It still looks nasty in the Northeast. Libbie is having pangs of regrets about canceling but I'm happy about it. It would be miserable up there. I worked on Loge, an AVR controller to select which heater to use for greenhouse heating. In the afternoon we went to Fresh Market and picked up some precooked ribs to have with squash and Shiraz for dinner. After dinner i watched a little of the Babysitters which I downloaded.

It was a rainy windy night. We woke this morning to hear Washington Mutual collapsed overnight. In the meantime, the Federal bailout is mired in political squabbling. We have to fly today in awful weather. I heard from John - he is going to bring the microwave and some chemicals for testing.
We left for the airport at 10:30 in some rain squalls which eventually cleared up by the time we got to the airport. I dropped Libbie off and parked the car in the parking garage. When I got to the Southwest counter in the rain Libbie decided that we shouldn't go. A lot of flights were delayed or canceled and our flight was 90 minutes delayed with a stop in Philly which looked like we may spend the night there. We stopped at Courtneys for lunch. I had the Colorado scramble and Libbie had a country scramble. The difference was she got cheese and I got ham in our dishes. The day didn't turn out too bad. We had Butternut Squash soup for sesert which was pretty bland. Watched a little of the debate then went to bed after unpacking the suitcase.

I loaded 300 ml of alcohol into the microwave and had quite a bit of success maintaining 70C for 10 minutes in a number of runs. The new algorithm seems to be doing well. I'm going to bring my laptop and JTAG device to Rhode Island. It's a rainy day today. We have a Noreaster forming off the coast and is going to track up the coast and follow us to RI tomorrow. It won't be a pretty weekend. I checked us in to Southwest - we both got the A boarding group. I checked some of my preferreds today - I would guess the damages are down about 10% in preferreds and 30% in my one MLP which is MWE. I expect all to recover eventually. It's a tough call - the economy is bad enough and natural gas has fallen where there may not be significant recovery in MLP's. The preferreds are quality issues so they may fare better. I would like to pick up some NRN tomorrow which is trading at 18 but will probably settle around 20. Dinner tonight was trader joe's barbecue chicken on toast. It lacked a bite - it tasted pretty bland. I'm not looking forward to our evil empire trip tomorrow.

Vicki called at 9:15 this morning to tell me that Jack Dowd delivered Nancy's baby in the car on the way to the hospital. The baby's name is Trevor Collin at 8 lb 1 oz, 21 inches. Found out that Warren Buffet purchased Constellation Energy which caused the preferred CEG-A to recover quite a bit. This was a scary ride. Fixed another problem on the controller card. The pullup was 1k which only gave a 2 volt down level. Changed it to 10k and now the down level is 0 volts like it should be. This was stressful since I'm shooting for taking this with us when we leave for RI on Friday. I went with Libbie to Southpoint this morning. She picked up her dress at Norstroms then returned a top to Coldwater Creek. We took the opportunity to do a short walk at the mall.
I skipped lunch although I'm feeling a little weak today. Don't know what that's all about. Joe is balking about the rehearsal dinner in the evening. Not sure what his problem is. We arranged the venue, sent out formal invitations and thought all was well. He seemed to have the same bug up his ass when Christa and Craig hired the photographer.
I'm having some success with the microwave. I added a user selection for power level. This kicks in when the actual temp gets within 10 degrees of the target. This may need to be programmable as well.
Dinner was Trader Joes Canneloni and Bean Burger.

Struggled with the controller card through the morning before going to the grocery stores for old geezer day. Found that the door signal was shorted to the LEd with a solder splash. The door open now works but the logic level is only 2 volts in the down level. Either there is not enough drive on the input or the output was damaged from being shorted. It's not a good down level. Will check the pull up resistor to make sure it's only 4.7k. May need to go to 10k. In any event, the down level needs fixing. Went to deposit my $59 Home Depot rebate check then filled my gas tank at NAD. Some stations are running out of gas due to hurricane Ike and the changeover to low sulfur gasoline. Stopped by Great Clips next to Krogers to see if they were busy and they weren't so i got a haircut. Had it cut shorter. We've been communicating with Anne about hotel reservations for Dallas on Dec 6. Will visit the Nasher in downtown Dallas then the wedding on Saturday then the Dallas opera on Sunday. Watched the TIVO version of last nights dancing with the stars. it was the season opener. The surprise was Brooke Burke. This gorgeous girl has 4 children and can really dance. The comedian is terrible. Cloris Leachman is also terrible but at least is entertaining. This morning I had toruble with Traviata. It wasn't there and I couldn't get it back so I turned it off and restarted. Still don't know what happened.
Dinner was Trader Joes pasta.

I struggled with the microwave controller. Need to do some very hard hardware changes. We had to leave early for the 6 PM start of the Opening Night Gala. Left the house at 4:30 and ate a light soft taco dinner at Mo's Southwestern Grill at North Hills. The Senior bus was unloading when we got there which seemed early but they really lined up to the doors. We did well - had dinner then got in line. The evening was wonderful - all the glittery costumes, gowns, sets and the marvelous singing of Fleming, Hampson and Vargas. What a delightful night!!!!

It was a short day. I got the temperature probe working but the microwave still has problems. The door circuit seems to be fried. It will be a hard fix since the chip is under the DC-DC converter which will need to be removed. Went to the Ballet at 2. A very nice performance of three disticntly different composers. I enjoyed the pas de deux of Timour but the haunting one was the torture sequences by Lynne Corbet Taylor. We got home in time for Libbie to make her excellent pizza and then watch the emmys for the rest of the evening.

Went to Duke hospital this morning and got a prostate screening. They will mail the result by Thanksgiving. When i got home I started looking at the temp probe and found I was programmed for the old One Wire Temp device which is a single byte temperature. The new family. code 28, uses two bytes for temp with 4 decimal point precision. Before I could test my new algorithm I had lunch with Libbie - she fixed some nice BLT's. Next I went on the porch roof and washed windows and put up the rest of the shutters. Ran out of screws so I switched to metal screws with plastic inserts for two of the fasteners. This looks like it will work OK.

Worked on the temperature probe in the morning checking all the timings of read and write of ones and zeros to see where the problem may be. It seems to be reading FF for the temperature as confirmed on the scope. After changing the timings I'm now getting AD. Found that I need to set the output to a strong one (active) or else the bus droops to 1.5 volts with just the pullup after commanding a conversion. In the afternoon I took all the shutters off over the porch. I stretched a ladder across the porch roof to give me some balance. After this Libbie and I went to Lowes and then the greenhouse and nailed boards on the bottom of the plastic over the cool cells. Got home and Libbie fixed a nice dinner of flounder stuffed with crab and Brocolli. Made some more calls in the evening to get convention committees signed up.

Still reeling from the preferred losses in the market. Hope things recover some day but the banking crisis seems to be getting worse.

Great news - a Fed bailout of bad mortgages is causing the market to soar. Worked on shutters today. I'm trying for one a day.

Irwin agreed to be treasurer for MAAVS.

Dinner was barbecue chicken with veggies.

Found out the internet is out this morning. Called the Time Warner repair number and found that there is an area wide outage that is supposed to be fixed "in 90 minutes". The Internet came back. In the meantime, i got the LCD and Keypad working on the second controller card but can't get the temperature probe to read. The market is down 450 today. I found my CEG-A was down to $15. I paid $25 for it and own 1,000 shares. I'm hoping this abandoning of stocks and even preferreds is a temporary phenomena which will recover in a few months when Wall Street gets some financial confidence back. It seems a mess today. Talked to Kathy Lahti about the convention. We now have a signed contract and need to start assigning people to the various roles.
Talked to George McDonald about the Treasurer position but he turned me down. Will try Irwin Wagman next. Talked to Fay but Irwin was not home.
Dinner tonight was a veggie entree from Trader joes. Libbie did not like it because it was all carbs but I loved it - potatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, brocolli and snow peas in a very tasty sauce.

Cut some copper tubing to make some probes for the microwave. Market is doing a little better today although it's a pretty glum rainy day outside. Talked to Arlene today about the insurance policies that Aunt Helen has. Still don't know if they are viable. Made a grocery run today to both Krogers and Trader Joes. It's a pretty lackadaisical day. Dinner tonight was pasta from trader Joe's. After dinner I finished the microwave probe - soldered the chip to the wire, applied some thermal grease and put the heat shrink on, The heat gun does a nice job shrinking the tubing, way better than how I used to do it with a soldering iron or flame. It seems to be a worthwhile purchase.

After the bankruptcy of Lehman yesterday the market is down over 500 today. Not a good day for the preferreds either. Went to Walmart and picked up another microwave which I modified fairly easily. Need to make some probes as well. Dinner was stir fry from Trader Joes. Ran quilt on my Linux distro for the AVR32 and made the changes for 2 usarts. It seemed to compile OK. The truth will be when I burn it to the board. This is way more complicated than I ever would have thought.

After reading the traditional Sunday paper I printed the RSVP cards and printed our names on the envelopes. Libbie addressed the invitations while I worked outdoors finishing the mowing and weeding around the Roses. After a lunch of BLT's we went to Lowes and Walgreens for Isopropyl Alcohol and a microwave. Lowes doesn't carry the Sharp anymore but are switching to GE. Home Depot carries Magic Chef so we went home empty handed. I checked online and found that Walmart in Holly Spring has the Sharp microwave or I could buy it from Amazon. I'll go to Holly Springs tomorrow and pick one up since they list it at $57 and Amazon shows $82. Libbie has perfected her ultra thin crust pizza crust with Olive Oil and a topping containing garden tomatoes - Yum!!!

During breakfast we watched some of the early pictures of hurricane Ike in Galveston and Houston. I mowed the backyard today then worked on the landscape lights. Put a new light up on the tree that used to carry the IR sensor which was never used. Dinner was stuffed flounder and a delicious Butternut squash. After dinner we went to Staples and purchased Rehearsal Dinner Invitations.

Got Ubuntu updates and all the build essentials loaded thanks to a few web pages describing what I needed. I then ran through the make source and make config successfully. Not sure if the buildroot worked because one file could not be found - I suspect it's a versioning problem. The buildroot took several hours. While this was going on I mowed the front lawn but had to abandon the back because it was too wet. The mower kept choking on the grass and stalling. I got cleaned up then climbed the ladder to look at the lights. Did a trip to home Depot and got a pack of 2 halogen bulbs ($7.50 - ouch!). Replaced the two bad bulbs but one of the original plastic lights has the wires cut at the base and it seems to be weathered. I'll prepare one of the metal lights that I have and replace it tomorrow. Came back in and found the build had finished. Hurray. Libbie made barbecued chicken with her own sauce - yummy. We had it with steamfresh peas and a bottle of Shiraz.

I'm feeling much more chipper this morning thanks to reduced eating yesterday. I'm going to start researching how to modify the Linux boot image. Tried loading Ubuntu Linux on an old computer several times. In the end I found that Ubuntu doesn't include the development tools by default. It's not set up to be a developers machine. think I will switch back to Debian. Could not get the Linux image to build on this machine - seem to be missing a few packages. Had some email chats with Joe Bruns about the wisdom of what AVSA is doing in regards to web software. Sold half of my position in MWE today. I got tired of it falling few cents each day for no reason. My target for buying it back is November at about $25. I sold for 29.50. Received a quote from Spark - their least expensive package was $52. We went with LaCapilla for $12.95 per plate all inclusive. Pitchers of margaritas are $18.95. I put a $200 deposit on my credit card.

I'm a little slow this morning. Ate too much yesterday and didn't sleep well. The rains all day stopped me from going out to cut the lawn. Went to Harris Teeter with Libbie this afternoon to get 24 grain bread for BLT's tonight for dinner. Got a $500 check from John today for the microwave which was a surprise. I'll return a majority of it. I did some reading and scoping of my TTY port on Rembrandt. I found that I have to recompile the image to enable the other USARTs on the card. I'm very tired today. Went to bed at10 and slept very well.

After getting in at 1:30 this morning I didn't get up until 7. Worked on the serial routines under Linux for the one wire bus. I gave up trying to compile any programs I found and read the spec and started writing my own. This is the easiest way and it seems to be going well. I'll need to put a scope on the uart outputs to see if it's really doing what I hope it is.
I'm putting together a Mouser order for driver GasFETS and schottky diodes for the one wire assembly. I may do a separate proto board with 3 RJ45 connectors and the driver stuff at first to put in a box with the Linux board for Stoneybrook.
Did the grocery store later in the day. Met Tom Herner in Kroger's - he talked about doing a Danube cruise next week for 2 weeks. When I got home I ordered tickets for opening night of the Met HD series on Sept 22. Looked in my eMail and saw there was a 10% off coupon code for Carolina Ballet. Called the Ballet line and got ballet tickets for Sunday afternoon Sept 21. The arts season is up and running!!!
Downloaded Lib's camera containing the pictures from her California trip. Pretty nice places she visited. We checked on the owner of the rental house today to see if he's legit. Not a problem, Libbie talked to the realtor selling the rental house and I researched the owner.
Dinner was pasta that I picked up in Trader Joe's today.

Got up at 6 which was before the radio went off. Continued looking at the serial programming for One Wire interfacing. I'm fat - I feel very bloated this morning. I may do two walks - one in the morning and then again in the afternoon by driving over to the park. Had trouble with the blog this morning. I found that when I enter without logging in there is no way to login and no way to make an entry. I added another entry into Tom's Musings which is the login page. Let's see if this works.
The login page seems to help get to the blog when it appears to be stuck at read only.
I struggled most of today trying to compile a one wire serial module. I may have to strip it down to nothing and essentially write my own. I put out the MAAVS eMemo today. Now I need to work on the BB web site.
Had some troubles updating the BB web site. When there are no streps in a category, the program barfs with an illegal function call or something like that. Added one fake strep to get around the problem.
I started looking at doing the onewire routines from scratch based on the uart, The PD kit from maxim is too complicated and won't readily compile.
Libbie encountered thunderstorms this evening in Las Vegas. Her plane took off 1 1/2 hours late because they didn't want to fuel the plane in a thunderstorm.
Left the house at 12:15 and arrived at the Sheetz gas station at 12:45. Libbie called at 12:54 saying she just got off the plane. Picked her up outside the terminal at 1:05 and got home by 1:30 AM. this is pretty late but I was up and wide awake.

Sunday. Picked up the paper as usual at 7:05 AM. I noticed the $10 off Lowes coupon from Libbie expires today so I'll go down and pick up another roll of aluminum foil for the crawl space. Late last night I changed the port for Rembrandt and can now access the http server on port 9320. Next step is to compile a "hello world" program before I compile my own temperature reading program.
After lunch went to Lowes and picked up the roll of foil. Back home I collected pine straw off the driveway and picked up tree limbs in the backyard as well as pruned the roses and weeded.
After a quick shower I settled down and compiled a hello world program using Cygwin and GCC on my PC, Mazeppa. Downloaded Hello World to the Rembrandt and executed it OK.
Next step is to write a One Wire program derived from lots of examples on the web. I'm going to either use a serial port or the TWI port on the AVR32.
Studied some one wire interfacing techniques using 3 volts which is a problem. The Uart will provide the timing but will have to buy some GasFet transistors from Digikey or Mouser. Cost is $.14 each which is more than acceptable but will have to buy 100. because of quantity pricing. Started writing the interface program using Digitemp as a guide. I also need to look at OWFS to see how they did serial port I/O. Fell asleep downstairs watching IFC, went to bed at midnight.

The alarm went off at 6 as always but I was very tired and felt like sleeping in but I didn't. We got 4 inches of rain last night and it's still raining. Elizabeth said it will rain for 3 more hours. Talked to Lib while she was in bed at the Lapworths. The sun came out at noon so I went over to the greenhouse. Everything looks OK. I ran a generator test then turned the monitor system on. The garage is flooded. I was thinking of adding a drain out the back which Libbie doesn't want. Perhaps if I add a pipe with a sewer cap it might win her approval. Picked up the mail, my Walgreens rebate for shampoo came today. will take that with the Eckerds $5 gillette rebate to the CU on Monday. I finally made progress with Linux. Got the SD card functioning and used it to transfer the networking file to the card. It now boots with networking. Still no web services. I get a forbidden 403 error.
I got past the web thing. The conf file has a restriction of what IP addresses can access the thing. This is stupidity on Atmel's part. I made it available to all and now can get to the web page. Had to also modify the S91httpd script to change the port of the web server. Interestingly, Firefox wouldn't allow a port of 87 so I changed it to 2287 and all is well. I wanted something more meaningful. Maybe for Stoneybrook I'll use the build ing address, 9320, and see if that works. I also took a look at OWFS and templogger which comes with it. I rejected this stuff as too complicated. I'll probably write my own based on Digitemp. Digitemp also has a script to output the data to the RRDtool. I'll make the whole thing C to hopefully simplify things. Dinner and lunch was a Stouffers French Bread pizza. While studying one wire temps under Linux I had the spanish channel, Gigante Sabado on. This is an old fashioned variety show with lots of T&A.

I read an interesting recommendation by an author on MSN about how MLP's are going to come back strong and the time to get in is now. IV is back and seems to be faster than ever. I studied how the Round Robin Database tool (RRD) works this morning. It looks to be pretty powerful and may be just what I need to log temperature and humidity data. It contains nice tools to create graphs for display in web pages. I'm going to get it working first in Linux, possibly on an NSLU2. It also seems to work in Windows, at least there is a windows binary that I've been using. Hanna is supposed to hit today with 1 to 2 inches of rain and some wind gusts. Not sure about the greenhouse but around here the generator is all set to go. I need to check the chain saw gas since I recall running out this summer.
The NGW100 came this afternoon. Atmel providesnothing in the way of instructions, cables or even how to hook it up. After muddling around a bit I found that Linux bootup comes out of the DB9 rs232 connection. There is no indication what the baud or flow control should be. I was able to change the IP and access the device but I ended up having to change the switch in my office to an 8 port Netgear switch instead of the 5 port Linksys I was using. Went to the greenhouse in advance of tropical storm Hanna and ran a generator test cycle then I turned the monitor system off. We don't need it when the overnight temp is in the 70s. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine, Parmesan fish.

Left this morning at 9 after breakfast to take Libbie to the airport for her 10:30 flight to California. she has a stop in Denver. In the meantime I worked on the Linux stamp I will be developing. The name is going to be Rembrandt. I need a free web site to host it - I started looking at Google Sites. In the interim I have started collecting info on Traviata in the Wiki. this is a great idea to organize my thoughts andplan what I want to do. When the Gateway board comes I want to fire it up, compile an application or two, possibly get the web server and a temperature probe working. This eventually will be a multi device platform. I was thinking of calling the collective bunch "Network Toys". This would fit the goal of hosting NCID on the thing, possibly hosting a weather station with http and one wire stuff running. I will put one in Stoneybrook to monitor HVAC, one as a zigbee to LAN gateway or something like that and of course there's the fish pond and greenhouse to consider.

Got up at 5:12 am, the alarm was actually set for 5:15. Did all the morning stuff - filled my thermos, had cereal, put the stuff in the car and left at 5:40 AM. Short delay in Tampa where there was a 3 car accident at I-4. I made some pretty good time. Stopped for gas in Brooksville at 3.59 and again in Reevesville, SC for 3.59 where I stopped at McD for a bathroom break. Got home at 4:30 - Libbie wasn't home. Unpacked and she showed up later. We went out to the Mexican place for Margaritas and food. I had the Pollo chipotle again which I took home in a takeout box for tomorrow. In the evening I fell sound asleep and was awoke y the telephone. when it rang I was so out of it that I didn't know where I was. Went to bed at 10:20 - it felt good to be home.