and i was tired for reasons unknown. ~ July 12, 2016 misc --------------- I worked on preparing a First Class database update today but did not upload the password file since it needs encrypting on an Android device before uploading. Will get to that tomorrow. Libbie went to REI today to do an exchange while I went at the same time to Prince Produce to get peaches. I noticed on my way there that there are sidewalks all the way so a bicycle would be an option in the future. I tied the tomatoes today and did some weeding but got tired pretty fast as well as soaking wet from the high humidity. Dinner tonight was a hamburger with onion and tomato and a side of baked beans with maple bacon. ~ July 13, 2016 bad A/C --------------- The A/C had problems today downstairs. I went under the house and found out the vent stack blower was turning on and off. Even with the blower power unplugged, the relay continued to chatter. I was worried that the igniter was also doing this so I didn't leave it powered up for too long. There were new controllers online for around $90 and also in stock at Grainger for $179 plus tax. Libbie didn't want to leave with no air flow downstairs so I opted to spend the extra $100 and ordered it from Grainger for will call pickup tomorrow. I spent quite a bit of the day studying how to implement a moteino to MQTT gateway. I found a nice one on instructables that uses back to back arduinos. I'll substitute a Moteino for one of the arduinos. This looks do-able. Dinner tonight was hamburger again with tomato, onion and baked beans. We finished another bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet with dinner. For dessert we went over to Brewsters and had a waffle cone. ~ July 14, 2016 --------------- Drove to Grainger this morning and picked up the new controller at WillCall. Capital Blvd had a problem Southbound with a water main break so after I picked up the controller at Grainger I went North to I-540 and came home 540 to I-495 to the beltline. This was a pretty good way to get back from Grainger. The road is wide, new and empty and the speed limit 70. After lunch I put the new controller into the furnace. This went well and it works OK. I threw the old controller away since today was garbage day and I don't need more junk hanging around. For dinner we had hamburgers again with tomato, onion and baked beans. The frozen Sirloin burgers are pretty good, we both enjoy them. ~ July 15, 2016 dance again --------------- I did some packing for Alaska today. It's pretty hard pulling together clothes for possible cold weather for 18 mornings. There is a possibility of doing laundry in Juneau when we are on our own so we can wash clothes for the next 3 days before we fly home. I put together a DHT-22 temperature sensor Anarduino but did not load code into the thing yet. This will be my base to experiment with an MQTT gateway as well as accommodate the one device I can't easily change which is the ceiling fan Moteino. Dinner was spaghetti with fresh basil and cheese. We went to dance tonight and had fun. It was a light turnout. I tried the new parallel walk in Rumba that we learned Monday night, even did it once with Lana. She is expecting a new grandson about the same time that Christa is due. After dance we went out to Taza which is at the corner of Davis and High House. This was a good choice, it's a quiet upscale restaurant. I told Libbie I may consider coming here for dinner some night. ~ July 16, 2016 Packing --------------- Last minute packing this morning gathering things for Alaska. We left for the airport at 3:30 and easily checked in and got through TSA to our plane gate. The plane left Raleigh on time. We lucked out in that there was no person sitting between us for the 6 hour flight to Seattle. I really liked Alaskan Air. The plane had very nice chargers at each seat. The fight was more or less smooth. it was n easy transfer with little waiting in Seattle to board our flight for Fairbanks. We had a pretty High School girl in our row flying back from a reunion in Utah. She lives in Fairbanks and shared wit us stories of the white nights. We were amazed at the 4 hours of sunset and when we landed at midnight it was still light out. I like the 24 hours of daylight. WE eventually got to our hotel at 1 AM. ~ July 17, 2016 Day 1 --------------- We had the hotel buffet which was a nice breakfast for $30. Met a couple there who were starting a Road Scholar program at this hotel. Good to hear that Road Scholar chooses this place to stay. When went to the lobby to try the internet i saw Anne and Paul just getting t there. They left Raleigh before us and were just getting in. Long night for them. We used the hotel shuttle at $5 each and went to downtown where we got a walking map and MP3 player. We took a fun walk in the rain listening about historic buio;dong. While downtown we had lunch at Big Bobs BBQ which was outstanding. It was featured on diners, dives and drive ins on the food channel. We had our orientation at 3, the wine and cheese reception at 6:30 and then walked to the Chena Salmon Grill where we waited for a table. Libbie and i split a planked salmon which was over the top excellent. This was the best salmon i ever had. Dinner was done at 9:30 and it was surprising that it is still light out. ~ July 18, 2016 Travel to Roadhouse --------------- Early morning wake up and had our bags outside the door at 6:00 AM. They picked up our bags for Denali while we went to the lobby to get coffee. The bus left for the rail depot at 7:15 where we boarded the train for our ride to Denali. We sat in row 21 behind a very nice couple from the UK who had a daughter in Houston. Their names were Alan and Mary. We had breakfast with them in the dining car downstairs. I ordered the Blueberry pancakes with reindeer sausage. The breakfast was incredibly good. We lucked out because we were in the back of the train and the back went first. I also enjoyed the outside platform on the back of the train. What a neat experience. We rolled into the Denali park entrance then loaded up into a bus that looked like a school bus. Our bus driver named Kirsti was incredibly self sufficient and multi talented. I am convinced there is nothing she can't do. It was very rainy and at times incredibly foggy. The highlight of the trip besides the incredible views was seeing a Mother Grizzly bear and her 2 cubs. Once at the Roadhouse i was blown away by how nice it was. This is written up as "rustic" but it certainly is not rustic. Every bit of it is luxurious. After checking in we each ordered an Alaskan Amber which ended up being 2 Alaskan Ambers. Dinner was Sausage manicotti with a salad and peanut butter pie. It was an incredible day followed by a wonderful meal and a nice people. ~ July 19, 2016 Botanical walk --------------- We had the buffet breakfast in the lodge at 7:30. We got the time wrong and thought it was 7 so we went down and had coffee instead and waited. It was the traditional American breakfast - eggs, bacon, hash browns and yummy. After breakfast we had signed up for a moderate hike with a botanist. Ananda was a twenty something who went beyond our expectations. She stopped and identified every single plant and shrub along the way, it was totally enjoyable. We ate from the plentiful blueberry bushes, cranberries, etc We saw miniature azaleas, miniature dogwood, miniature birch and other plant species including the bear favorite, the soap berry. This is a small bush with edible but soapy tasting red berries. We had a turkey wrap box lunch on the river before turning around and going back the way we came. It started raining on the return trip, sometimes it rained pretty hard but the walk was totally worth it. Door to door was 7 hours time although we only covered 5 miles on the trail. Our van ride back was an unexpected wildlife treat. we saw one moose along side the lake on the other side and then a moose next to the road with his whole head in the water. Ananda told us what he was eating in the water but I didn't remember the name of the plant. That night we had a family style dinner. I chose the Cod which was a little dry but fine. At the beginning of our hike Libbie lost the screw to her glasses which meant the lens fell out. She was one eyed the entire hike. At the clubhouse we found a guy, John, who was traveling with his grandsons. His wife was an optometrist. He temporarily fixed her glasses with a paper clip and needle nose pliers. We hope they stay together. We had an evening presentation by Chris of wolves in the park. This young man is passionate about wolves. I fell asleep through part of the presentation. it was dry. ~ July 20, 2016 travel to Anchorage --------------- Early pack up this morning. We had our suitcases out for pickup at 5:15 then went over for a 5:30 buffet breakfast. Breakfast was the usual cheesy eggs with bacon. We got into the roadhouse bus and started the 95 mile trek back to the park entrance. it was still raining as Kirsty drove and told us her story. She used to drive race horses around then decided to stay in the US as an illegal immigrant for 7 years before making it legal. She gave some hilarious tales of her and her sister driving Roadhouse buses up from the factory in Georgia to Alaska. They camped on the buses as they traveled. At one time they accidentally ended up on the Las Vegas strip in the Roadhouse bus. We gor to the train station in time for the arrival of the train which we boarded into the dome cars once again. This time we had a noisy and obnoxious cruise tour in front of us. The scenery on the trip was awesome in spite of the low intelligence level of the morons occupying the front section of the car. our train narrator told many personal stories. My favorite was his prom date. He lived in a trailer and had a rusty old pick up truck. However, he had his own plane and a pilots license. He took his date up to Denali, had a picnic lunch and asked her to be his girlfriend. She refused and only wanted to be friends. The same with a kiss goodnight at her door. It wasn't going to happen. We had a nice lunch on the train. We satA with Ron and his wife. Ron is a doctor at Hoag in New port Beach.I ordered the Alaskan Seafood salad which had crab, cod and shrimp over noodles in a sesame and ginger sauce. It was reminiscent of a trader Joe's Thai salad I like. We got off around 4 in Takaneeta, a cute authentic Alaskan town. We walked with Paul and Ann, bought a beer at the General Store and walked all the way to the river. We walked back and had dinner at the Denali Twisted Creek restaurant and Brewery. I ordered an Alaskan fish sandwich which came with curly fries. This was accompanied by a Sockeye Red beer which is one of their amber offerings. After dinner we boarded a comfortable motor coach and went to Anchorage where we went to the Knit River Lodge at the end of a road. It was quite luxurious for a rustic Alaskan lodge and is quite new. ~ July 21, 2016 Dog Camp --------------- Woke early and gave Libbie her birthday card. After a nice breakfast buffet we went for a hike in the woods behind cabin 8. This was a challenging hike even though it was supposed to be moderate. Libbie was having much difficulty on the steep sections. We ended up turning around at the stream we had to cross by holding onto a rope which is too bad. The rest of the group said it's a good thing we turned around because there was a steep vertical section that required a rope to climb. After the hiking we came back wet and muddy. We got soap and some quarters and used the sole washer and dryer in the basement of the main building. This takes care of any potential problem of running out of clothes. The weather cleared a little in the afternoon which means the helicopter flight was a go. We got suited up with hat, gloves and over boots then climbed into the chopper. Libbie had the front seat since it was her birthday. What an experience. the views were awesome. We landed on a cold snowy and foggy dog camp. The wind was blowing and the dogs were howling. They had a sled all set to go across the ice. We got some instructions then climbed aboard and we were off at 9 mph. I drove first and was a little worried about falling off the runner since I had one foot on the runner and the other on the brake ready to step on it. After we changed places a few times we made it back to Dog camp and then met each of the dogs individually. I'm not into dogs but it was a fun experience anyway. The fog lifted a little when it was time for the chopper to pick us up. We got a nice sight seeing tour around and over the glacier on the way back instead of just transportation. It was wonderful. We got back and then went out onto the little porch next to the restaurant and had wine and good conversation. The wine was covered by uncruise which was a nice surprise. I had a delicious piece of Salmon for dinner followed by NY Cheesecake. The wine total for the night was 3 glasses of Cabernet. It was a nice day and fun birthday for Libbie. ~ July 22, 2016 Anchorage --------------- We had a leisurely morning with the usual buffet breakfast at around 8. On FB this morning i sadly learned that Jimmy Musnicki had died. We got going on the bus about 9:30 and went to the Alaska Heritage Center in Anchorage for a few hours. I enjoyed the crafts people and the native costumes of the Alaskan Natives. Lib and I sat in the front row and watched young people perform Alaskan Native dances before I went for a walk in the rain around the lake which was set up with typical Alaskan native living quarters across various regions of Alaska. We took a group photo in front of the sculpture in front of the facility. Our bus next went into downtown Anchorage where we had lunch at the 49th state brewing company. I ordered a bread bowl of chowder which came with a salad. Accompanying the chowder we had a glass of Alaskan Amber. What a lunch. We were dropped in front of the Egan building and headed straight for JC Penny and found the optical center on the third floor. The very nice lady put a missing screw into Libbie's glasses and crimped the end. She was friendly and did not charge for the service. After Penneys we found North Face and bought rain pants for me but they didn't have any for Libbie. A trip around the corner to Rays Outfitters resulted in a pair of rain pants for Libbie as well. She was the one who wanted them in the first place. We got to the Lakefront Inn near the airport and pigged out on the WiFi which was excellent. I got to post a few glacier pictures and the Talkeetna general store pics. A surprising number of people knew about the cat who was elected mayor according to the comments on Facebook. We had an appetizer of Salmon mousse and Nachos in the bar which we called dinner. We had an Alaskan Amber to accompany the meal. It was very noisy. Mary and Alan from Great Britain joined us. It was a nice evening in a very noisy bar fo ~ July 23, 2016 Travel to Juneau --------------- We used our voucher and had a very nice made to order breakfast with both of us facing the lake. i ordered ham and cheese omelet and english muffin. We got on the bus promptly at 10 nd went to the airport where we waited some more. I found the Robert Steve book in the bookstore which I purchased. This has the poems Wde was reading to us on the journey. The plane ride was smooth and on time except for the last few miles into Juneau where we had high winds and the plane rocked. We ordered the northwest Deli package on the plane which was cheese, salami, crackers and trail mix. Our limo driver gave us a little downtown tour after which we walked to the Red Dog Saloon for food and drinks while a country singer played his guitar and sang. Libbie and i split an order of fried fish and had an Amber. We walked downtown juneau concentrating on stores with native art, not chinese crap. We went back downtown with Lyn and Linda, Anne and Paul and us and had dinner at Tracy's Crab shack. I had the Alaskan King crab which came with a roll and also had an Alaskan Amber. We walked back in the rain and stopped into the Red Dog for another Alaskan Amber before going to the hotel for the night. We're in the Gold Belt hotel on the harbor. We lucked out and got a beautiful view of the water. ~ July 24, 2016 Dinner on boat --------------- Up on a rainy juneau morning. We watched our ship dock at 6:10 AM from our waterfront window then got dressed and walked to the Sandpiper Cafe for breakfast. it was pricey - 17.99 for Libbie's eggs and bacon. i had the Vanilla and cinnamon French toast which was excellent. however, the sourdough was cut so thick the batter didn't soak all the way through. Coffee was another $3 each so it was expensive. We walked back in the pouring rain then stopped into the civic center where the Uncruise people were set up to take our luggage and feed us some snacks and coffee. We brought our suitcases over there then went with Paul and Anne to the Alaska State Museum which was outstanding. i saw lots of Alaskan history and artifacts as well as some art which i thoroughly enjoyed. Once done with the museum we went back to the civic center where we hung out waiting for the orientation. We received our badges then went as one to the boat where we met in the lounge and had champagne and cheese and crackers. Dinner was an outstanding King Salmon and asparagus paired with a Sauvignon Blanc which was age in Oak and had a stronger bouquet than a normal Sauvignon Blanc. Dessert was a chocolate grenache in raspberry. Wow, talk about a good meal. We settled into the lounge afterward for coffee and chocolates before going to our cabin. While in the lounge we saw a brief slide show of the coming weeks activities. I stopped in the ships library and picked up a book which was the complete poems of Robert Service. I'll look for that book on either Amazon or eBay. Need to photograph the cover. ~ July 25, 2016 Dawson Glacier --------------- At 6:30 AM we went to the lounge where they had set up a continental breakfast of yogurt, cereal, fruit and sweets. I grabbed a coffee and a cheese danish then went outside to the rear of the third level. At the end of our level where they set out a protective mat on the floor. We grabbed a blue yoga mat and a blue block object and found a spot on the floor. Tomorrow I may do this earlier to make sure we have a better spot. i have never done yoga before. Our leader started us at 6:45 with some shaking then we stretched overhead and right and left followed by a sequence of arm and leg movements on the floor. I think the whole time was worthwhile. I felt alert and awake. I'm not sure if it is really necessary or not. Breakfast was next at 7:30. We sat with two guys from Raleigh. At the table were Anne, the two guys and Libbie and I. Paul did not make it to breakfast, I had a ham and egg omelet with bacon and some hash browns. It was quite good. During breakfast the ship stopped. We had reached Dawson Glacier in Endicott Arm. Later in the morning we donned life jackets and boarded a skiff. John, a mate, lent me some neoprene gloves and I bought an uncruise knit hat. I also borrowed a rain coat from uncruise, wore my rain pants and a tee shirt under a flannel shirt. I was dressed quite warmly for the ride. The ride on the skiff was cold and interesting as our captain drove around several icebergs with his 90 hp Yamaha pontoon boat. The glacier was a pretty shade of blue. They say it makes it's own weather and it was true. It was windy and cold. I first thought I heard thunder but later I found that it was the ice calving. It cracks with a roar when it hits the water and explodes. Ice shrapnel is thrown into the air and huge wakes are created. We were only allowed to be 1/4 mile from the glacier. The glacier itself is 1 mile wide. There is a delay. The ice falls and hits the water followed by the crack of thunder a second or two later. We saw a whole wall of ie collapse and drop into the water with a loud roar. It was pretty awesome. When we were out there we had hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Outstanding!!!! What an environment to have this concoction. Nnxt the skiff started rolling in the ensuing wake. This was the awesome power of nature. We sat down for lunch when we came back and had a chicken salad on a pita along with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. The wines are on taps - Melbec, Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc. Dessert was warm peaches and raspberry crumble with vanilla ice cream. We then went outside to watch the boat approach Fords Terror which is a white water rapids caused by rapid changes of the tide. There was a bald eagle perched on top of a pine tree watching us. A few people were on the beach next to Fords Terror. They were from small skiffs which came off a smaller boat than the Safari Endeavor. I received a pair of boots, size 12, on the upper deck. These will be used for shore hiking in tide pools. Cocktail hour is at 5:30 every day. I went down early and ordered a martini which was my second this year. I really liked it. We saw an incredible number of humpback and orca whales in a little bay we pulled into. It was pretty spectacular, there were easily 20 whales putting on a show. One even breached and went vertical launching himself into the air. So cool. All this activity took place shortly after dinner. We discovered the sun deck which is on the 4th floor. It was pretty empty and a great place to take whale photos. Dinner tonight was 50-50 cod and duck, both of which were delicious. Dessert was cheesecake with blackberries. Wow. We had dinner with a couple from indiana who owned a used semi truck business. Also at our table were Paul and Anne. After dinner I stayed in the lounge for the evening talk about some Alaskan lore. I may have dozed partly through the talk. ~ July 26, 2016 Skiff into ocean --------------- I woke at 6:10 AM and chose to skip yoga which started at 6:45. I didn't feel like laying on the cold ground and twisting my body around. Maybe tomorrow will be different. I went to the lounge and had coffee and a blueberry muffin. When Libbie came back fro Yoha it was time for breakfast. I ordered a tomato, basil and Mozzarella Omelet which came with potatoes and bacon. At 10:45 it was time for Kayak 101. We suited up and got into kayaks on the back on the boat. They launch 4 at a time. I got into the front of one and Libbie had the steering in the back. They said that over 6 foot one tall you can't really fit in the back and control the steering pedals. We seemed to get going OK but then Libbie lost the pedal with her right foot so we were behind the group. This was OK since we ended up getting a private lesson from Kate which was great. She's an enthusiastic young lady. We paddled to shore and saw some star fish and coral then headed back to the boat. It seemed short but we learned a little about kayaking. Annie said we all graduated. I doubt it but I feel much better about it and feel I can manage on my own easily. We had lunch with the two guys from Asheville who don't seem to be very smart. They said they returned a Go Pro Camera because it came with too many cables and they were faced with installing drivers and software. All of it was too much. For lunch we had Tacos Carnitas. I had a hot sauce and a seasonal Alaskan summer ale beer. It was great. Dessert was a cupcake with whipped topping and a strawberry. Very nice but way too much. We barely finished lunch before we had to go out for our shore walk. it turned out we never did the shore walk and went out amongst the humpback whales instead. Heather was our captain, a very shapely and pretty twenty something who had several years in the service including an assignment in Fayetteville. She said Raleigh was the big city when she was in service in 2006. On the whale watch we had 3 or 4 humpbacks surface next to the boar and dive under us. We could almost reach out and touch the tails as they dove. What a sight. They also were pretty loud as they did their blow out of water on the exhale. Wow! I hope I got good photos. We never did do the shore walk. This was so much more spectacular. We went down to cocktail hour and had a glass of Cabernet along with some Bruschetta. The bruschetta had mozzarella, tomatoes, olives and French bread toasted. Our entertainment was the young Heather outside with a pipe guiding the chain into the hold while they pulled the anchor up. She is a very capable young woman with muscles. At dinner we sat with Prudy and her grand daughter Elizabeth Ann, a nine year old in the 4th grade. The Cains joined us. Dinner was seared scallops with green beans over polenta. We had several bottles of Malbec on the table. Dessert was unpronounceable, a policetta??? which was a tapioca or vanilla mold on a plate with fresh peaches. It was quite good. After dinner we enjoyed a presentation by Sarah of tidal pools and intra tidal areas of the coastline. Topics covered were the various crustaceans such as the mussels and then the starfish that eat mussels to keep them in heck. Acorn barnacles and their reproductive habits. I especially liked her description of the reproductive appendage and how it's used. There are kids in the audience so the topic was family friendly. Other critters covered were hermit crabs and the adornment credit, a crab that decorates it's shell with bits and pieces of rock and coral that it finds. I'm impressed in general with how knowledgeable the staff is. ~ July 27, 2016 Skiff tour into Ocean --------------- I took a walk around the boat anchored in the beautiful Keku Islands area. The rain is on and off and surprisingly there is a weak cell phone signal. Libbie got a number of text messages. All is well in Providence according to Mary and Joe texted back that Christa and "sister" are still doing well. No baby yet. Breakfast was with a couple from Asheville and a couple from Flagstaff. I had the open face egg and tomato on an English Muffin with potatoes and bacon. Earlier at 6:30 AM I had coffee and an Apricot bread in the lounge while I caught up on my blog. I enjoy the lithesome tall figure of Samantha, the blonde bartender. She was attending to the continental breakfast buffet set up in the lounge. I went out on the shore walk with Sarah. She gave the talk last night with the subject being the critters in the tide pools. She was great at finding all the little guys on the shore that we talked about last night. We had a couple of kids that were really curious and found lot of the critters first. I found that Sarah was a teacher and this was her break time. She has been with Uncruise one year. She is really good. We came back in a pouring rain. The lunxh was perfect. It was a hot bowl of vegetable and kale soup. We liked the food so well that we ended up buying the Uncruise cookbook from the ships store. We went out with the skiff tour at 2:15 instead of the kayak tour. We had Lindsey, a very capable and pretty blonde. It's amazing how many beautiful young adventurous woman there are on these boats. We had a nice excursion but only saw some eagles and a seal plus a few other birds. On the way back we went into a driving wind and got unbelievably soaked. Salty water was spraying over the boat and a times we got hit by large waves that totally soaked us. By the time we reached the Endeavour we were saturated with dripping salt water and cold. We went to the lounge for hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps. Earlier in the day I had an Alaskan Coffee. This time i ordered a gin martini from Samantha followed by a couple of glasses of Cabernet. I had 2 more glasses of Cabernet with dinner. This evening we had Alaskan Dungeness crab. They brought us out some extra crab which was nice of them. It turned into a social meal. We spent much more time at the table than normal cracking crab claws. For dessert we had an orange pound cake with raspberry ad cream sauce. The talk tonight was by Lindsey and was about Salmon. I fell asleep part way through the talk. The boat is going through some rough seas as I write this after dinner. They warned us about this saying that we were gong with the wind which was strong but contributing to swells on the water. The boat is pitching to and fro but it isn't anything too bad. ~ July 28, 2016 Cruising for Critters --------------- I went down to the lounge at 6:47 and picked up a coffee and a very tasty vanilla bean scone with powdered sugar. I accompanied this with some huge blackberries. While sipping coffee and organizing some notes on my tablet the sun came out. It was a beautiful blue sky with mountains rising surrounded by rings of fog or low hanging clouds. The boat continued moving into the icy straits and alas during breakfast we moved under a deck of clouds. Breakfast was a tasty Italian sausage and egg scramble with spinach and onions. This was served with toast and potatoes as well as a side of bacon. We had breakfast with Dottie and Don from Waco, TX and Anne Cain. Paul was outside taking pictures. It was a lazy morning. The program was cruising for critters as we made our way through Icy Strait. We saw many many sea otters while the sun kept playing hide and seek. It was nice to see the sun and blue sky. We passed a cabin at the water's edge that looked like it had an outhouse. It's pretty remote. I spent some time sitting at a table in the lounge while writing on my computer. We also did some people watching, seeing a group of 4 young girls in their early twenties playing a game that involved 4 plastic pistols and some cardboard cutout characters. They later switched to a card game that Libbie said was Rummy. Just before lunch I grabbed an Alaskan Ale at the bar and went down to lunch with Anne and Paul. Rick and Linda from Asheville joined us. I need to look up their vacation rental company which is called "couch surfing". Dinner was a tomato basil soup and ham and cheese Focaccia sandwich with Alaskan Chips. Spice pear cake with caramel sauce was the dessert. The sandwich was too big and the dessert was more food than I should have had. We checked out the skiff tour assignments and once again my name was not on the list. Annie checked her spreadsheet and found that my name was a reference instead of a named cell which was why it wasn't printing. The water where we are stopped during lunch is an emerald green and very pretty. Libbie got the best shot of the vacation at this spot. After lunch we went out in a skiff tour. We were in the tiny rubber raft with no seats, just the rubber raft to sit on with some ropes to hold onto. It started out calm and sunny but soon the rains began. This was topped off by us heading out into the open sea with large swells which caused our raft to bounce and joust across the water, it wasn't very comfortable. I didn't enjoy too much of the trip although it was nice to see the hidden cove we sailed into and then visit the island with all the seals laying about and once in a while fighting each other. It was so nice to get back. We went down to the lounge where Libbie ordered a buttered rum and I had an Alaskan coffee. Samantha our ponytailed blonde bartender is incredibly pretty and personable. After the Alaskan coffee I had a few glasses of Sauvignon Blanc before switching to a Sonoma Zinfandel. All were very nice. Dinner was a carrot ginger soup followed by an Alaskan Ling crab served over sweet potato, bok choy and brussel sprouts. Desert was a chocolate mousse with a chocolate sauce and a vanilla cookie. Wow. We watched a presentation about bears which I slept through part way. I need to find a way to stop sleeping through the evening programs. ~ July 29, 2016 Glacier Bay --------------- Everything is pushed back today due to our timing at the far end of Glacier Bay National Park. We have a 24 hour permit that starts at midnight. We picked up a ranger that we picked up onboard at the Visitors Center at the Park entrance. We then sailed 65 miles to the Glacier end of Glacier Bay and woke early in the morning at John Hopkins Glacier where we stayed until 8 AM. I was up at 5:50 and walked around the boat at 6:15 enjoying the glacier. There was coffee and croissants available at 6. We enjoyed the glacier and all the ice floes. There was loud roars of white thunder but it was coming from glaciers behind John Hopkins. I saw a small calving and timed the sound at 8 seconds which indicates it was about 8,000 feet away. We had a wonderful breakfast of bacon and hotcakes with berries at 8 AM. We sat with four other people from the ship including the 2 guys from Asheville and a couple from A little later we had a talk about glaciers and the area from the Park Ranger. Outside the scenic was the classic Alaskan scenics. I took hundreds of photos and videos and actually ran the battery down. I had to put it on the charger before lunch so I could photograph our journey as we exited the park which I assume will be later today. We had lunch of a Salmon crab cake accompanied by a glass of Cabernet. Daniel the bartender said the Cabernet tap was out so I had the Cabernet out of a bottle. Each wine tap is fed by a keg which holds approximately a pony keg size wine barrel. I'm not sure what a pony keg is. Our lunchmates were Dottie and the 87 year old guy from Waco, TX and a couple from Phoenix. The Phoenix couple said they booked through their travel agent. I was surprised to hear people still use travel agents. Lunch was the Salmon Crab cake on a bed of Caesar salad. Strawberry shortcake for dessert. After lunch my battery was fully charged so I dropped it back in just as we were passing Fairweather Peak, one of the prettiest mountain ranges in the Park and also the highest peak in the park. Next a brown bear was walking along the shore on the port side of the boat. We watched him for quite a while. This animal was huge. I shot some movies and a number of stills which did quite well surprisingly at 30x zoom. We listened to Captain Shep talk about other uncruise adventures and all about the Uncruise loyalty program. Annie covered tomorrow's activities which will include forest meandering, skiff tours and independent paddles. During the afternoon Ranger Daniel gave a bird talk. We passed Marble island but we were going too fast. There were thousands of birds on the island but i thought we were going too fast to really see anything which is too bad. We had the cocktail hour food which was ceviche and salmon chunks. Yummy. i had two mixed drinks, an Alaskan Coffee and a Martini before switching to wine for dinner. many glasses of Merlot later and dinner was done. We had Alaskan halibut with a salad and berry tort for dessert. Libbie got a chocolate cake we all shared that had a candle in it. They sang a group happy Birthday which was pretty nice. The boat was able to find dock space which they said they are not always able to do. We went ashore and visited the Glacier Bay visitors center then took a short walk in the woods along an interpretive trail. We talked with a park law enforcement officer who was outfitted with a bullet proof vest and gun. Our conversation was about needing the vest. He said he was required to wear it. The officer was from Washington State. The girls on our ship are pretty strong woman and all beautiful. We watched Heather put on a hard hat and start working the boom to fetch the gangplank. On the front of the boat I did a movie of Lindsey pulling in the rope that tied us up while Heather unhooked us on shore then jumped onto the boat grabbing a hanging buoy. She was wearing a swimming life preserver. These ladies all seem to be beautiful and quite capable of handling things. We watched a beautiful sunset from the sun deck while the boat was delayed searching for the couple from 308 who did not check back in on the magnetic board. It was about 9:30 before we got underway. I lay in bed catching up on my journaling until about 11 PM. We both noticed a choppiness to the ride that we had not experienced before in addition to the occasional rolls of swells and wakes from cruise ships. I peeked outside and did see a rather large wake so a cruise ship probably did pass by. ~ July 30, 2016 Bushwhack --------------- I was up early and had coffee cake and coffee at 6:30 in the lounge. Outside was very foggy but did lift a little so that I was able to wander around and take pictures of the mountains in the mist reflecting in the calm waters of Idaho Inlet. IT was so beautiful. We had breakfast with a couple from Tennessee who used to live in Orlando and a couple from Asheville. I had the caramelized French Toast with bacon and potatoes. Once again the French Toast was very thick which means the batter doesn't soak all the way in. In the morning we went out with Kate on a skiff. We did a wildlife tour finding otters, dolphins, eagles, a deer, a sandpiper and some water fowl. When we came back had 4 minutes t get to dinner which was a Tostada which we had with a beer. which was probably well worth it. The entire crew seemed to work incredibly hard for their pay. i've never encountered a harder working group of people. We went out for our forest meander at 2:15. Our guide was Arianna and it was an incredibly great walk through some forests that didn't have trails. How beautiful! Arianna identified moss and berries as well as old growth forest wood and fernss. What a great experience. We ran out of gas on the way back in our rubber boat which they called a zodiac. Switching over to the aux tank fixed the situation. once back the polar plunge was going on. I ordered a Martini then switched to Sauvignon blanc before having a Zinfandel with dinner which was a Sockeye Salmon. Dinner was chocolate pie which was yummy of course. They showed slide show of our weeks activities then we watched whales on the deck. The whales were our last hurrah for the sea. Libbie and I went up to the bridge to see the boat being driven which was a treat. Shep spent some time explaining the radar navigation and triangulation system and the VHF transponders where each ship displays it's position, name, speed and other pertinent info. It's an amazing system and is probably the same as used on airplanes. We never got our galley tour. It was scheduled for 2 and we had a 2:15 forest walk. We waited around the galley until 2:10 but then left to get our rain pants and boots on for the walk. ~ July 31, 2016 Last Day --------------- I awoke early and lay in bed around 5:15 AM. I heard the ship horn go off around 5:30 and decided to take my shower and finish packing for leaving. Our bags have to be out at 7:30 which is when breakfast starts. I went down to the lounge at 6:00 to get a cup of coffee. Samantha was setting up the continental breakfast which is available at 6:30. GPS is showing that we are approaching Juno. Through the fog I can make out buildings on shore along the channel on our approach to Juneau. I returned the book, the Complete Poems of Robert Service to the ship library. I'm going to order this book from Amazon or eBay. We packed our suitcases and had them outside at 7:30 AM. Jose stopped by and said the credit card was declined. I got a text from Capital One which i acknowledge that it was me who was using the card. We made the $1500 deposit for our next cruise on the credit card and it appears to have gone through. The tip amount of $800 was the issue. They were going to rerun the batch. After a breakfast of cream cheese omelet with Anaheim peppers and bacon we said our goodbyes and marched out the gangplank. The entire crew was in a line greeting each person individually. We used the wifi at the centennial hall while waiting for our bus to the airport. In the meantime we walked through downtown looking at a book store and an Alaskan Crafts building. Our shuttle driver to the airport at 11:45 was pretty entertaining. His name was Jake and is a college student studying Mandarin at a college in Utah. He dropped us at the airport where I tried the rental counter of Enterprise. It turns out my reservation was in Fairbanks, not Juneau. The nice lady got me fixed up with a Juneau rental. We stopped at the hatchery on the way to the AirBnB. Libbie inquired about the power failure. They did lose some fish but mostly saved the run. Found our AirBnB on Douglas Island. Met Jean who did not get our text this morning. Sprint which is used by Republic Wireless does not have any coverage in the juneau area. We are on the third floor of a split level. I really like the house. Our room is incredibly huge. Our host Jean gave us a pass for Mt Roberts which is the mountain overlooking Juneau with a tram to the top. We ran down to the Foodland IGA and picked up cereal, milk and blueberries as well as a bottle of Ravenswood Cab and a block of sharp cheddar cheese. We sat on our deck next to the bedroom and had wine and cheese while watching ships in the harbor. We saw the Endeavor across the channel and the progress of events for the new crowd. The embarking and the fire drill. A little after 6 I woke Libbie up and we headed out to dinner. We found on street parking in front of the Alaska hotel and meandered down the street to Tracy's Crab shack where we met Lynn and Linda. It was pretty crowded with cruise ship people. I ordered 2 cups of the crab bisque and a Captains Premium ($45) dinner which consisted of 2 Alaskan crab legs with one of them being a killer claw. Libbie and I had 2 Alaskan Ambers to complement the meal. It was a delightful evening having dinner with friends in a pretty informal restaurant if you can call it that. After we parted at the docks we used the pass from the BnB and too the Tram to the top. There was only one other couple on the Tram. They were from Boston and staying at an Air BnB. I looked for coffee at the top but found some very expensive $16 bags of coffee. On the way back on Douglas island I found a small convenience store where I was able to pick up and bag of Klondike Heritage coffee. ~ August 01, 2016 Glacier Gardens-Mendenhall Glacier --------------- I woke early and had a wonderful shower with a waterpic wand in our BnB. I liked it because I could adjust the water pressure in addition to the water spray pattern. This is what our Downing Place wand lacks, it comes out too hard. I tried downloading pictures from the camera but got a disk full error. it's hard to believe but the hard disk is full on my laptop. I deleted somee movies which gave me 10 Gb more space but the reality is this is only 1/2 of an SD card worth. Libbie and I had our shredded wheat with Blueberries. This is quite a difference from what we had been having for breakfast everyday. I surfed the web and purchased the Robert Service collected poems book for $4.50 on eBay. After some cereal with Blueberries in our room we left for the Gardens. We couldn't find the place at first but we were persistent and asked at the Safeway Liquor Store and then again and then again at a little rooms by the hour motel. The clerk used to work in the Garden so we found the place finally. They don't have a map on their brochure and also don't have a very big sign in front, it's just a little mailbox sign. The place is spectacular. Kyle drove us to the top to see the lookout then drove through the Tongass National Forest. There wasn't much of a snack bar there for lunch so we drove to Fred Meyer and bought a Cuban from the Deli dept. Picked up some water and Tim's chips and found a scenic pullout overlooking the Mendenhall Glacier. We walked the field a little after our picnic lunch then drove to the Glacier. A 2 mile walk back to the Falls was certainly worth the trip. We watched the glacier movie in the visitor center before leaving. I couldn't believe the number of cruise ships that had arrived in port. They send buckets full of tourists to the glacier. It was very crowded and jam packed when we left for the day. We had wine and cheese on our patio then our host recommended the Island Pub for pizza on Douglas island in the little town of Douglas. This was about one mile away down the highway. We ordered a build your own pizza of mozarella and provo;one on marinara sauce with /italian sausage. Alaskan Amber accompanied the meal. The sausage was a little hot for Libbie but i thought it was OK, not too hot but with a little heat to make it interesting. We drove aorundd Douglas a little and noticed a second cafe in the town as well as a picnic area on the water with a shelter where people were grilling food. It's a nice little community away from the crowds of Juneau. We came sriaght back home with a slight amount of difficulty since we were approaching our little BnB from the opposite direction from where we normally approach. ~ August 02, 2016 Brewery Tour --------------- Did some journaling this morning and also researching on Trip Advisor of some Juneau venues. We left around 9:30 for The Shrine of St Theresa. it's about 20 miles North of Juneau and was beautiful. There is a little causeway you walk out across the waterway to an Island. On the Island is a little chuch and stations of the cross and other religious artifacts. The whole place was peaceful and reflective. i enjoyed it. Next we tried to go to the Botanical Garden next door but it was closed for reasons unknown so we headed to the brewery. We easily found it in an industrial park by the airport. They give you three beers of your choice from which they are brewing. They give out bottle caps to be used as currency. I had the Oatmeal stout, an experimental Spruce Berliner sour and an Alaskan Red which Libbie also had because she liked the Red Dungeness crab on the label. I ended up buying a tee shirt with Alaskan Amber on the front and also a packet of sourdough mix. We drove up the highway to Fred Meyer and picked up a Boars Head turkey and cheese wrap in a Jalapeno jam spread. We had this with leftover Tims Extra thick and crunch and water. Had our sandwiches at the Mendenhall Glacier overlook on Glacier Hwy just as we did yesterday. This little rest area was a find with a good view of the glacier and yet convenient to the highway. We packed our trash and put it into the trahs can on the way out. Next stop was downtown Juneau where we turned on Main and went up the hill looking for the Capitol. We found it but it was covered in black cloth since it was being renovated. We found street parking near the capitol and saw the Juneau City museum across from the Capitol so we decided to investigate. It was an OK museum. Watched the movie and toured the exhibits. I liked the traveling art exhibits which consisted of a show by a local artist of oil paintings. We left the museum around 3 PM and came back to the BnB. We liked the Alaska placemats in our room so we asked the home owner, Jean, where she got them. She said they were from the Tee Shirt shop at the Cruise terminal. We planned to have dinner on the island at the island pub but changed our mind since we were going across the river to the cruise terminal. Parked at the terminal for $2 per hour, 4 hours and bought the placemats. Lots of cruise ship tourists buying chinese crap! We went to Tracy's Crab shack for dinner instead of the Island Pub since we were in the neighborhood anyway. We ordered the Captains Premium leg and 2 bowls of crab chowder for a total of $80. We also ordered 2 Alaskan Ambers with dinner, my new favorite beer. There was a huge guy who said he was a chef at our table along with his mother. Both came from the cruise ship. His Mother was buying trinkets to decorate an Alaskan themed lamp. I'm convinced this is the kind of clientele that takes cruise ships. Overweight and not very intelligent. This may be a stereotype but walking downtown Juneau confims my suspicions. I don't think we had any fat people on our uncruise. On the way back to the island I stopped for gas to top off the tank for returning the car tomorrow morning. Got back and packed everything and gathered our other things for the 4 AM wakeup tomorrow. Our flight is at 6:30 AM. ~ August 03, 2016 Fly Home --------------- We had a false wakeup when Libbie alarm went off at 12:05 instead of 4:05. It was not on Alaskan time. We got the correct wake up at 4:05 AM, 4 hours later on her cell phone. It was raining and dark out when we left for the airport at 4:33 AM. Got there before 5 and dropped the keys into the bin. The airport is tiny and did not have TSA Pre. They gave us a blue card to use so we didn't have ot remove hour shoes. We got off on time and had a very smooth flight on time into Seattle but faced a 3 hour layover. Picked up a very expensive 2 biscuits and 2 coffees for $14. at McDonalds in the airport. Wow. we had a 3 hour layover in Seattle which is not a bad airport. We got some seats with power outlets and hung around until it was time to load our plane for the 3 hour flight to Minneapolis. We had a young college student between us, Ann, who was flying from her parents assignment in China. She was going to her boyfriends family in Charlotte before returning to school Aug 29 in Alabama. In Minneapolis we bought a sandwich and chips for dinner and then boarded a very cramped flight to RDU. The plane is an MD88 with 3 and 2 seating. We were on the 2 side with uncomfortable seats for the 2 1/2 hour flight. We got in 10 minutes early and began the drive home which was easy. It cost $133 for parking. our car once again was first to be dropped of by the Relax and Park. We got home and found the cable modem was totally dead. It doesn't even light up. The violet tower watering is also toast. It won't reboot when i tried it. The great news is the moteinos running the fans worked great. The back room is circulating and also the foundation fan circulated. I need to do something to improve the water controllers for the tower and the outdoor sprinkler. ~ August 04, 2016 repairs --------------- After going to bed at 1 AM this morning after our all day flight home yesterday I woke at 7 AM. I had oatmeal for breakfast since we didn't have milk for cereal. Went to Best Buy when they opened at 10 and exchanged my burned out router for a new one. The extended warranty is the best thing I have ever done. This is the 3rd replacement modem for the 9.99 price of the extended warranty. Once I got the modem activated with Time Warner I spent several hours trying to get Internet connectivity. The issue turned out to be the cable. I used the yellow crossover cable which it doesn't need. It needs a straight through cable instead. Once this was corrected I tried the house network but no dice. So far i replaced the cable modem and the router. Later at night when I was going to bed I replaced the switch under the office desk which supplies Manon and the switch in the upstairs closet. I suspect the 8 port switch in the office closet is bad. Once Manon was running I watched some YouNow live broadcasts before bed. I was shocked by some of the shorts that teenage girls were wearing with their butt cheeks exposed. Oh my. Dinner tonight was trying to eat light. We had cottage cheese and fruit for lunch and salad and a squash medley for dinner. ~ August 05, 2016 Computer Catch up --------------- Woke at 6:30 AM with a headache. I'm also a little dizzy this morning. I hope it's just getting settled back in to a routine and not something more serious. I have gained quite a bit of weight since my physical - 8 pounds that I want to get rid of by my 70th birthday in November. I went to Costco before lunch to look for a coffee grinder. I ended up buying 2 bottles of Rodney Strong. It was a lackadaisical day. I got most of our home LAN working including the cameras. Still no irrigation controls. Dinner was salad and a squash medley. We were both tired and worn down so we chose not to go to the studio dance tonight. ~ August 06, 2016 ESP8266 --------------- I spent a lot of today looking at the ESP8266 as a replacement irrigation controller. I like that it can be WiFi attached which keeps it physically off the network and doesn't have proper shutdown problems like Pi and also not wearing out a flash card. Hopefully it's self contained and independent. I went to Kroger to look for seafood - either Salmon, crab or shrimp. The shrimp was 4.99 a pound so it won. Dinner was shrimp with corn on the cob and Rodney Strong Cabernet. ~ August 07, 2016 Lazy Day --------------- This morning we learned that Emily was born at 10:36 PM last night. Spent some time watching the stuff on YouNow. Libbie has a rabbit in the garden so I tried to find how it got in. Ended up cutting the weeds all around the fence to look for an opening. Found out a log fell on the electric fence and broke it. Tomorrow I'll clean up this mess and repair the fence. I located the Bill Price interview audio and uploaded it for Phil to sync with the video. He thought it was excellent and wanted to know what equipment i was using. This is happiness. Throughout the day new pics of Emily have been emerging on FB, instagram and email. There is one very nice one of Paige looking at Emily. it's a winner which i sent on to Denton for Anne and Richard to see. Libbie made her excellent pizza once again which we had for dinner. ~ August 08, 2016 Mr Wonderful --------------- Using trial and error I hooked up the DS3231 RTC from Adafruit to a Huzzah and got it to store the time/date and then read it back ever 10 seconds. It finally works. The secret is to use pin #4 for SDA and pin #5 for SCL. The library example code runs. Now I want to hook this to the NTP packet to set the clock. We went to the Roadhouse for Mr Wonderful. It's been a few weeks since we've been out dancing. Curtis gave Foxtrot lessons. We skipped the first one since our soup arrived but at the break we took the group class. We ordered the Salmon BLT which we split and had sweet potato fries and a Yuengling to go with the meal. We left at 9 since we were tired. It was a nice evening. ~ August 09, 2016 --------------- I spent a lot of time reading about NTP and trying various things but did not get very far. I watched some shocking YouNow broadcasts of little girls behaving badly. Dinner tonight was hamburger on a bun with vidalia. Accompanying this was baked beans. ~ August 10, 2016 NTP --------------- I had success getting NTP running, fetching the time and setting the RTC. NTP does not include Date info or daylight savings time info. I guess in the Pi version of the sprinkler this is handled by the OS. We had a good dance lesson with Robert. This time we did Rumba and expanded it with a double spot turn with an underarm turn between the two spot turns. Dinner tonight was hamburger, the last of the frozen ones, with vidalia, tomato, banana pepper and a whole wheat bun. We had leftover baked beans with the hamburger. I stayed up late looking at more YouNow and also answering Phil about my camera. ~ August 11, 2016 Po Boy --------------- Didn't do much today. Went outside and mowed the front and back with the tractor. The grass was pretty high. The grass needs the hand mower now to do trimming. I'll do that tomorrow. I spent some time today with the Robert Service Poem "Yukon", memorizing the first 2 verses. I got out the MP3 recorder, plugged it into the charger, a tried recording the first verse a little as practice. I used a new cooking light recipe for dinner, Pan Seared Shrimp Po Boy. I bought 10 oz of frozen shrimp at Kroger along with pickle relish needed for the tartar sauce. A 1/2 tsp dose of Tapatio into the tartar gave it a little zing. The sandwiches came out really good. Even Libbie liked them. Paul posted some really nice wildflower pics on FB today from our Alaskan trip. Beautiful. Dinner was the Shrimp Po Boys with a half bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet. I decided to book an Uncruise Costa Rica to Panama trip after studying some of the options. I will call them tomorrow. ~ August 12, 2016 Southwest Night --------------- Took out the pressure washer today to do the front steps. Had to go to Kroger to get gas then dragged it over to the side door to pump up the tires. It started readily. Hooked up the hoses and tried it a little then Libbie wanted to use it to clean the steps. she also did the brick walk which wasn't bothering me very much. It looks much better now. I want to raise it but doubt if I will get around to it with all the other items on my plate. For dinner tonight we made the shrimp Po Boys again. After dinner we went over to the studio for the Friday night party. The theme was Southwestern night. I wore a flower shirt and straw hat. Libbie wore a tie dye skirt she had purchased in Huntington Beach. I had to use electronic tools to fish out the string that ties the skirt up. It was back inside the seam pocket and couldn't be reached. My knitting needle was able to snag it and pull it out so we could grab it to be tied. ~ August 13, 2016 Dance --------------- I started watching a tutorial on using Eagle. The goal is to make a PCB for a Huzzah hooked up to a shift register and relays for sprinkler control. We went to Costco this morning to get a new Uninterruptible Power Supply for Traviata. The old one died and won't power the computer anymore. Costco had a CyberPower 1300 for $99. We also picked up a bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet to go with the King Crab we will have for dinner tonight. I took the tractor across the creek to mow the weeds. while clearing one pile of rotted logs in the high weeds a copperhead snake came out across the front of my shoes. I almost picked him up with the handful of brush I picked up!!!!! This was too close of a call! That ended the mowing for the day although I was pretty much done. We had a salad which i didn't care for, the King Crab made in the steamer and a bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet. Nice meal to end a nice day. ~ August 14, 2016 Sprinklers --------------- Created the schematic for the Huzzah based sprinkler system. This is my first time using Eagle for building a schematic and PCB. I started watching the YouTube tutorial yesterday then muddled through the hookup today. I had to locate libraries online for all of the parts. Outdoors I used my rake to pull the rotted logs out of the high grass watching for my friend the copperhead snake. After I cleared the logs I took the mower and mowed the other side of the creek where the big mower missed. this really wore me down. Late in the PM I picked up a Google chromecast at Walmart for $35 after reading that there is a plugin for the Logitech Media Server that will stream audio to the chromecast using the media Server. After fiddling with this for a while I actually got it to work well controlled by the Squeezer app. This is great news. I can put Chromecasts on various stereo systems to stream music to them. Woo Hoo!!! Big news. Dinner tonight was Libbie's outstanding pizza. It came out better than well this time because it was loaded with basil and tomato pieces. ~ August 15, 2016 Eagle --------------- Did more work on the Huzzah schematic and learned the layout portion of the program. I did some preliminary runs of the wiring program but I still have more to learn. Because of Libbie's trip we had our lesson with Robert today, a Monday. We did some waltz chassez and lock. I'm going too fast in the lock. He had me slow down a few times. It was a good waltz review. We had spaghetti with cheese on it for dinner. It's been a while since we had spaghetti. ~ August 16, 2016 OshPark --------------- Finished up the layout and had enough confidence in it, after doing and redoing it several times, that I sent the final off to Oshpark. I paid the extra $5 for priority mail otherwise shipping would be free. The price for 3 boards with the extra shipping is $42. My BAC preferred was called, I got an extra $20k in the individual account. I ended up spending some of it on a purchase of 500 shares of GAINO, a term preferred that pays monthly but has a mandatory call 5 years from now. Dinner tonight was hamburgers that I picked up in Kroger. I got fresh instead of frozen. I think the frozen tastes better. We had this with tomato and onion and a garden pepper on mine. Libbie has her bags packed for tomorrows trip. ~ August 17, 2016 fly --------------- Took Libbie to the airport for her 8:15 flight. Worked on the Sprinkler for the outdoors. The Pi was bad but not the SD Flash. Later found that the relay board was bad. Turned a solenoid on and later found it was still on, hours later. Wasted lots of water. The hose attaching the water from the solenoid to the outdoor sprinklers rusted out and the hose let go. Will fix this tomorrow. Dinner tonight was a hamburger with tomato, onion and ketchup on a bun. ~ August 18, 2016 dvd --------------- I downloaded the audio files today. It apparently never made it to my inbox when the Nicholas's sent them over the weekend. Most of the day was taken up assembling the DVD with the pictures and MP3s. I also dropped the interview videos into the mix. They were surprisingly integrated in by the ProShow software without a problem. I took the steps today to get a certificate from Comodo for the traviata.dyndns.org domain. I can get my money back in 30 days if this doesn't work out. Dinner was fried chicken and potato salad, both from Kroger. The chicken was an impulse purchase. I was in the store and hungry. The fried chicken smelled good so I went for it. ~ August 19, 2016 Dance --------------- I worked on the DVD quite a bit today and eventually uploaded a version to Youtube for review. Libbie reported she found a few things wrong with it. She must have time on her hands in RI. This is good, I'll depend on her for fixups. I went outside and started hooking up the floodlights I started installing months ago. I decided i needed to go to Lowes and pick up more lights. Bought 3 more floodlights and a splice to hook up two pieces of landscape wire. I identified a few more places where I would still like some lights but instead I will hook up the lights I already own to be used on the porch ceiling. This will involve routing landscape wiring in the ceiling which is going to be a challenge. Dinner tonight was some Kroger fried chicken and potato salad. I went to the studio party at 8. It was a pretty fun night. I danced with Janet, Anita, Lori, Shannon and Dawn. Dawn is a terrible dancer. I did a Rhumba with her and she was terrible. Anita is a great dancer, so was Lori. I picked up my new glasses today and boy am I happy with them. I could see really well up close and the distance vision is quite good. I'm more happy with them than I ever thought I would be. ~ August 20, 2016 security --------------- Tried to install a purchased security certificate on Traviata. I didn't have much success. I may have to switch to a newer version of uniserver. My concern was migrating SQL but it doesn't look like I use sql for anything on traviata. This is good. The galleries are based on Jalbum which doesn't rely on external programs or databases. I got ceiling lights wired on the front porch but not tied into the main outdoor line yet so I have not tested them. Dinner was Kroger fried chicken with potato salad. Much of the indoor time was spent on either the security certificate or the AVSA DVD. Dinner was a Hormel turkey microwave dinner. These are the non refrigerated ones given out as a Friday freebie. ~ August 21, 2016 Wired front porch --------------- A pretty good day! I finished the movies for the DVD, I only need to build the final thing and mail it. I started a beg letter for MAAVS. Need to figure out how to make address labels which shouldn't be too hard. I wired the front porch low voltage lights into the main line. I also replaced the 12V malibu LED light above the garbage can which surprisingly was burned out. I now need to drill a hole in the foundation wall for the low voltage line. For now the power pack is outside under the Camelia bush and running on an extension cord. For dinner I bought a Kroger wood fired crust which was pretty terrible and made a pizza on it. I made several errors including putting the cheese down first before the tomato sauce. What a mess. The good part was the peppers and onions that i chopped up and spread over the top. This really added to the pizza. After dark i took a look at the lighting and I'm not sure I like the porch lights portion of the mix. Also, the garage door side of the house is pretty dark. I may mount some lights on the columns on either side of the door near the ground and pointing up. ~ August 22, 2016 Lighting --------------- Alexa alerted me at 7:20 to check Libbie in for her 7:25 flight tomorrow morning. She got TSA Pre and an A59 boarding position which is good. Today I decided to mount two landscape lights on either side of the garage door. I had to spend $45 and purchase a one inch concrete bit to pass a conduit through the wall. Once I had the bit it went very well. I then ran the low voltage wires and tied in these two lights. I also added another pine tree light on the living room side or East side of the house. When I tested it out at night it was beautiful! The peak above the garage is still not lit enough, it's quite dark. I'll try a few more things to light it. Dinner was the other Kroger wood fired crust. This time I made it correctly with the sauce first then the cheese and then the chopped veggies. I didn't like the taste of the cheese as well. Not sure what the problem is. ~ August 23, 2016 party shopping --------------- Worked at finishing up the MAAVS beg letter before going out to pick up Lib. I also copied the contents of the WWW folder over to a new version of UniServer. I want to use a version where the configuration menu works. This will help me configure SSL using the certificate i purchased. The wiki has directions on how to enable a freeSSL certificate, I may try that and also check into getting my Comodo SSL money back which i think I can do within 30 days. Picked up Libbie at the airport this morning around 11:30. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese. We broke into my beer stash that I bought for the party this weekend and had a bottle each. I bought 4 racks of ribs today at Kroger as well as most of the other items needed for the party. ~ August 24, 2016 lights --------------- Today I worked on the landscape lights adding 2 lights aimed at the gable over the garage. Last night I put one temporarily on the side of the little decorative roofs under the gable and liked it so I permanently mounted the 2 lights and tied them into the main wiring. We still need lights on the porch roof and possibly one more on the porch ceiling near the front door. We had a nice dance lesson with Robert ending with a "cliff hanger" which he called sliding doors in the Rumba. Dinner was a practice run of succotash which was fresh corn and lima beans with bacon as well as baked tomato halves. I really liked the succotash but didn't care for the mushy bread of the roasted tomato. ~ August 25, 2016 AVSA DVD done --------------- Finished up the AVSA DVD this morning but Manon2 doesn't have a DVD burner. I later hooked up the small PC and burned 2 DVDs but did not test them. I'll do that tomorrow then package them up for mailing. Mailed the first batch of MAAVS beg letters while Libbie finished the next batch. We ended with a total of 180 letters going out. We had a dinner of hamburgers with tomato and onion on buns. After dinner I was pretty tired but spent the rest of the evening making Smoking Gun Rub and Cocca Loca rub. I will rub the ribs tomorrow for the party on Saturday. Uncruise sent a link to 343 pictures which are quite good! It was a fun trip as can be seen in the uncruise pictures. ~ August 26, 2016 Luau --------------- I spent the morning rubbing the ribs and mixing the spices for the chicken rub. I also managed to burn 2 DVDs and send them to Anne with the afternoon mail. My ribbon cables arrived from an eBay vendor. These are for the Huzzah based Sprinkler I have designed. I baked the wings and Libbie made the wing sauce for the party and cook off tonight. We left at 7:15 for the studio with our wings. We did not win any prizes in the raffle and did not win the cook off. Oh well, it was a nice evening with a variety of BBQ foods. I had a little bit of chicken, some pork, one of my wings, some potato salad and 2 beers. It was a nice night of dancing. I managed to dance with Lori and Anita as well as Libbie. I think for our showcase we need to do a Cha Cha since we need more choreography there. ~ August 27, 2016 Alaska Dinner --------------- This was a busy day. I cleaned the garage and driveway with the blower then mowed the weeds behind the electric fence before repairing the fence. A quick trip to Kroger to get plastic plates for our hors d'oeuvres as well as heavier aluminum foil and colored toothpicks. The smoking went along well along with timing by Alexa. I am almost out of wood chips but made it to the end. The ribs came out delicious. This was a first for me smoking 3 racks at once. We pulled them at 5:30, cut them up and put them in the oven at 180 degrees. The Oshpark board arrived in the mail in the middle of all this but I couldn't touch it. Anita arrived with her Baked Alaska at 6. The others soon followed suit. We had an enjoyable evening of food, friendship and Alaskan memories. I had a little trouble with Anita's iPhone for showing pictures but transferred some of her pics from iphone to a stick using Libbie's laptop. Ken and Lana brought an album of their Alaskan trip from 29 years ago. It was a church trip. The party was over at 11:30. We were surprised it was so late, we lost track of the time. Menu tonight was 3 kinds of ribs, succotash, baked tomatoes, fresh fruit and a little over 5 bottles of wine plus some beer. ~ August 28, 2016 Recovery --------------- The party was great. Today is recovery. I got the ladder out to add two more lights to the roof but didn't put the lights in. I'll wait till tomorrow. Started populating the new PCB boards that arrived yesterday. The DVD is out the door and the party is done. time to get to work. Dinner was Libbie's fabulous pizza with a beer left over from the party ~ August 29, 2016 lights --------------- Worked on hooking up the new lights on the porch roof. Did not finish the job. The lights are mounted but the wires dangle into the porch knee wall. Heard about a problem with the DVD. Have to substitute an audio file to correct a pronunciation problem and swap out two pictures which were wrong. Wrote a quick beg letter for the MAAVS MEmo tonight in an eMail to Ken. dinner was Ribs with succotash and the rest of the bottle of Malbec. We went over to Brewsters for cones tonight after dinner. I had the usual chocolate Raspberry truffle. Got the Smart Things hub running by calling their support. My ID seems to have been dropped from their server. I don't like the idea that they are in the middle of transactions. ~ August 30, 2016 Lit Up --------------- Finished the wiring of the new porch roof lights. it's a little disappointing there are hot spots. I went up the ladder after dark and made the corner light better by aiming it more vertical whcih just barely washes the wall. Will fix the other one like this before making a decision. Dinner was the last of the leftover ribs, 2 ribs along with potato salad and baked beans. Dessert was a slice of watermelon. I also made the $95 deposit for our Costa Rica trip which is due on Aug 31. Next amount due is in January. ~ August 31, 2016 generator --------------- The generator ran a rough test cycle yesterday with lots of backfiring so I did maintenance today. Replaced the plug and changed the oil and filter. I also adjusted the valves but when I took the exhaust cover off to turn the crankshaft by hand i discovered the fan was broken. I don't know how long it has been like that. Ordered a new one for $88 from a place in Alabama. I hope to get it here next week. i also ordered an air filter from AutoZone which is in the store formerly occupied by Apex Ace Hardware. We picked it up after our dance lesson and i installed it. Picked all the tools up and put them in my lawn cart and moved it to the shed until the fan blade gets here. The generator is temporarily out of commission until i get this fixed. In the meantime while playing with it I discovered that i could smooth out the rough idle by playing with the governor. It may be that the idle is set too slow. I have more playing to do. We had a good dance lesson with Robert picking out our music for the Winter Ball . We also learned thhe sliding door Rumba routine as well as forward and reverse twinkle of the waltz. Dinner was Spaghetti, cheese and a hoppy Wheat beer from Sierra Nevada. After dinner i moved the ladder and adjusted the second light. I'll see if this is an improvement. it should be. ~ September 01, 2016 --------------- It's September already. I can't believe summer has whipped by so fast. In order to get ready for debugging on the desktop PC I spent almost all day organizing files on the PC as well as transferring files back and forth from the laptop cleaning up things in the meantime. I also watched q bit of YouNow. The things the young girls do is literally shocking. It's a different generation out there. We had hamburgers with potato salad and beans for dinner. ~ September 02, 2016 Hermine --------------- It rained all day because of tropical storm Hermine. I spent the time working on the OshPark board adding the rest of the hardware and getting it ready for software. Andy put a notice on Facebook that the studio was going to be open tonight because his camping was delayed by a day. We went and found there were only half a dozen people at the studio. We did some dancing anyway while i danced with both Marilyn and Jennifer. It was an enjoyable evening. Before we went over we had a Chinese takeout 3 meat dinner along with a bottle of St Michelle Merlot. The wine doesn't help my dancing but it was enjoyable. ~ September 03, 2016 roadhouse --------------- It's the end of yesterday's tropical storm. The sun came out at noon. We ended up with a two day total of almost 2 inches of rain. The driveway really needs a cleaning. In the evening we left at 6:15 for mr Wonderful in Pittsboro. The web said it would start at 8 but it really started at 7. We got there late but had an enjoyable time chatting with Bill, Joan and Jocelyn and Gregg. We danced quite a bit. For dinner I had the fried flounder sandwich with a side of chips which i didn't care for. the chips were salty and overdone. We left at about 9:10 PM. ~ September 04, 2016 software --------------- I continued working on the Huzzah software for the H2O sprinkler system. I took apart the garage door remote from my car to find out what's wrong. I bought a new battery at Walmart but it didn't fix it. I tried reprogramming it at the base unit. Let's see if that makes a difference. Dinner was Libbie's fabulous pizza once again. For dessert we had yogurt which was the Friday freebie from Kroger this week. ~ September 05, 2016 Labor Day --------------- I worked on the software for the watering timer all day. It's coming along pretty good. We had Nathans hot dogs with relish and mustard for lunch, a holiday tradition. I talked to Debbie about our Mardi Gras trip. She is going to correct the invoice and also take my $1,000 next installment for the trip. For dinner t0night I made chicken sliders with Apricot chutney. neither of us cared for it very much. there was too much garlic in it and not much other flavor. After dinner tonight we took a trip to the ice cream store, Brewsters and got two small waffle cones. Each cone has two scoops of very rich ice cream. I booked the Blake Hotel for a night earlier for $161 in New Orleans then bought tickets leaving Tampa on Wed before Mardi Gras and returning Monday. ~ September 06, 2016 Water timer --------------- I put in a pretty good effort on the Huzzah based water timer. Today i got the clock displaying on the home page and also straightened out the schedule pages. I took a nice bike ride this afternoon on the Shepards greenway behind the condos and then towards the pool. Dinner tonight was hamburger and baked beans. ~ September 07, 2016 dance --------------- We had a pretty good dance lesson today. We started the choreography for our routine at the Winter Ball using the song "Do You Love Me?". Dinner tonight was apricot chicken from cooking light. I rated it as a 5 out of 10 which wasn't great. ~ September 08, 2016 --------------- I got a lot of the pages working on the sprinkler controller. The biggest issue was the NTP time. I ended up using a neat technique which extracts the time from a URL return header. It returns the header reliably. The issue now is to convert this to epoch time in order to set the Real Time Club (RTC). Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled over the top. ~ September 09, 2016 party --------------- I bought the rest of the ingredients for Chicken Kung Pao Ran the wire under the house for the landscape lights but ran out of wire. It was surprising that the 50 foot roll of wire ran out. Will pick up another tomorrow. I tried in the afternoon to get the relays working on the sprinkler but no luck. All the outputs are at 0 which turns all the relays on. This is unfortunate. I am suspecting the 595 chip from eBay is bad. I have a whole antistatic foam card full of them and tried another but the results were the same. I'm stumped. Dinner was hamburgers with onion, tomato and baked beans. We went out to dance tonight and had fun although I was tired. I did not want to go out to Brewsters Tavern afterwards so we went straight home. ~ September 10, 2016 pld Train --------------- Ran out to Home Depot to get more wire and ran into the Kretchmans at the return desk. They were returning a towel bar from their bathroom remodel project. Finished up the wiring for the landscape lights and installed the timer in the front hall closet. Dinner tonight was Kung Pao chicken. The veggies in the stir fry were pepper, onion, snow peas and broccoli. We had this with Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon. Still no luck with the relays on the sprinkler. I can't get the 595 shift register to accept commands. We got the old train set out and started cleaning it up for our trip to California. We'll leave it with Joe. ~ September 11, 2016 Relay success --------------- I started building another sprinkler breadboard from one of the PCBs but didn't complete this effort. Instead I used the breadboard and put a 595 onboard along with a Huzzah and tried the test program with that. It still wouldn't work so I looked at the datasheet and found the line called MR stands for Master reset. When it is held down like i had it all the shift registers are reset to 0. When I moved the jumper wire to 3 volts the circuit started working. I modified the PCB of the sprinkler to make the rest line high instead of low on the 595. The relays all worked perfectly. This is a breakthrough. For dinner Libbie made her pizza but added lots of fresh tomato slices and fresh basil. It was good. Libbie cleaned the train cars out on the back porch and let them dry on a sheet in the sun. They all fit nicely in the old hard sided suitcase which we will leave in California. ~ September 12, 2016 Mr Wonderful --------------- This was a busy day. I got the relays working at the proper times in the timer program. This took a little bit of doing working out the functions to select individual relays. I did the MAAVS awards accounting for check deposit tomorrow. We went to Mr Wonderful tonight and had a really nice dance lesson with Gaylord from Esquires. I danced a Rumba with Tess. Boy, she's elegant. Ken and Lana joined us at our table. We split a Salmon BLT which came with Sweet Potato Fries. Accompanying the meal was a Yuengling. We stayed until the end at 9:30. We stayed around because Adrienne and Marie lost their car key and we were ready to drive them home if needed. They did have an extra key. ~ September 13, 2016 do it all --------------- I left for a haircut at 8:55 but at Great Clips there was a line so i bailed out. It is Senior Day. Later I went to the bank for MAAVS awards check, went to the CU for trip money, $150, then went to Kroger to get gas and finally got a haircut. At 12:30 there was no one waiting and 3 barbers working. Later in the PM I got on my bicycle and went to Foodlion to pick up a can of peas. I also picked up a jug of Roto Rooter and poured it into the upstairs bathroom sink to unclog it. It worked pretty good. It's a lower temperature day so it was perfect for a bike ride. The cashier in Foodlion was amazed at me, she said she can't balance on a bike anymore. Dinner was leftover Kung Pao Chicken. ~ September 14, 2016 checkin --------------- Got up at 5:30 this morning to check in for our flight tomorrow. After a quick shower I checked us in and got 'A34' boarding for the Houston segment but 'B09' for the Houston to SNA portion. I did some last minute work on the Huzzah Sprinkler and then devoted the rest of the day to hooking up the replacement Netgear router. This involved getting a list of MAC and IP addresses, a lot of which were already documented on Life Bits II. After about 4 hours I got everything configured and working then tested it from outside by using my cell phone. It all is accessible from the external internet. I also secured our router for the first time using Libbie's cell phone number. This meant logging in with all our wireless devices and adding a password. We had a nice lesson with Robert today continuing our choreography for the Swing dance we will do. We came home and packed then had a tuna noodle casserole for dinner. ~ September 15, 2016 travel --------------- Up at 3:30 AM for our flight to California. We left the home at 4 AM for the 5:55 flight. After parking the car and checking in we were through TSA at 5 AM which was good. Both flights were incredibly smooth. We split a ham egg and cheese croissant at RDu for $10 plus 2 small coffees which were pretty good. On the plane I managed to get the long seat in the exit row with no seat in front which allowed me to stretch out. The guy on the aisle in my row had never flown before. That was hard to believe at his age. The husband and wife were going to Corpus Christi to visit a new grand child. We only had an hour in Houston before our next flight. We had an empty seat between us which was nice so I could sit sideways and stretch out. Joe and Paige met us at John Wayne. Paige had a nice card for us. We stopped by McDonalds and picked up some egg McMuffins before going to a playground park where we had our meals while Paige played on the playground equipment. During the day we enjoyed some time with Emily and also Paige. Out to dinner to La Capilla for Happy Hour at 5:30. I had a chicken Taquitos and beef Flautas with a Pacifico beer. When we got home i was incredibly tired and went to bed at 8:45 and basically passed out. ~ September 16, 2016 Huntington Beach --------------- I woke up at 6 this morning after going to bed at 8:45 last night. It was a much needed catch up sleep. We went to Paige's gymnastic class. There were bleacher seats above the floor for us to sit and watch. After class we went to Ballast Point Brewery which was a nice brewery restaurant overlooking the water. Libbie and I split a Cuban sandwich with a California Amber beer. It was a lot of food but the bill with tip was $90 for lunch for all of us. Ouch. Dinner in the evening was a bowl of chicken and beef over rice. We had a bottle of "California Red" wine which was pretty good for a no name wine. ~ September 17, 2016 laguna woods --------------- We went with Joe and Paige to a trampoline place. They bounced around on various mats and trampolines. Paige is very well balanced and athletic. After the park Joe dropped me off at 11:30 at Enterprise Rental cars on Beach. I rented a VW Jetta for 2 days. After a lunch of In-Out burger Libbie and I used Joe's toll transponder and went to Laguna Woods to look at some Open Houses. We initially had some trouble at the gate - they wouldn't let us in. We called a friendly Realtor who let us use her name to get us in the gate. We stopped first at an old guys place who was selling it by owner. His price was $180k for a 2 bedroom unit. It was near the main gate and was a coop unit with new carpeting installed by the coop association. We next visited a totally refurbed unit that was beautiful and showed well. Our last one was a pre listing called a cottage which had no one above or below. We returned home to baby sitting duty. Joe and Christa went out to a 20th HS reunion while I entertained Paige non stop and Libbie dealt with Emily. It was a chore keeping up with these two. It's definitely a job for younger people. For dinner I went out to Photastic and ordered 2 Grilled pork sandwiches and a raw beef noodle soup as well as Spring Rolls. I waited up till 11 before falling asleep. I heard them come home at 11:20 PM. ~ September 18, 2016 trains --------------- For lunch today we went out to the Park where hey run one inch scale trains around a large track in a figure 8 layout. Libbie and i went with Paige on one of the runs. Joe went out on another with her. We had Quesadilla;s for lunch with Avocado and Jalapeno. In the evening we had an interesting order from Gulf Thai. hrista and I went to pick up th eorder aafter waiting around 30 minutes. We got there and it was 20 more minutes waiting for our food. When we got the order it was missing a few items which was another 15 minutes. The food was good and we had a bottle of Ravenwood Zinfindel to accompany it, ~ September 19, 2016 aquarium --------------- We went to the Aquarium today. It's a great place, especially for Paige. We bought $4 worth of Nectar to feed the birds but they weren't interested. it was warm and they stayed in the shade. After we left there we came back late in the day and had hors d'oeuvres for lunch which were the egg rolls leftover from yesterday's dinner. I found the cable modem at home is dead since 1:21 PM. For dinner today we had the leftover Pad Thai along with Cabernet Sauvignon that Joe bought for us. ~ September 20, 2016 dance --------------- We went to dance class with Paige and Christa. Charley was there making it a private lesson with two girls and 2 instructors. When it was over we went next door to Lucci's. I liked the sample of Bread Pudding. The bakery is over the top with yummy looking treats such as cannolis, raspberry Jelly rolls and butter cookies. We next went to a park over by Cliff Side Country Club and watched Paige play on a very nice jungle gym. We went to the 1531 Sub place and ordered sandwiches for lunch. Libbie and I split a turkey and provolone with avocado and Basil Pesto. Earlier today I created a new custom search module for Drupal in order to search the growing_tips page. I'm having trouble submitting it to Google for indexing. ~ September 21, 2016 gymnastics --------------- This morning we went to Paige's gymnastics class. Libbie joined in on the fun down on the floor. There were quite a few young mothers with their kids also in the class. You need to be in shape to do this stuff as Libbie found out. After gymnastics we picked up Jersey Mikes subs. I had a turkey and provolene "Mikes Way" which makes it easy to order a sub. Debbie and Craig, Granny and Mike came over later in the afternoon for pizza. Joe bought us a bottle of wine to have with dinner. The pizzas that Joe made were over the top delicious. I had too many. Christa had picked up some vanilla and peanut crunch candy ice cream which was pretty creamy and quite good. I lay down around 9 and passed out with my clothes on. I woke up an hour later and finally went to bed. ~ September 22, 2016 SNA to RDU --------------- A relaxed morning, our last at Joe & Christa's. We packed up and left at 10 for John Wayne airport and got there in less than 20 minutes. Joe and Paige drove us. Our first flight left Orange County on time at 12:10. It was pretty bumpy but downright scary landing in Vegas. We had to pull up at the last minute after a gust of wind pulled us off course while at tree top level. The pilot went back around and tried again. i certainly did not like this flight. Our next flight was delayed out of Oakland due to wind. We ended up taking off an hour late. The plane was 100% full. We finally landed at 11:45 PM and waited a while for a Park and Relax shuttle. Libbie called them because the card said to call after midnight. We got home around 12:30. Everything looked great. We lost connectivity with the house during the week. Fortunately it was only a cable modem reset. I need a UPS on the modem and router for this reason. ~ September 23, 2016 recovery --------------- Today is a slow day of recovery from our California trip. I did a lot of paperwork in the morning backing up the photos, copying entries to my journal, processing the mail and other activities of day to day life. I registered for both the LSAVC and the MAAVS conventions. The envelopes will go into the mail tomorrow. A pile of awards came in while we were away. They all needed to be put into my tracking spreadsheet with names, addresses, etc. Once done with this I ran the checks over to BB&T, $260 dollars total. One of the mail items was a MyPublisher album that i put together before we leaved. It's not great. The cover is badly over exposed, I shouldn't have used it. The cover makes a difference in making a good book. The Roku came today as a result of a prepaid subscription to Sling TV for 3 months. Not sure if I really need it but it will get the Met Player on our TV. Dinner tonight was Chinese 3 meat takeout with eggrolls and rice. I bought a bottle of Mondavi Bourbon cask aged Cabernet Sauvignon which is really good for 11.99. Kroger was sampling it. ~ September 24, 2016 --------------- I tried getting the NCIDdisplay running but had lots of trouble. I sent a query to Jack for help. He forwarded it to Tod who sent some suggestions i will try in the morning. Outside I installed the new generator fan and then bolted everything back together. I did a test run and was happy with the results. The generator seemed to run pretty smoothly although all I thought was wrong was a slow idle speed in addition to the broken fan. Now it has a new air filter, oil filter, fresh oil, new spark plug and a valve adjustment. Dinner was Salmon with sweet potato and another bottle of the Mondavi Bourbon Oak barrel aged wine. ~ September 25, 2016 good day --------------- This was a pretty good day of accomplishments. In the morning I fixed up the Android program to eliminate the crash in the semiminiature listing of results of the Advanced Search. I also got the NCIDdisplay running using some tips that Tod had sent me. When the ESP credentials get corrupted it's hard to restore functionality unless you flash other credentials into the device. After lunch we went to Lowes for a new door opener they had on sale. We also got out Fall bulbs and a shopping cart of bargain plants from the $1 table in the back of the garden department. The total for everything was $117. Once home Libbie planted the Salvia and other plants while I mowed the lawn and then chopped down the Japanese Irises with the mulching mower. The hose broke on the pond pump and half the water in the pond got pumped out. I added a splice to the hose then I checked the chlorine level and was not happy. I changed the Chlorine filter and was still not happy with the results. I used the hose and brought the pond up a few inches then turned the pump on for an overnight run mixing the fresh and old water while aerating the mixture to get rid of the Chlorine. We'll check it in the morning. Dinner was Libbie;s wonderful pizza after which I listened to the Met Opera encore of Elektra with Nina Stemm. I loved this performance. While listening I fine tuned the Growing Tips section of the website. For the rest of the evening I read some blog articles of how to control a relay using Alexa and an ESP8266. ~ September 26, 2016 Alexa switches --------------- I spent most of the day studying how to interface Alexa to an ESP8266 to turn on a relay. Once I can do this I can do a lot of control things. I found an emulation of a Wemo switch which I'm basing my work on. I also fine tuned the newsletter archive on avsa.org dressing it up a little. It's ready for prime time. Dinner tonight was eating lighter. We had Salmon on a salad. The Salmon was leftover from Saturday. Too bad I had lots of other things during the day upping my calories. Tonight was opening night at the Met. The Opera started at 5. I listened to all of it and really enjoyed it. ~ September 26, 2016 Alexa switches --------------- I spent most of the day studying how to interface Alexa to an ESP8266 to turn on a relay. Once I can do this I can do a lot of control things. I found an emulation of a Wemo switch which I'm basing my work on. I also fine tuned the newsletter archive on avsa.org dressing it up a little. It's ready for prime time. Dinner tonight was eating lighter. We had Salmon on a salad. The Salmon was leftover from Saturday. Too bad I had lots of other things during the day upping my calories. Tonight was opening night at the Met. The Opera started at 5. I listened to all of it and really enjoyed it. ~ September 27, 2016 Alexa relay working --------------- I spent a lot of the day tinkering with the python program running on NCID that emulates a Wemo switch. I finally found a typo in the device list. I only had one device named Sprinkler but the REST address was typed wrong. Fixed it and now I can turn an LED on or off onboard an ESP8266. The other issue was the Python script not running when the command window was closed on the Server. I found the & sign added to the end of the startup command gets it to work in the background. I still haven't gotten the program to autostart. So far everything I have tried has not worked. The great news is I have a template to get Alexa to recognize devices and I have a method to issue commands to a device. Next step is to end out an MQTT publish to a broker. Dinner was spaghetti with cheese on top. After dinner I listened to Don Giovanni live from the Met. I didn't make it to the end though. I went upstairs at 11 PM. ~ September 28, 2016 --------------- Lots of time reading about MQTT today and tried setting this up on the Pi in the closet. It does recognize commands from Alexa o turn on and off an LED. Now I need to send out an MQTT publish command. We had a very good Swing lesson with Robert today continuing our choreography for the Winter Ball. I ended up paying the extra $348 I owed. This was a charge I didn't want on our credit card this month but better now than later. I need to purchase plane tickets to Panama and back from Costa Rica yet. In the meantime i sold half of the Ferrelgas stock at a small loss because of a really bad earnings report. The scary thing to me was them stating loan repayments are in jeopardy. I suspect a dividend cut is in the works which will kill this stock. I got out at $13 and put the money into a CEF muni which only pays 5.5%. Dinner tonight was hamburger with vidalia onions and tomato. ~ September 29, 2016 HTPPC --------------- I spent the day assembling and configuring the new i5 computer i will be using as a multimedia home theater PC. I ended up ordering a new DVD burner from Newegg for $13. Late in the afternoon I made some chicken wing rub and prepared 8 wings for oven roasting. Dinner was the chicken wings with sweet potato and a bottle of Shiraz, three buck chuck variety. ~ September 30, 2016 Cashew Chicken --------------- In the morning I worked on preparing the ribs by removing the membrane and rubbing some Smoking Gun rub on the meat. I wrapped it and refrigerated it for smoking tomorrow. We both worked on preparing some Cashew Chicken for dinner. We grated Ginger roots this time instead of bottled spice and used oyster sauce and real garlic to make it authentic. It was incredibly delicious and a real keeper. We had this with a bottle of Shiraz. It rained in the morning during which I went out to Home Depot in Cary to get lever handles for the upstairs doors that Libbie is in the process of painting. since I had a 10% off coupon I also bought the paint, a total of almost $300. I forgot the coupon but not a problem. I took the sales receipt to HD Apex and got my 10% off. We were too tired for dance tonight so we lay in bed after our showers and just visited side by side on the bed. It was a nice end to the day. ~ October 01, 2016 RIP --------------- I worked in the morning on fixing the FC4A password. John Carter reported there were no updates for Jul and Sep. After fixing this I also fixed the crash problem with advanced search. I uploaded it all to Google Play. Communicated with Joe about his Xmas lights that he posted on YouTube. I'm toying with the idea of doing something like this for "Do You Love Me" for our showcase in the the Winter Ball. After lunch today Libbie received a phone call from Bill and her Dad that her Mother passed away during a nap after lunch, somewhere between 1:30 and 2:30. Sad times in the days ahead. I called Arlene then Vicki with the news. Libbie was calling extended family members. Nowadays this has to be done before it is on Facebook. I started the ribs smoking today at around noon. Pulled them out of the Smoker at 6:20. We had the ribs with Buttenrut squash and Mondavi Bourbon barrel aged Cabernet. This is my favorite of the Mondavi line. After dinner this evening Libbie talked with Christa about MAry Ellen and her last few hours. Later we went out to Brewsters and got a waffle cone. There were 2 young ladies in summer clothes in the store. One had tiny and tight short shorts and the other form fitting leggings. I'm going to miss summer. ~ October 02, 2016 Christmas flights --------------- I studied flights for Central America from Costa Rica and to Panama. We did our bookings for Southern California for Christmas. Prices were pretty good to John Wayne so we went for it. We tried to communicate with Joe who is in TN but he wasn't interested in Christmas flights so we went ahead with our plans. Libbie made her pizza again for dinner which was quite good as usual. ~ October 03, 2016 sequencer software --------------- I found some Youtube videos of xlfights sequencer software and did some timing marks of our "Do you love me" song. I like the technique in general and the software seems to be easy to use. I ordered some driver chips for the Huzzah to drive an LED strip. I'm getting the DIP version. Dinner tonight was hamburger on a bun with tomato and a Vidalia. We had some leftover Shiraz with the meal and Bush's Southern Pit BBQ which surprisingly had a little kick to it. ~ October 04, 2016 hurricane maybe --------------- I got Alexa to put out MQTT via a php script interpreting commands. The MQTT is interpreted in the NCID display and scrolls forward and backward in the history. I made a youtube video and sent the link to jack and Tod. I'm happy with the results so far. The hurricane is now predicted to hit the NC-SC border as a Category 2. We changed our flights to go to the funeral on Friday instead of Saturday because of this. For dinner tonight I made a Cooking Light recipe which had pork chops smothered in apples and pearl onions and covered with chicken broth, butter, salt and pepper. Libbie has been sending family pictures to Heather for the Mary Condon memorial service. I scanned a few pics of the 50th anniversary back in 1991 for her. ~ October 05, 2016 swing --------------- I started working thorough getting the IOS app into Apple with in-app purchases. Called Amy at AVSA and got the routing number and the account number to fill out the Apple forms. Once again we had another good lesson with Robert extending our showcase number. Robert started by hugging Libbie for her Mom's death. This was nice. I ripped a bunch of YouTube videos for Bill for the Memorial Service. I had to use the small computer I built for Multimedia because it has the correct audio drivers for MyMP3. I'm still studying bridge emulators for Alexa. This clearly is the way to go. Dinner tonight was the ribs leftover from Saturday along with a baked sweet potato and the leftover zinfindel from yesterday. ~ October 06, 2016 getting ready --------------- The storm changed tracks, it won't be as bad in NC but we're going tomorrow anyway. We checked in at 8:05 and got 'A' seating. I got together a bunch of background music that Bill had requested. On the IOS app, I finally have a contract in the Apple iTunes console. Now I need to create a new certificate, compile a sandbox version to test the shopping cart. Lots to do and time is running out. We had spaghetti with cheese over it tonight as an easy dinner. Packed for our trip to RI shortly after dinner. ~ October 07, 2016 fly to RI --------------- We left for the airport at 6 am and were through TSA by 6:52 which was a few minutes earlier than planned. We even had time to have a bowl of cereal and make coffee. The plane is the same plane through Baltimore so no chance to get off the plane for breakfast. The flight was choppy all the way to Baltimore but very smooth after that, so overall it was OK. We got a red Corolla rental car in Providence and went to Bills. We picked up Subway sandwiches before going there. Libbie and I split a 12" turkey sub. At Bills I repaired a window shade which had fallen out of the sheetrock. We ended up going to Home Depot and picking up some Mollys to hold the shade up. This job took longer than expected. Afterward we stopped at Brookdale to visit George who was still very sad and crying over Mary's death. We went to dinner with him in the dining room. I had the Flank steak sandwich with steamed red cabbage and Boston Cream Pie. It's amazing how the people there can't hear. The same menu choices are repeated over and over. I would go crazy there. We went to the hotel and put our suitcases in the room. The Quality Inn is much nicer than I ever expected but it will be expensive. The 3 nights is going to be $714. Ouch. Add to that the plane tickets and rental car and it is painful. In the later evening we went over to Bills and had a glass of wine and reminisced over the past years of Mary's life. ~ October 08, 2016 day before --------------- I had bacon and eggs for breakfast in the hotel lobby. Good thing we flew in yesterday, one day early because we found our flight was canceled for tdoay. Not sure why. We were booked on the 8 AM flight today but changed it to yesterday because of the storm. We watched the rain on our cameras. There was 6.5 inches at home and the backyard was underwater with white water running through. We had lunch at the Assisted Living. I had something called ratatoui which was onion, peppers and eggplant. It was delicious. I also had a tuna sandwich on wheat which tasted more like a salmon salad than Tuna. I helped Bill pick up the Pizza from Famous Daves. We had a nice party in the Pub. Steve and Lesley came later in the evening with the girls when we were finishing. On the way back to the hotel from the parking lot in the rain we met Holly and Darrel just checking into the Quality Suites. They flew to Hartford and drove to Portsmouth. Strange! ~ October 09, 2016 Funeral --------------- Breakfast was sausage this morning. We were woke up at 1:30 when the wedding party came back and talked outside our room and in the lobby. We fell back asleep and woke at 7. After breakfast we went to Brookdale since Libbie had to get George ready. We left for the funeral home by 10:30 for the 11 AM service. The service was beautiful. Bill talked about Mary packing lunches, his cheating on a book report and other childhood events. John talked about Mary and her easy going attitude no matter what happened which matched my subsequent poem of contentment. Libbie talked about Love and Steven read a poem. Nate read the Clock of Life Poem. Later I gave the story of the poem to Heather. We went to the Foodworks restaurant where I ordered a Portuguese omelet. I was expecting the sausage to be hot but it was very mild. We dropped George off for a nap then picked him up at 4:30 and went to Bills for hamburgers. By then it was pouring rain and very windy. It was a nice gathering at Bill's house. Lots of reminiscing, all of the somber sadness was gone. Mary would have loved it. ~ October 10, 2016 fly home --------------- I got up at 5 AM today. We left the hotel for the airport at 5:25 AM. Traffic was very light. Libbie stayed in RI so she took the red corolla back to the hotel from the airport while I checked in. The Southwest counter was empty, the woman just wanted my last name and looked up my reservation and took my suitcase. I breezed through TSA Pre and stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and a bagel. It was the worst bagel i ever had with an odd taste. I wanted cream cheese thinking it would be on the donut. it was in a little tub i had to juggle and put on myself. How awful. I sat at the bulkhead in the middle seat on the flight to BWI. The flight was mostly smooth with some light chop going into BWi. In BWI I picked up a bacon egg and cheese in McDonalds as well a s a coffee. I think it was mindless eating since I wasn't very hungry. The flight home was smooth as well. I was struck by how much water was on the ground after the storm. There were huge muddy bodies of water everywhere. I picked up the mail in the box, there was no mail today because it's Columbus day so it was just Friday and Saturdays mail. The driveway needed cleaning so i blew it off. There were lots of sticks everywhere. That was our only damage. I went to Costco and picked up wine, coffee beans and garbage bags. Stopped at Kroger and got some fried chicken and potato salad for lunch as well as dinner. ~ October 11, 2016 First day home --------------- This is my first full day back. I did a lot of catch up work on MAAVS awards and updated LSAVC then worked on the Growing Tips page. Lunch was a piece of chicken. Dinner was the fried chicken and potato salad. I talked with John Glembock this afternoon and then listened to Don Giovanni live in the evening from the Met. During the day today i sold all of the Ferrelgas because it is doing so bad. They are cutting the dividend and can't meet their debt obligations. It's a risky company. The worst is yet too come. I joined Motley Fool income investor which is not very good. i may request a refund. ~ October 12, 2016 pizza --------------- Did some proportioning of awards money. Kitty sent a list of awards which I spread the money around for. Got a bill for the colonoscopy that was lower than the previous one so I paid it. That should complete this phase of the doctor stuff. Took a ride to Glenwood Ave today, spent an hour. Nice. Dinner was a homemade pizza with a new tomato sauce I found plus plus onion and pepper and pepperoni. Very good. ~ October 13, 2016 New Orleans travel tixkets --------------- Did a lot of studying of ESP8266 today on Youtube. I have a pretty good handle on this thing. Need to get going on the IOS Project again. Time is running short but the awards took some time. Dinner was a homemade pizza using the good sauce with onions and peppers. No more Pepperoni left. I went online and got the New Orleans tickets straightened out. I accidentally booked March 27 a while ago instead of Feb 27. Corrected the booking and paid an extra $176. ~ October 14, 2016 not much --------------- I did awards accounting today. Kitty and I have a discrepancy. This pretty much took up most of the day. Got it all straightened out. The awards are now finalized. Wow, this was work. Took a bike ride through Shepards greenway from end to end. Talked to our neighbor Larry. He would like to try my Pedago. Dinner was the Lloyd Pulled Pork BBQ from Kroger today on a hamburger bun. ~ October 15, 2016 libbie comes home --------------- I picked Libbie up from her flight from RI. We went out to Fresh Market and picked up a Rib Eye and Baked potato for dinner. Accompanying this was green beans and Rodney Strong Cabernet. ~ October 16, 2016 pizza again --------------- I skipped the Sunday shows in order to get a release version of the app loaded up to Apple. Having lots of trouble with certificates and provisioning. I'm going to delete all the keys and start over. I did manage to book our return flight from Costa Rica, First Class on American. Am going to research going a day early to Panama to do some sight seeing. Libbie made her wonderful pizza while I kept getting internal errors while building a release version of the app. I requested help on the B4X forum. ~ October 17, 2016 surgery --------------- At 7:30 I left for the hospital to drop Libbie off to get her leg surgery. They called 3 1/2 hours later that she was ready. Libbie could hardly walk. We had lunch at O'Charlies in front of the hospital. Met Bryan Stevens there. He of course is retired. I had half a turkey club with a half bowl of loaded potato soup and a Yuengling. Later I found the answer to why I was getting an internal error when doing a release. The hosted builder is limited to 40 megabytes. I need to change something. Dinner was a tuna sandwich with celery in it. I picked up the celery when I went to get fresh bandages and gauze for Libbie's leg. ~ October 18, 2016 recovery --------------- Libbie is doing better today. We tried our swing routine a few times. I managed to get an awards listing out to Sandy. She is having problems doing the booklet. I'm glad I'm not too involved. For dinner tonight we had hamburgers which I bought with a coupon. they were delicious. We had them with the last of the fresh green beans from Saturday. I listened to William Tell on Met Opera and really liked it. I have successfully got the store purchases communicating with Apple for subscriptions. Yeah! I still need to set a variable in the program to store expiration as well as a flag to indicate fetching updates has been paid for. I started working on reset code for an ESP8266 and the router. This is to improve long term reliability of server access from outside the house. I could probably use the Pixel driver attached to a dual relay card which I ordered. ~ October 19, 2016 --------------- I'm working hard on the IOS app now, trying to understand subscriptions and in-app purchases. I'm close to sending this to Apple. We had a nice lesson with Robert today. We know a lot of our routine, he helped us with some trouble spots. We realized that Esquires is this Friday night. I wasn't expecting it so soon. Dinner was hamburgers on buns with a bottle of Shiraz. ~ October 20, 2016 Sent to Beta --------------- I tried several versions of the First Class app today and finally got one that worked and put it into beta testing. I'm not sure what the sandbox account is all about but it apparently works without that. For dinner we made Cashew Chicken which was as delicious as lat time we made it. We had it with a bottle of Shiraz. ~ October 21, 2016 Esquires --------------- The app is still not approved by Apple. I worked on wiring up an RF module to a huzzah for the gateway. Did not get the code into it. We left for Esquires at 5:50. There was a smaller than usual crowd but we had a fun time and stayed until 10. i clearly ate too much. Stuffed and winded after dancing. We did very well on swing dances. For the dinner buffet I had some roast beef and a slice of trout almondine which was delicious. ~ October 23, 2016 pizza --------------- I'mm really feeling stressed out. I can feel a headache coming on for the first time in 20 years. I need to release the IOS app, build an album and also put a version of the app in the Apple store. Libbie's pizza came out wonderfully today. The crust was thin and the topping was tasty. It has been a long time. ~ October 24, 2016 rental car --------------- I spent all day today working on the photo album. I'm sorry I bought a $40 voucher for an 80 page book. I had the deadline extended this month until the end of the month. it ran out Oct 2. The book covers Albuquerque, Alaska, some cooking and parties as well our Cali trip. We had the leftover eggplant from Saturday night for dinner tonight. Since mine was half eaten Libbie supplemented it with some pasta. We decided to rent a minivan to take up North so i made an Enterprise reservation for Wednesday. ~ October 25, 2016 pack up --------------- I submitted the release version of the App to the Apple store as a first pass to see what is wrong with it as deemed by them. Winston sent a lot of feedback. I started working on some of the issues. This is discouraging. Libbie made some excellent hamburger tonight from the frozen patties which are really good. Worked on fixing a few things in the app after dinner. I picked the rental car up today at noon. Libbie was not around so I rode my bike over there and put it in the back of the van to take it home. it's a big old Dodge Grand Caravan. The stowaway seats are a space waster. ~ October 26, 2016 travel --------------- We left this morning at 9 AM. traffic flowed smoothly even through DC. We had a biscuit stop at the VA border then another stop on the other side of the Annapolis bridge. This is the first time I tried using the Quickpass in the EZ Pass lanes. it said "paid" at the bridge so I guess it worked. We used it again on Rte 1 in Delaware. Arrived at the Hotel ML at just before 5 PM which was nice. For the last few miles on 295 in NJ we were in rush hour traffic so we bailed out and used the side streets as guided by Google. The hotel is pretty beat up. It seems to be clean but the walls need a good coat of paint and the furniture and carpeting need replacing. There was a retirement party with live music and half price drinks. They invited us to help ourselves so we made a dinner out of it. One side of the room had Indian horsedeouvres and the other side of the bar had American Food. The Indian food was hot and spicy and enjoyable. The American side had chicken cordon bleau, wings and mushroom stuffed ravioli. We had 2 beers to wash it all down and called it dinner. ~ October 27, 2016 Entries --------------- I worked on my Apple rejection issues. They wanted privacy, terms of use and other nonsense in the app as well as a restore purchases button. I set the router up in the room and attached it to the wired cable. This works well for my own personal network. Download speed is 15 Mbits down and 6 Mbits upload speed. Most importantly the iPad and the laptop are in the same network for program compiling and downloading. Woo Hoo, We had the hotel breakfast for $9 each, $30 with coffee, tip and tax. For lunch we went down the street and found a Wendys. The hotel restaurant is closed which is bizarre. Libbie did her entries in the afternoon. For dinner a large f=group of us ate in the hotel lounge. We had a couple of beers and I had short ribs with mashed potatoes and veggies. Libbie had a crab Mac and Cheese. I came back and tried to see if the new upload was accepted. It's hard to tell but i think the state is "waiting for review". For dinner tonight we ate in the bar with a bunch of MAAVS people. I ordered short ribs in a wine sauce with mashed potato and julienned veggies. It was pretty good, I had it with a Sam Adams Oktoberfest. Service was really slow but it was a nice time with friends. ~ October 28, 2016 Judging --------------- This morning is the judging. Libbie and i went down the street to McDonalds for breakfast. We met Donna, her husband and 2 teenage daughters there. When judging was over we had the job of writing winners names on the envelopes. Libbie was a little disappointed, she thought she would do better but Sandy brought in so many plants that were almost perfection that she placed second in every category. Oh well, at least she won some money. I did the banquet tonight which was a costume contest. I read a poem then had the costume judging. After a Salmon dinner with a delicious cheesecake we did the costumes. ~ October 29, 2016 lunch --------------- This morning i worked on the app a little. I was a little encouraged that the app went into review at Apple. Too bad it's not done even though i submitted it on Thursday. We had lunch with Patti Evans at the Harvest Restaurant with her husband Richard. He is in bad shape, suffering from Dementia. He has no idea where he is, he kept saying he graduated from Camden high School. I had the butternut Squash soup and a half chicken wrap which was nice. The food was delicious. Richard was in such bad shape, we felt bad for Patti. We said goodbye and headed back for the Members meeting which didn't have any new news that we didn't already know. This convention had a 1,000 meal shortfall and was short 20 room nights. We lost much money. In the evening we had the awards banquet. I did the emcee work, Libbie read the awards envelopes until the last three which was here, Karyn Chichokci and Sandy awards which were many. The dinner was very very good. We had the Flat iron steak. We sat with Brenda and Mahlen as well as Kitty, Donna and her Mom Sandra. It was a nice evening. ~ October 30, 2016 wedding --------------- This was a leisurely morning. We didn't have to be in Waterford, VA until 2:30. We had a McDonald's breakfast then came back to the hotel and packed the car and all our stuff. We were on the road by 9:30. We did not stop for lunch but instead chose to drive straight to the venue. Traffic was on our side, we did well on the bridges and roads. Our Easy Pass worked for us once again ringing up a $4 toll on the Delaware bridge and $4 for the Delaware TPK which is a ripoff. The ride through the VA countryside was beautiful. The weather was perfect and the Fall colors were nice. After crossing a long iron bridge, the Google GPS said "Welcome to Virginia". Haven't heard that before. The Farm house was spectacular in a beautiful setting. Kristen never came over to greet us but Josh did. Holly was also pretty civil. i enjoyed some time with Daryll. which was a surprise. His sister Sue turned 70 last week and is a delight. We did a Swing dance stealthily since we weren't supposed to dance for some reason. We sat at a table with the Guenthers, Condons and Hollisters in addition to Michael and Sasha and Darryl's sister Sue. Dinner was a nice buffet. We had many glasses of wine and Carne Asada with all the trimmings. I especially liked the pepper and onions which the caterer said was ammde with Poblana peppers. it poured rain at around 5 before they could cut the cake but all cleared up and the cake was cut. I had Apple pie instead of cake. We left at around 7 and checked into our hotel in Leesburg VA about 7 miles away. it was a beautiful Comfort inn which was luxurious compared to the Hotel ML in NJ. Everything sparkled. I rained lightly as we made our way to the hotel in the dark but everything worked out well. ~ October 31, 2016 travel --------------- Up and at the Comfort Inn breakfast at 7 AM. We checked out and hit the road by 7:30. I took 15 South to 17 South all the way to Fredicksburg instead of going to the Beltway in morning traffic which looked pretty heavy. At Fredicksburg we stopped for biscuits, coffee and gas at 1.97 per gallon. It was a beautiful day for traveling. Traffic was light and the weather was perfect. We got home at 1:30 and took both the Prius and rental Van to Kroger to fill up before returning the car to Enterprise. The girl helping me was a very pretty young blonde with a huge squash blossom necklace that I asked about. She said it weighed 2 pounds. The mailman brought our accumulated mail. My PCBs from OSH park for the pixel boards arrived and so did the 4 strands of RGB lights. Now I'm ready to test synchronized lights!!! For dinner Libbie made grilled chicken which we had with half of a butternut squash. ~ November 01, 2016 Waiting --------------- Still waiting for Apple approval. I submitted last Thursday Oct 27 but still nothing. The cable modem was dead this morning. I had to do a reset. This was an impetus to get the reset circuit working. I found the thing doesn't work with the Huzzah plugged in. I unplugged and programmed the Huzzah and it apparently goes out and pings Google like it's supposed to so at leas the software is functional. I found that i put the 125 driver chip in backwards. It's a little difficult to get out of there because it's between two socket headers for the Huzzah. It may be easier to build a new PCB assembly. I have three PCB's from OSH Park. This one may be able to be recycled for Christmas lights if needed. Dinner tonight was wings and the other half of the butternut squash. ~ November 02, 2016 travel --------------- This afternoon we travel to Dallas. I ran to Lowes and picked up a tool bag for the audio equipment I'm taking to Dallas. We packed our bags and left home at 2 PM. Could not get to our Park and Relax lot because the road was closed due to Air Force one visiting RDU. We parked at the terminal instead. It will be more expensive. Southwest check in and TSA were a breeze. Our flight was totally full but fairly smooth for the 2 1/2 hour flight. We had some trouble at the Enterprise counter. We had to wait for the clerk to finish a contract then she had to get a car because the one outside had a cracked window. Then her printer didn't work. By the time we got going we lost about 30 minutes. Traffic on Mockingbird was horrible. It took almost an hour to reach SR 75. Surprisingly 75 mvoed right along at 55 MPH even though the speed limit was 70. The hotel is wonderful. It's a Comfort Inn for $79 per night. The bathroom is huge, the lobby downstairs is beautiful. the one girl working the counter was incredibly slow. We went out to dinner at Coilleys Tex-Mex. i had a chicken chipotle Quesadilla with a large shiner bock. Yummy but too much food. ~ November 03, 2016 Bush Library --------------- We went to the Bush library this morning on the SMU campus in Dallas. The library was well done and got a good flavor of history of the recent times through his administration. There were a mob of school kids there. Around lunch time we went over to the Perot Science Center to see the "Birds of Paradise" exhibit by Cornell and National Geo. It was quite good but an expensive proposition. We spent $70 for lunch, admission and parking. In the evening we went out with a group of 11 Lonestar folks to Chuys. I had the Valley Combo whcih was an enchilada and a Chile Rejeno. For drinks we had Shiner Bock. ~ November 04, 2016 Judging LoneStar --------------- We volunteered to be clerks at the Lonestar show. I had the blooming gesneriads with Susan Hill, Gary thurman and someone else. Alcie was the other clerk on our team. Judging finished up and I went back to my room and worked on the additional material that Apple needed for the web listing. I then resubmitted the app although i didn't need a new binary this time. I only had to change the App Description which they call the metadata. We then went out to Inn and Out Burger for hamburgers and fries. I missed the Gesneriad presentation of Mel Grice since I was in the room updating MAAVS and Lonestar as well as organizing my pictures. I went out to Kroger in downtown Plano and picked up a 6 pack of Alaskan Amber for dinner tonight, At the pizza and beer dinner we had a very nice dinner of Pizzas, salad and beer. Bev's daughter Sylvia and husband Chuck were the entertainment tonight with their Karaoke and DJ skills. Libbie and i danced all night until the end. At one time Libbie had them play Happy Birthday to Penney and I so we danced a swing together. Later I danced a few dances with Amy from the office. she is pretty and curvy. She really liked to turn which was nice. ~ November 05, 2016 Presentations --------------- I resumed my picture taking in the Showroom then went to Pat hancocks presentation about hybridization and selection of plants by triangles. It was quite informative. We did Inn and Out for lunch once again then stopped into Ben Hanings presentation on pests and disease. He is quite good. Afterwards I located Mel and also Dave Kesserling who set up the projector and the iphone to VGA screen cast so that whatever was on the phone was on the big screen. The presentation went quite well. Afterwards, David showed his viewer presentation which is a First Class viewer only application. It has potential since that is probably all that people want anyway. We picked up a hamd and turkey sub at Krogers and had that for dinner before we left for the Opera. It was smooth sailing all the way to the Ross St exit on 75 then into the Opera house parking garage. We had parking next to the escalator which was convenient. Our dress circle seats were perfect. We were in the center of Row A, one seat from the erfect center of the House. We attended the pre performance lecture by the choir director who was Ukrainian. It was a good insight into the writings of Pushkin and how Pushkin may even be better than Shakespeare since he covered everything, prose, poetry, literature. The performance lasted 3 1/2 hours and was really good. Great singing, a good orchestra, a nice chorus, beautiful staging and the music of Tchaikovsky was a pleasure to attend. I really enjoyed it. Egress was excellent as well. Because we were in the center of the row I thought we would wait a long time to get out but it was easy. We walked down the stairs to the escalator and then down into the parking garage. Attendants directed traffic in the garage, all the entrances were converted to exits and all the roads were one way out. We easily went down the street and right onto the 75 South ramp. We got back to the hotel in Plano in about 20 minutes. The parties were over and nobody was around. It was an excellent day however. ~ November 06, 2016 Happy 70 --------------- We did the hotel breakfast on my birthday. Met all the people packing to leave and also the EC who were having a 9 AM meeting today. Anne joined us at the table and we chatted. Mary invited us to dinner with them and several others tonight. The day started out sunny but clouds rolled in. We headed over to the Arboretum at around 9:30. The gardens were lovely. I was expecting to see the pumpkins but they had all been moved out and the 12 days of Christmas were running. Huge gazebos contained animated figures playing out the 12 days. It was a little early for Christmas but enjoyable. There were a few brides and many Quincinerras which is a 15th birthday celebration coming out for Hispanic girls. Not only were the girls there to be photographed in the garden but whole families came along to watch. the dresses were elegant, the girls also covered with jewels. Around noon we had a beer and Brat but it started pouring. We moved to a table with an umbrella and were soon joined by a Russian son and parents taking advantage of the shelter. I waited until our 12:30 checkin and got us checked into our flight for tomorrow. The Russians were living in Arizona and visiting Dallas. We walked some more after lunch then saw that rain was imminent again. We left in time as the rain started again and was with us all the way back to the hotel. Joe called as we got to the hotel. Paige, Christa, EMily and Joe had birthday greetings. We did Facetime later in the hotel room for more Birthday songs. At 6 PM we went out with Mary & husband Bill, Terry Post, Susan Anderson, Bill Price and Winston. The restaurant was Mi Cocina and was a contemporary Tex-Mex place. it was very cleanly laid out. We were served promptly by a nice young man. I had the Poblano sauce Enchilada with rice and refried beans accompanied by a Dos Equus beer. The assembled crowd sang Happy Birthday which was a surprise. That's 3 times. Came back to the hotel happy and tired. ~ November 07, 2016 travel home --------------- After breakfast I drove Susan Anderson to the DART rail station at 8 AM. It was only one mile away and was a good way to go out to get gas. We only took 5.9 gals at a Valero for 2.09 per gallon. At 10 AM Libbie and I drove down 75S without incident then took Mockingbird to the Airport. Enterprise is the last rental facility before the terminal on the entrance drive so it was pretty convenient. Pointed out to the person checking us in that the tire pressure light is on. While we were driving we found the button to set the clock back since this is the first day of standard time. TSA went pretty smoothly, we were both TSA Pre. Once in the secure area we had chicken sandwiches at Chick Fil A with a small order of fries. I really like the Spicy chicken sandwich. Our flight was at 12:30 but the incoming was diverted due to bad weather. They gave us another plane from a hangar which didn't get going until 3 because they had to add additional fuel to go around storms. The flaps didn't work in Raleigh so we made a high speed landing and had to get the Fire trucks out to inspect the brakes. We waited an hour for the brakes to cool. Got home at 9 and had a bowl of cream of chicken soup for dinner followed by a bowl of cereal. A tiring day. Communicated a little with a lady named Alice since she has overlapping keyboard problems on an iPhone 4. ~ November 08, 2016 ios and reset --------------- I started by working on the reset circuit for the router. When we came home yesterday I reset the Cable modem. This restored internet to our home. For the reset circuit I mounted another driver chip on a new PCB. The previous one has the chip mounted rotated 180 degrees. I finished populating the PCB but did not power it up. Next I moved to IOS. On smaller displays the keyboard covers the input area. I experimented with the Scrollview and have gotten some success. I still don't fully understand how it works. I converted the inventory and part of the search over to a Scrollview. The dropdowns need some help, they won't scroll and still have to be added manually to the Scrollview. I will work on this tomorrow. Dinner tonight was pork chops with butternut squash. After dinner I worked some more on my roadtrip story. I'm a little rusty with my writing. Need to write more. ~ November 09, 2016 scrollview --------------- I was shocked this morning when I woke up and found that Trump had won. I was checking to see how badly he was beat since all the polls were calling for a Hillary victory. Wow, I am happy. Socialism was rejected. I spent the day on Scrollview for the three screens that need it in IOS. I was successful. Will probably release it as a beta first. Tonight I recorded William Tell from the Met. It was their last performance of this opera. I fixed some chicken wings after lunch then we went to our lesson at 3:30 with Robert. We picked up a few pointers on Swing especially the hammer lock. Dinner was the wings with butternut squash. We had water to accompany the meal. I need to lose a few pounds and this is the way. ~ November 10, 2016 fly --------------- Left the house at 5:30 to take Libbie to her 7 AM flight. Spent the rest of the day working on the IOS scrollview. I seeemed to get it working. Took a quick trip down to Fuquay and on the way back stopped at BoJangles on 55 in Apex and picked up a 2 piece dinner. It was great. Dinner tonight was chopped BBQ which was premade in a tub along with baked beans. ~ November 11, 2016 snowflakes --------------- I was depressed today. Laura got some nasty mail because I commented on her stupid petition for the electoral college to elect Hillary. I said she lost because people didn't want socialism, an opinion shared by my friend Andrea who has family living under socialism in Argentina. I called Mary and John and also talked to Laura. She is off the wall. I viewed it as a poor snowflake who didn't get a participation trophy because her person lost the election. For dinner tonight I made a large pizza using a Kroger pizza shell. The rest of the pie was from scratch. I updated the MAAVS website. Still need to do Lonestar. ~ November 12, 2016 ribs --------------- I got the Lonestar website updated and also tested the IOS Scrollview which seems to be working pretty good. I haven't found any issues with it. Drilled some holes in an electrical box to mount the relays and Huzzah for the router and cable reset device. Dinner was a little different tonight. i bought some precooked ribs sealed in a package and heated them in the microwave. They were OK but not great. I had these with baked beans and a bottle of red blend wine that Kroger was sampling. ~ November 13, 2016 trump interview --------------- Spent a lot of the day online learning about the election and electoral college and other nonsense. I did get the First Class update out the door hopefully for users of Android. iOS subscriptions still have a problem That's the next issue. Dinner was 2 mini pizzas made from scratch. I bought crusts from Kroger then loaded them up with cheese, tomato sauce and onions and peppers. They were pretty good. i ate this during the interesting interview with Donald Trump on 60 minutes. i like Melania. ~ November 14, 2016 Sanford --------------- Took a ride to Sanford, it was a dreary lightly sprinkling ride. I thought it would be a nice Fall day trip. Continued the reset work and also managed to get the updates up on the web for Android. Dinner tonight was the leftover pulled pork on a bread round. ~ November 15, 2016 meatloaf --------------- Worked this morning on the reset some more before leaving for the airport at 11 to get Libbie. i waited in the cell lot for her to get her baggage. I enjoyed reading the "Now you're 70" book from Ken and Anita. With Libbie home we did the Tuesday groceries and picked up the ingredients for a single fruit cake batch. I finished the code for the reset and ended up doing a mod to the circuit board where i removed the relays from GPIO 0 and 2 and moved them to GPIO 4 and 5. 0 and 2 were wired to the RED and Blue LEDS but were also used for the firmware update which caused the relays to chatter. We made muffin tin meatloaf this evening which we had with green beans and a bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet. ~ November 16, 2016 Ticker --------------- The reset circuit kept crashing after x minutes. I did some googling and reading and found this is common. One person used the Ticker library function and had success with no crashes. I changed the code to utilize the Ticker library which isn't much different than the TSR I included but apparently this one is safer and doesn't result in crashes. It ran all day without crashing. Need to decide whether I will have a separate router reset from the cable modem reset. I went outside and picked up the pinestraw in the piles next to the driveway. I spread it around in the back by the new dogwood and around the Camelias. Dinner tonight was the leftover meatloaf muffins with a tiny bit of leftover wine and some Lima Beans. ~ November 17, 2016 stuffed portabello --------------- I spent a bunch of time answering stupid FC for IOS questions. The Apple users are definitely a lover class of people. I went out to Kroger and bought the ingredients for Portabello chicken Pesto mushrooms. The recipe was kicked off by the idea of clearance priced Portabello mushrooms. Libbie helped me make the meal which was outstanding. Cooking Light comes through again. We had this with a Parker Estates Cabernet Sauvignon. While Libbie was at quilting this afternoon I put in 4 packages of bulbs. The drilll bit makes it easy except I practically went through both batteries on the portable drill. The drill is the greatest thing ever. ~ November 18, 2016 modem reset --------------- I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto. ~ November 18, 2016 --------------- I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto. ~ November 18, 2016 --------------- I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto. ~ November 18, 2016 --------------- I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto. ~ November 19, 2016 dinner --------------- I cleaned up the router room and installed the router restart box. I tried doing a few updates from upstairs and hung the thing. I need to look into a watchdog timer for the thing. We went out in the PM first to Loews to look fro bulbs then to Fresh Market to get Ribeye for dinner. Dinner was ribeye, lima beans and baked potato with sour cream. Accompanying the meal was Fess Parker Cabernet. ~ November 20, 2016 cable modem --------------- No internet this morning. After the CBS Sunday Morning show I went to Best Buy to exchange the modem for another. The warranty is the best $10 I ever spent. I worked with Time Warner to get the modem listed on my account. When that wa s done all worked again. In the meantime I struggled with the modem reset. I researched forwarding MQTT to websockets. It's built into the version of MQTT on the Debian repository but not on the Pi Jessie repo.. I followed some online instructions for adding the Debian repo and installed from there. The web page I created seems to work with receiving MQTT messages. Dinner was Libbie's pizza. ~ November 21, 2016 MQTT --------------- MQTT seems to be unreliable. I eventually traced the problem to the initial http connect to one of the 5 URLs. Once the connection is made the MQTT client publish fails. This is not good but the good news is we really want to know when it does not connect and not when we do connect. However, I am going to try an http stop tomorrow to see if this corrects the issue. Libbie went to the dentist today at 2 which was risky business for our 3:30 dance lesson. The studio is closed Wednesday before Thanksgiving this week so we rescheduled for today to continue our routine. We pretty much have most of it and did well only missing once or twice. Half way through the lesson we switched to Rumba which was great because we did pick up a few pointers. We did the sliding doors which starts with a box then immediately an underarm turn followed by a turnout. We then go back and fourth before getting together and completing with a fifth position to close. When we got back I spent the evening scanning an envelope of Libbie's Mother's pictures. Next I will read the backs of the pics and label the front with the captions. This will mean each pic becomes 2 pics, one with a caption and one without. In the evening while scanning I listened to Manon Lescaut live from the Met with Christina Opelais. I heard Anna Netrebko do it last week. I like them both. Dinner tonight was leftover chicken with a bottle of Parker Estates Cabernet we picked up in Kroger today along with baked beans. We also picked up some Triscuits and a brick of cheddar to have a glass of wine along with a pre dinner hors d'oeuvres. ~ November 22, 2016 captions --------------- I captioned all the pictures today from the envelope and tried making a movie of them in 1080p but it didn't play on the TV USB port. Back to the drawing board. Next I played with updating the genealogy program. This is slowly coming along one name at a time. Libbie went grocery shopping with me today. We picked up our turkey as well as wine and other things needed for the Thanksgiving dinner. Dinner tonight was Spaghetti without any wine, just water!!! ~ November 23, 2016 Chinese dinner --------------- I got the MQTT thing resolved. I needed to close the previous HTTP connection before it would use MQTT to transmit status. This now seems reliable. I continued with the genealogy work and learned quite a bit more about the program's templates and options. This may work well. For dinner tonight we picked up some Sczechuan 3 flavor and a bottle of Ravenwood Zinfindel. The grocery store was less crowded in the evening then when I went earlier in the day to get Apple Cider, flour and baking soda. It was a zoo in the afternoon. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. ~ November 24, 2016 Thanksgiving --------------- Thanksgiving Day. I looked for a Black Friday code for ProShow but came up empty handed. Instead I found a portable version on Pirate Bay and used a Sandbox type program called Time Freeze which restores your PC to the point before using the program. This insures you have blocked key loggers and viruses. Sheetz was running the promo again they featured last year and before, buy a paper and get a free coffee. I bought 2 donuts as well when I got the paper. It's thick and full of Black Friday ads. I'm not very interested in anything. The Sheetz donuts are very good. I built a nice movie today of the photos using the new version of ProShow Gold version 8 that I sandboxed. IT played nicely on our TV. We had a very nice Butterball turkey cooked in a bag along with stuffing, broccoli, cranberries, potatoes and Brut Champagne. Topping it all was a pumpkin pie with whipped cream topping. Libbie worked hard all day because in addition to the Turkey dinner she also made the traditional annual fruit cakes. Wow, lots of good food. ~ November 25, 2016 Day after --------------- I worked on scanning more of the Stauffacher pictures today and also resurrected the genealogy site on the web. I added plenty of headshots to the program in addition to names and dates and a history. I like te TNG program a lot. I bought groceries in Kroger today along with a $100 Bean gift card which got me $20 back for the groceries. I spent the giftcard and ordered $130 worth of clothes which came with a 20% off Black Friday discount. In addition I got a $10 gift certificate, 4x fuel points at Kroger and the usueal 2% credit card rebate. Good deal. Dinner was the leftover turkey with just water. ~ November 26, 2016 sunset --------------- Libbie cleaned the floors downstairs. i continued to scan photos from the Stauffacher album and also wrote a Python program that works. The program sends an MQTT publish out for the outdoor lights to turn on. This routine will be incorporated into a sunset program so that when sunset arrives the MQTT command will turn on the outdoor lighting. Thanks to MQTT I can also include feedback to determine if the lights received the command. Dinner tonight was turkey again with stuffing, broccoli and with Chateau St Michelle Sauvignon Blanc. Good stuff. I'm now researching the python sunset calculation program. ~ November 27, 2016 genealogy --------------- This morning during CBS this morning I worked on the Stauffacher-Ward genealogy from the files Mary and John sent yesterday. Unfortunately I can't read the box file which comes from the Mac Reunion program. Once CBS Sunday morning was done I went upstairs and finished scanning the Mary Condon 1930s book. Libbie made her excellent pizza once again. The crust came out pretty thing which was surprising. ~ November 28, 2016 chain saw --------------- I fired up the chain saw and cut up a small tree that fell in the woods in the back and hauled the bigger pieces away. I used the cart to pick up the small stuff. I have a successful version of the sunset python program running. It also has MQTT publish commands built in. The MQTT gets published when the seconds to sunset counts down to zero. I tested it using MQTT-Spy and an MQTT publish was issued at exactly sunset. Later in the day I took apart a Sonoff and soldered an FTDI header onto it then hooked up the jumper wires to the programming cable. I put an MQTT based program onto it and tested it out. The program is based on one by Superhouse on YouTube. It was a success and issued MQTT packets on demand. Dinner was the last of the turkey along with a baked Yam and some gravy. ~ November 29, 2016 Pad Thai --------------- I did the Tuesday groceries and picked up the ingredients for Pad Thai. After lunch Libbie and I went to the Asian store on Kildaire Farm Road to get bean sprouts because Kroger doesn't sell them. this store was a find. We also bought some Spring Rolls to try them. Libbie wanted the vegetable ones. When we got back I worked on the shop ceiling and installed a 4 foot LED strip light. I'm not happy with the job, too many holes in the sheetrock plus I can't get the strip flush so I put shims in place. We made Shrimp Pad Thai for dinner which we had with a bottle of Shiraz. The meal is definitely a keeper it was so good. Notable was Libbie adding Siracha to her serving to spice it up. Wow, she has come around to the dark side. ~ November 30, 2016 Coconut Chicken Curry Soup --------------- The sunset timer works well. It turned the lights on last night and turned them off again at 3:30 this morning. Next I turned my attention to the flakey temperature reporting from the porch and greenhouse. I decided to wire up an ESP chip to do the job but first I tested the WiFi in the back room by planting an ESP chip in the corner transmitting MQTT packets. I was able to receive them all. I struggled with getting a one wire device working on the ESP. Finally i hooked up a little breadboard and discovered the secret was to turn on the internal pullups in the ESP at the setup interval. This did the trick for the breadboard. When I moved the real thing to the shop and hooked it up to the sensor lines these was nothing. I tried a few different programs but nothing. I may have to get out the scope. For dinner tonight we made Cooking Light's Coconut curry Chicken Soup. This took quite a bit of prep time with cooking noodles, snow peas and spinach then making the broth mixture with onions, spices, chicken broth and coconut milk. Then the two mixtures were combined with red pepper flakes. The end result was well worth it. We had the soup with half a bottle of Shiraz. ~ December 01, 2016 Temperature using ESP --------------- I fired up the ESP again today in the back shop and used the scope to figure out what was wrong. I eventually hooked up just the sensor lines to the ESP on a breadboard. This worked well!!! I decided to build a second prototype by cutting another proto board and then gluing with expoxy the two RJ45s and the power jack. i soldered down the 4 pullup resistors and the two ESP 0 pin headers. Dinner tonight was the leftover Rotisserie Chicken from the chicken soup yesterday. We had this with baked yams. ~ December 02, 2016 Wiring --------------- Today I wired up the second ESP sensor board. This seemed to go well. Dinner tonight was leftover Coconut Curry Soup. We went to the studio in the evening for the Friday night party. It has been a while since we were there. It was nice to see everybody. Afterwards we went out to McGregor Tavern where we split a Quesadilla and had 1 1/2 Yuengling drafts. ~ December 03, 2016 Crawfish --------------- I persisted today and finally got the new temperature board with the ESP8266 working and reporting via MQTT. Now I need to receive this data and display it somewhere. However, only 3 of 4 channels are working. My scope says the 4th channel is not responding so it's probably a broken connection to the sensor. Dinner tonight was shrimp, baked yam and a failure at Crawfish which Kroger had for 3.99 per lb. I bought a handful for $1 to try. Not good. We had the dinner with Columbia Crest Cabernet. ~ December 04, 2016 Open Hab --------------- I spent the whole day trying to understand OpenHab and it's configuration. It will probably do the job receiving MQTT packets and displaying them on a web page, both internally and outside the house. I found a Pi 3 in the table next to my chair and configured it while watching the CBS Sunday morning show. I enjoyed CBS sunday Morning since they did a promo for the Rolling Stones. They also profiled Billy Bob Thornton and his movie "Bad Santa" which I donwloded today. I ended up installing Openhab several times before I found a great way to install it using the Debian archive thanks to the website "instructables". I put a copy of their webpage on Tom's Life Bits. Dinner tonight was Libbie's pizza on a crust she made from scratch. We went out this afternoon and tried to go to Costco but it was s crowded we went to Walmart for our Christmas Cards after picking up 25 prints of us at Walgreens. ~ December 05, 2016 Openhab2 --------------- A pretty good day. Libbie went out with Anita dress shopping and I continued to configure Openhab2. I finally got it displaying a frame with my temperatures which it received from MQTT. Success at last. As a final thought I configured the router to do port forwarding to the Pi so I can access the house environment from outside. Hooray. I got a haircut this morning when Great Clips opened at 9. Later at 11 I went to Costco for wine and coffee beans. Surprisingly they were selling stamps for less than face value, 46.75 for sheets of 100 stamps. I'm so happy with the Openhab display that I went ahead to begin building another ESP based sensor to replace the attic and plant room arduino. It will be nice to get those temperatures onto MQTT. Then I have to get the moteino to MQTT gateway working so the moteinos can report-in properly. In addition, the light sensor in the greenhouse needs to be populated with a moteino so it can send it's data to the gateway. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese. After dinner I worked on the code for the new ESP while listening to Salome live from the Met. I really like Zika Lucic's voice and singing. ~ December 06, 2016 MQTT temps --------------- I finished the new Huzzah based temperature receiver for the plantroom and the attic sensors, a total of 5 sensors. I built the software with bits and peices of code and soon had it reading temps and sending out MQTT packets wit the readings. This is great news. I did the groceries today as usual and picked up the ingredients to make hominy based chili from cooking light. This was good. The original recipe called for using pork but we decided to use stuff we already had so we got out some frozen chicken breasts and made a chicken and hominy chili for dinner. We had this with Ravenswood Zinfandel. ~ December 07, 2016 final lesson before showcase --------------- I got my temperatures from the new Huzzah sensor displaying on Openhab2 hosted on a Pi 3. This is great. In addition, the sunset outdoor light controller has been successfully turning the landscape lights on and off without a miss. I'm amazed this is working so well. At dance today we had our last lesson before the showcase. We used the big ballroom to practice our routine which had a few issues but nothing too bad. After that we went to the regular studio and brushed up on some Rumba which was pretty useful. It was another good lesson. Dinner tonight was leftover chili from yesterday. Good stuff. We finished the Zinfandel from last night with one more glass each. Later i tuned into the Adafruit Youtube broadcast and got the promo code, bonnet. to get 10% off on 5 more Huzzahs. I'm currently using one for NCID, one for the greenhouse/porch monitor, one for the attic/plantroom and one for the Internet monitor for a total of 5 Huzzah devices. I needed some more. I'm also running out of 5V supplies but ordered 5 more from Sparkfun last week. They are slow shipping. ~ December 08, 2016 --------------- I downloaded the Visa bill which closed on Dec 6. The bill was $4,700 which was higher than expected but it did include the last payment for Mardi Gras as well as the hotel, meals and car for the Plano trip. Libbie had about $1200 worth of charges on this one which lessens the burden on the checkbook. I started work on the gateway code which will translate the moteino wireless devices transmission into MQTT packets by receiving the moteino status over the air then use a Huzzah to put it on the internet. The goal is to replace the LowPower Labs gateway. I got dressed in my tux and Libbie wore a new evening gown for Esquires tonight. We left at 5:50 but had a very very slow trip because rush hour traffic was horrible like it always is. It took us almost an hour to get to North Ridge. We sat with Charlie & Terry, Jim and Jane and Gary and Janet. At the buffet I had Salmon, a single piece of beef and some squash casserole. I finished the meal with chocolate cake and coffee. Yumm. We did well dancing and had enough room to practice our swing routine for tomorrow night. We left after the second set by the Tune Swingers, about 9:30. It was a good night of dancing. ~ December 09, 2016 Show Time --------------- Today is show time!!! We do our performance tonight. We practiced two times during the day, once in the morning and once shortly after lunch. We're as ready as we'll ever be. We left for the studio at 7:15 for the 7:30 party. I had a light dinner at the studio consisting of pulled pork and some pasta salad and potato salad. We were in the second act about half way through. This means we didn't see too much of the second act. We stayed until 10:20 in a fun night of dance and friends. Our performance went really well. We had a little trouble with no rock step before the 6 grapevines and also i didn't start turning Lib at the end until 2 steps in but everything worked out well. ~ December 10, 2016 --------------- i started the day working on gateway code for the mooteinos to convert their transmissions into MQTT packets but changed my mind half way through the day when I came across an Open Source garage door opener using an ESP8266 and a sonar distance measurer. I ended up ordering one but i will use my own firmware in the thing which will use MQTT and will not have the Blynk software in it. This will replace my current Moteino which works well but is not WiFi capable. Getting on WiFi and specifically sending MQTT packets is a must have for my home automation. I may also convert the crawl space fan to WiFi leaving only the bedroom ceiling fan with a moteino but even that won't last long. MQTT control is very flexible and is a must have. We left for Century Club at 5:50PM. Travel was much nicer than to Esquires, mostly because it was a Saturday. We sat with Susie and Russ, and two couples from our studio Nancy and Art as well as Harry and Terry. In addition, Susie had interesting guests, Luana and her husband. She was the portrait artist in Artspace a few years back that we used to visit. We had a nice time. Dinner was called heavy hors d'oeuvres with paper plates and plastic utensils but it was good. I had a little chicken, some salad and veggies as well as some potatoes and a spinach turnover thing. We got home at 11 PM and set the alarm for 5:15 tomorrow morning to check Libbie in for her Calif flight. ~ December 11, 2016 USA made --------------- Got up a little later this morning. Watched CBS Sunday morning then did some AVSA website updates as well as on MAAVS. We learned that our neighbor Janet Portzer died this week at age 65. Wow, shocking. She gave us some milkweed starts this past Spring and also gave us a tour of her gardens. They had installed deer fencing everywhere to protect their plants. Libbie did hosue cleaning today and took out half the upstairs outlets with the vacuum cleaner. It was not a beaker issue. Took outlets apart one by one and found the issue at an old outlet in the sewing room. A bad connection to the outlet inside the electrical box caused the wire to heat up and pull away, This opened the circuit to at least half the outlets upstairs. I did a Home depot trip to get a box of receptacles. Started with Lowes but they only had el cheapo chinese made ones that said Hubbel. Libbie made an excellent pizza for dinner. up erarly tomorrow!!! ~ December 12, 2016 garage door --------------- Left the house at 4 AM for the 5:30 flight. Traffic was light, I was back home at 4:45. I'll need to do this trip next week. I went back to sleep and slept until after 7 AM. This was unusual. I studied the situation with Moteinos and OpenHab with ESP8266s and decided to convert the foundation fan to an ESP device. It will be easier to manage. I also ordered a garage adapter from Rays hobby to make the garage door part of OpenHab. Dinner tonight was pizza made on Kroger mini pizza rounds. ~ December 13, 2016 no events --------------- Did the Tuesday groceries prompted by Lib telling me to ask Alexa. She had put bowl cleaner and soft scrub on the list. I didn't need much else but got some cereal and more pizza rounds. Took a ride to North Raleigh off Blue Ridge today. Should have worked on the electrical but chose to skip it. ~ December 14, 2016 busy day --------------- Paid the Visa bill today because the SS money was deposited. I need to log into Scottrade and pay the taxes and our condo fees. Interest rates were raised today so i don't expect the brokerage account to be pretty. I installed the LED light strip in my closet. It puts out an impressive amount of light. The goal is to clean the closet now that i can see it. I emptied most of my nightstand into the garbage can. Late today the dome camea came. Now I need to figure out hookup. The Sparkfun order of power supplies and a Pi also came but I have less need for these. The new garage door receiver arrived as well. I finished wiring the sockets in our bathroom. Replaced all three of them with new white ones. Dinner was more of the pizza rounds with tomato sauce and pizza cheese. ~ December 15, 2016 quarterly --------------- The camera came from China in the mail today. I ordered it on Dec 2 from Newegg. I temporarily mounted it on a ladder on the porch and plugged it into the outdoor outlet as well as plugged the ethernet into the garage router in the corner by the lights. It works similarly ot the others. Assigned an IP address to it in the router and set up some of the config including time and date and time zone. Ran some Cat 5 wire in the knee wall from the porch to the office closet. I also logged into the brokerage account today for the first time in a long time and paid the Stoneybrook maintenance payment. It's almost $1,000 dollars which is a significant amount of money quarterly. Dinner was the pizza again. I bought ribs but they need 2 hours of cooking unknown to me. I alos picked up some bagels at Brueggers. They know how to make bagels. ~ December 16, 2016 camera --------------- I mounted the dome camera on the porch ceiling yesterday but couldn't do the hookup because the wires were under th plywood flooring. Today I brought the skill saw into the knee wall and cut into the floor and did the hookup. it didn't work at first, traced the error to an RJ45 that was not plugged in all the way. Finished mounting the camera and put the dome on but forgot to include the black plastic shield. I may open it up again to add this back to where it should be. My CU ATM card came today. Now i only need a PIN number and I will have this all straightened out. We will need cash in Florida. WEnt to Home Depot to get a 12 V transformer which seemed inexpensive at $15 for a 60 watt unit. It worked when I hooked 2 LED spotlights up to it. Now it needs a Sonoff switch to complete the job. Dinner was ribs which were pretty good along with Cabernet by Smoking Loon which was quite good. It was highly rated in Kroger, 91 points by Wine Spectator. ~ December 17, 2016 Saturday --------------- Time is counting down too quickly. In a few days I'll have to get on a plane for Cali. Uggh, I hate travel although once I get there I have a nice time. I really like it at home, I must be weird. I played late last night and again this morning with Node-red. It's hard to learn but easy to make good looking web pages with sensor readings. I hope it's a contender vs OpenHab. For dinner tonight I had the other half of the ribs along with the Smoking Loon Cabernet. Nice ~ December 18, 2016 telescope --------------- It's freaky outside - almost 70 degrees. After CBS Sunday Morning I went outside and picked up the leaves Libbie racked last week then I blew the driveway off. IT's supposed to start raining today around noon then get colder. Indoors I finished the Sonoff device I'm taking to Calif and also untangled the caroling bells I'm taking. The bells were a discard from when Peter and Christa moved 2 years ago. I tried mounting the Pi and a battery along with power manager board in the metal box in my closet and ended up breaking the SD card on the Pi. The rains did come. IT rained the rest of the afternoon. The gentleman from Craigslist named Owen came over at 7 PM and bought the telescope for $150. He is going to clean it up and have it as a Christmas present for his Son. After he left I baked the two last pizza shells but had to run out to Kroger to pick up more cheese. They were all out of the small packages so I bought the large package of pizza cheese. ~ December 19, 2016 check in --------------- I woke at 5:15 using the alarm and checked into Southwest for the flight tomorrow. I got A57 of the Houston flight and A53 on the Orange County flight. I started up a new version of Raspbian and configured Node-red on it. I found the version of Node-red is 0.14. i did a simple upgrade to 0.15 and all was well, the menu item "Pallette Manager" then showed up. This allowed me to add the Thingspeak node and also have access to many more nodes in the future. I was pretty happy with the final result and updated the bookmarks as well as port forwarding so that Tom's Bookmarks could access the device as well. The Pi has a power manager and a 3.6V Lithium battery for backup. It's all mounted in the keybox in my Office closet. I'm reasonably happy with the configuration and implementation. For dinner I cooked the ribs for 2 hours at 350 degrees in a glass container in the oven. They started burning near the end but I pulled them out after the full 2 hours. They were pretty good with the Kraft freebie BBQ sauce. i spent the rest of the evening packing for the trip to Calif tomorrow. At the last minute I ended up going out at 10 PM after my shower to put gas in the car. That was not intended but I was glad to find they're still open. Earlier in the day I watched the NC electors in the Electoral college vote. It was a formal ceremony with pomp and circumstance. All 15 electors voted for Trump as the Broughton HS choir sang Christmas Carols. It was amazingly ceremonious. ~ December 20, 2016 Fly --------------- I left the house at 3:30 AM. The roads were empty but the shuttle from the Park n Relax was totally full. The Southwest check in counter also had long lines. I waited quite a while for people who had no idea how to check in to somehow get through the line. In contrast, I was the only customer at TSA Pre which was nice. I got the exit row on both flights. I had a very nice normal sized woman next to me going to houston on a very smooth flight. She was going with her family to Jamaica, a husband and two college aged kids. On the next flight I had a 300 pound woman next to me who took part of my seat space. This flight was pretty rough and felt like a trip in a dryer tumbler. The plane rocked back and forth as well as up and down. I was glad when we finally got to orange county. At least the Wifi worked on this flight unlike the RDU to HOU leg which it didn't so I could see where we were once we left Houston. Libbie, Joe and the 2 kids picked me up on time at John Wayne. Later in the afternoon we walked down Main St which was closed for the Tuesday night street fair. Paige got to see Santa. There also were Princesses in costume for the girls to visit. The Princess was more popular than Santa. Joe made a yummy pizza with Pepperoni for dinner. I went to lay down around 9 PM to read with my iPad and totally passed out. It was several hours later that I finally woke up and put the iPad away and went to bed for good. ~ December 21, 2016 ballast point --------------- up and at em today. It was a leisurely morning, Libbie made bacon and eggs for breakfast on toast. We then went to gymnastics with paige. I liked the other Mothers and instructor in Yoga pants. Very nice. We then went to the Ballast Point brewery where Lib and I split a chicken tosta with fries and also had black beans and salsa for the table along with chips. I had a California Amber beer to go along with it. It's raining pretty hard today. ~ December 22, 2016 rain --------------- up at 6:30. It's still raining which was unusual for So Cal. The rain barrels are overflowing, i printed out the Shrimp Pad Thai recipe for use as a shopping list today. Took a trip to Frys. Really liked the Galaxy Note Tab A. It's a small tablet that seems to be responsive. Joe bought a fairly expensive toy for Kyle for Christmas. I also looked at the Pelican plastic cases. After Frys we went to Stater Bros where i shopped and bought the ingredients for Pad Thai while Joe walked around outside with Emily. It was pretty crowded, we ended up parking far from the store. Later in the day Joe sent me the link to Paige's 529 account. We deposited $250 in her account for Christmas. Libbie and I made the Pad Thai while Joe and Christa went out for an hour. It came out OK. We had the Shrimp Pad Thai along with a bottle of Ravenwood Cabernet Sauvignon which was pretty good. ~ December 23, 2016 La Capilla --------------- Libbie and I took a walk to Ace Hardware then stood in line in Lucci's Deli to get Swiss Cheese. The cheese was wonderful but the place was crowded and we waited a long time but all was well. I had to run the last few hundred feet home to make a bathroom visit. We had a nice walk in Pacific City this afternoon. It's a nice shopping mall at the beach front on pretty high priced property. We had Hot Chocolate at a coffee bar called portolo but it took them a long time and the Hot Chocolate was on the cold side. It was a nice afternoon. We came home and the kids napped then we went out later too La Capilla which was pretty crowded but the food and the company was fine. Earlier Libbie had a hard time with Emily who wouldn't stop crying. It must have been gas since Christa came home and gave her some drops which cleared everything up. At La Capilla I had the combo of a Chili Relleno and a Beef Enchilada. I had a Dos Equis amber which was a nice beer to accompany the meal. ~ December 24, 2016 Wine --------------- This morning we took a walk to the store again. This time it was to Smart and Final for Candy Canes and then next door to the liquor warehouse for wine. We got some Ravenswood Cabernet for $6.79 which was a deal. The same stuff in Stater Bros yesterday was $9.99. In the evening we made Meatloaf Muffins for dinner which were a hit. They were pretty tasty. We used 2 pounds of beef instead of 1 1/2 pounds. We had the Rvenswood Cabernet with the meal. Earlier in the afternoon it was cookie baking time. Libbie and Paige made cookies then Christa came home and made her Tiramisu cake. ~ December 25, 2016 Merry Christmas --------------- After breakfast we watched Paige open her presents from Santa. She sure got a lot of presents, mostly of Dora. Once breakfast was over we sat around the tree and exchanged gifts. At 1 PM Debbie, Craig, Mike and Janice came over. We had another gift exchange then Joe fired up his propane fired oil fryer. He made potato straws and onion rings before cooking the turkey. The onion rings were delicious. He also tried stuffing balls which I didn't care for although everyone raved over them. The turkey came out very good. Christa made cranberry with apple and orange and Debbie brought some very nice mashed potatoes. Granny brought a green bean salad which i was not keen on. It's made with canned green beans and tastes like canned. Christa loves it, me not so much. We had another gift exchange with the Lapworths then we had Christa's Tiramisu cake which was quite nice. Everyone left at around 8:30 and I went to bed and literally passed out. I was either in a food coma or tired from doing nothing. ~ December 26, 2016 Christmas Next Day --------------- The day after Christmas. After a leisurely morning working on my garage door MQTT sensor we packed everything up and headed to Cory and Darshelle's house for Christmas with their family. Present were Craig, Debbie and Granny as well. We played a card game of Sequence during hors d'oeuvres. I sipped cabernet sauvignon which was excellent and had celery with Ranch dressing. Dinner was BBQ tritip and chicken with Broccoli salad. Very nice. The Lapworths had a gift exchange afterwards. Wow, the kids have too much stuff in my opinion. Helicopters, drones, monster trucks, shopkins and programmable dinosaurs make it a fancy and extravagant Christmas. We got home around 8 PM very tired. The kids were really tired and crying. ~ December 27, 2016 Last Day --------------- This morning after breakfast I worked some more on the garage door firmware. I worked on adding the config page which uses Java Ajax for configuration parameters. I mostly got it to compile before lunch but the EEPROMs need some work storing int values which require more than one location. We took Paige and Emily to the park for 2 hours so the house could get stripped of Christmas and vacuumed and cleaned. Libbie and I had brought Turkey sandwiches for lunch. Once we got back from the Park we checked into our Southwest flight at 2:25 PM for tomorrow. I got Christa's cranberry salad recipe typed into Tom's Life Bits. We went out to the downtown street fair around 6pm. Paid 1.50 for parking and found Joe at the HB Brewery. We ordered appetizers of nachos and beans as well as chicken and fries. Had this with a blonde beer then ordered a Catalina chowder bowl which came with clams, clam chowder and salad. The chowder came in a sourdough bread bowl. I was stuffed and tired. On the street we danced severa swings and Rhumbas to a live blues band. Very nice. ~ December 28, 2016 Travel home --------------- Joe made banana pancakes and bacon for breakfast. I finished up the work on the EPROMs for garage door configuration. Would love to test it. Went to gymnastics with Joe and Paige then Inn and Out burger for lunch. Next stop was John Wayne airport. Tsa was light and no problem. We were at the gate around 12:40 for our 2:25 pm flight. ~ December 28, 2016 Travel home --------------- Joe made banana pancakes and bacon for breakfast. I finished up the work on the EPROMs for garage door configuration. Would love to test it. Went to gymnastics with Joe and Paige then Inn and Out burger for lunch. Next stop was John Wayne airport. Tsa was light and no problem. We were at the gate around 12:40 for our 2:25 pm flight. The flight was quite bumpy. We hit some pretty good turbulence crossing into AZ. The plane really rocked around before settling into a chop pattern. We landed on time into Houston, it was a quick turn. We hardly had time for bathroom and a 6 inch turkey sub we split from Subwy. We were late getting off the ground waiting for three other flights to connect. Lib and i both were in the exit row with no one in the middle seat. The flight to Raleigh was smoother than our first leg. we waited a while for our luggage and once again waited a while for Park and Relax. Some people couldn't get parking so they took keys and parked cars when space was available. This meant we had to wait for them to retrieve these valet keys before we could go into the parking lot. We waited in the bus a while which was not great since it was after 1 AM. We finally got going and luckily our car was first. We got home at 2 AM. All was well. ~ December 29, 2016 sleep --------------- Didn't get up until almost 8 AM this morning due to our late night arrival. I sorted the mail and surprisingly quite a bit of it was not junk. Did a quick grocery run for supplies then settled in on putting up the LED light in Libbie's closet. The job was harder than mine since I had to cut through the plywood in the attic to access the old recessed light. My measurement was spot on and after doing the cutting i was exactly over the old light. It took a few more hours and finally the light was working. I previously covered the clothes in Libbie;s closet with drop cloths to protect her clothes since i would work in the ceiling. I'm glad there is no dance tonight. I'm pretty tired. We had tuna noodle casserole and peas for dinner. ~ December 30, 2016 --------------- Today i tackled the new garage door receiver in the garage. I mounted a new electrical outlet below the opener and then mounted the receiver. Everything worked. I also removed the old Moteino with the intention of using either open Garage or a custom huzzah implementation to monitor the door remotely. I needed a new jewelers screwdriver and ended up going to home Depot for a husky screwdriver set as well as the box for the new outlet below the door opener. We had a dinner of spaghetti with sauce and cheese then went over to the studio secret party at 8 PM. It was light attendance but a fun evening. Getting together with everyone was fun. I danced quite a bit. After the party we went to BJs Brew house at crossroads. We ordered BJs Amber beer and a plate of flatbread nachos which was delicious but not what i expected. I thought it was nachos with a plate of beans but was a pizza style with some black bean sprinkled on and also avocado and sour cream. We got home at midnight. ~ December 31, 2016 End of Year --------------- This is the last entry for this year. I started building a perfboard to fit into a case for the garage sensor hardware. We leave Wed for Sarasota, much to do before then. I researched an SSL once again for Traviata. I need it to get HTTPS for Amazon Alexa. Talked to Vicki today. She told me Barbara Cybulski died but i knew that from Facebook a few days ago. I studied how to implement an SSL certificate on Apache or some other web server. I even tried a few times to validate my domain traviata.dyndns.org using the free ssl along with a webserver. I had no luck but need to read more. Around 8:15 we started the oven and I cut the baguette in half for the party. I coated both halves with spicy marinara sauce then coated them with cooked italian sausage that Libbie cooked in a skillet. I topped it with cheese and put it in the oven for 450 for 10 minutes. I took them out and sliced them in little squares for the party and served it in aluminum pan. For dinner earlier in the evening we had tomato sauce and a peanut butter sandwich. We went to the party at 9 and danced quite a bit. I was really tired towards the end of the night. We met all our friends there and had a good time. I danced with Anita, Anne, Terry and Jennifer (I think). I had a great time. We had a champagne toast at midnight, kissed, said Happy new Years to all our friends then left around 12:15. ~