This is the day after. We had a leisurely morning looking at pictures. Around 11 AM Craig, Debbie and joe and Christa came over to open wedding presents. I also copied the pictures from the Lapworth camera. We put all the presents in the Lapworth SUV for storage in their backyard. Afterwards we went to the Huntington Beach Beer Co for lunch. I had the clam chowder and salad. The chowder was served in a bread bowl which was delicious. Later that day Libbie and i went to El Ranchito for dinner with Margaritas.

The wedding day was surprisingly another busy one. We went out to the iHop
for breakfast with all the Condon girls. We waited a long time for a table
but finally we got two booths - one for the girls and one for the guys.
I had the avocado and bacon omelet which came with a side order of buttermilk
pancakes. Too much food. Because breakfast was over past noon, we skipped lunch
and got ready for the wedding. My top button broke in a moment of pancake.
Joe gave me sandals for wearing on the sand but I stuck with the shoes and socks
until needed. Sandals seem very uncomfortable to me.

We had a nice slow start and then drove with Mary and John to
the rehearsal site on the beach. We had to pay $10 parking for
the one hour of the rehearsal. It seemed to be pretty chilly and
a little windy. Afterwards we all went to Rubys. Met Josh's
parents on the beach - they had wandered up from Laguna and
stumbled upon us doing the rehearsal. We invited them to Rubys
but they bowed out. The Ruby rehearsal dinner was nice - the
kids were excited with their iPod gifts. The dinner was good.
David and Peter joined us - David picked up Peter at John Wayne
and made it back. Arlene, Jessica and David and Ellie also made
it to Ruby's which was great. The bill ended up being around
$700. When we got back to the house our Gerbers had all wilted
and needed help. Arlene and I went out to get floral wire which
we got at 1-800 flowers. In the evening we went over to La
Capilla at 6:30 to set up the flowers and the sheet cake. Our
guests started arriving at 6:45 - we had the Margaritas and the
drinks brought out earlier than 7 but we couldn't start eating
until the Groom arrived. Joe arrived at 7:05 and we got started
with dinner. We ended up with 48 plates and 9 pitchers of
Margaritas. Mary Elaine and her boyfriend Josh were also there,
making it 3 Benziger kids and 3 Sroczynski kids. We left there around
9 and went home pleasantly tired. The bill came in at $800. We previously
put down a $200 deposit so the grand total was $1000.

In the morning we went to Sams to get a sheet cake which we had
engraved with "Three Cheers, your day is here". We picked up the
glass beads for the flower vases. On a walk I found a guy
selling watercolors of Rubys. Told him I would be back with my
wife. Libbie and sue went with the women to get their nails
done. When they returned Libbie and I went back to the Farmers
market at the pier. She found Gerber Daisies from a guy which
we negotiated for $32 for 6 bundles including the pail they were
in. At the watercolor place we not only got "Going to Rubys" but
we also picked up the Huntington Beach brewery painting and also
a Main Street scene that Libbie found. We got all 3 paintings
for $45 in cheap frames. We also looked for Huntington Beach
placemats but no luck. For dinner tonight we went over to Joe's
for pizza. all the boys were there - it was pretty loud with the
guys playing Guitar hero. Later they put on Wii fitness. Aiden
was great at the ski jump and a few other wii games such as
hitting soccer balls with his head. I had too much pizza and
also a few beers from Joe's tap. It was a fun night.

We surprisingly slept until 6 AM then got up to make coffee and
have our shredded wheat breakfast. I didn't like the Trader
Joe's breakfast blend coffee. It tasted more l ike Maxwell house
with soy fillers. We drove to LAX at the embassy suites and
picked up Sue who is going to stay with us till Saturday. On the
way back we stopped at Nordstroms to steam the dress and also
Crate and Barrel to buy a set of silver ware for Joe's wedding
gift. We had lunch late in the afternoon at Wahoos. Later Joe
came over to our house and started grilling some tri tips and
grilled veggies that we ate on Tortillas with Mondavi Pinot Noir.
The Pinot was pretty good but we should have had the Trader Joes
wine instead from an economy standpopint.

Got up at 4:30 for a 5:15 AM departure. We need to park in the
outbound lot, lot 3 because of the length. Our flight left at 7
AM on time and got into John Wayne a little early. We got a
Pontiac Vibe which I was very happy with except it stunk with
cigarette smoke. It was the last 4 door mid size so we kept it.
Stopped at Joe's and went to Wahoos for a veggie bowl lunch.
After lunch hung out at Joe's until our landlord called that he
was available to check us in. The house was nice although it
needed a little TLC. It had a SOLD sign on it. When Libbie was
here in September it was "For Sale". Paul and Marijah came and
met us outside the house. We all walked down to Ruby's for
dinner. When Christa got out of work, she and Joe joined us.
Afterwards even though we were tired we went over to La Capilla
to settle on the menu for Saturday night. We had to choose 3
items from the menu which we did with Joe's help. We also did
the grocery store, Trader Joes, and got wine, cereal, coffee and
milk.

We leave for California tomorrow. Lib and I spent the afternoon packing. We will have two big suitcases and the carryon. I'm bringing the computer. Dinner was the leftover barbecue chicken on buns. We have to get up at 4:30 AM tomorrow morning. I'm reading Grapes of Wrath which I'm really getting into.

After the Sunday newspaper routine I went to Home Depot to pick up a copper tee for the spigot plumbing. Cut the pipes and soldered the tee to the line and mounted a block of wood to fasten the end of the 1/2" pipe against. The spigot is pretty firm and stands 6 inches above the sink. It took a few hours to accomplish but it turned out well. After a lean Cuisine lunch of sezchuan shrimp we went to the WCPE open house in Rolesville. We have never been there before. Walked around the studio, had birthday cake then toured the transmitter and generator building. It was pretty comprehensive. I took lots of pictures of the music collection, offices and inside the transmitter building. We came back via I-540 and the 64 bypass to the beltline. It was an easy trip back. Libbie made her excellent pizza and I watched a 60 minutes story about the electric car revival featuring the GM Volt and the Tesla motor company sports car.

The countdown is on for the rehearsal dinner next Saturday. Libbie has 40 positive responses and she also thinks Holly and Darrel will be coming. I doubt it since we heard that as of last Saturday at Corrie's wedding they didn't even have tickets yet but they accepted the invitation. I spent the morning and part of the afternoon hooking up the new faucet on the back porch sink. On the way back from Ace Hardware I went up Laura Duncan and saw a spectacular house fire - they appear to intentionally burning a ranch home in back of the old Winn Dixie.
The faucet works and I punched a hole in the sink for the new spigot but I haven't hooked it up yet. This evening we had crab stuffed salmon and acorn squash for dinner. After dinner we watched Father of the Bride on FLIX. This was a very good movie.

Worked on the fish pond version of Loge defining the timers, etc. Looked some more at the runaway problem on Kahlo. It could be it takes a while for it to get to the magnetron off routine. I don't know why it takes seconds but I'll hook up the scope and see what's going on. The bathroom drain was leaking due to a cracked washer. We went to Lowes and got a drain repair kit for $7. This is an expensive washer. We also bought some new faucets for the sink on the back porch. This new one is higher and will allow a pail under the spigot. I'm also going to put a hose bib mounted on the sink basin. Took the dead tree down next to the house. Dropped some of it on Longo's property but I'm cutting it all up and putting it on the pile in the back. The new washer fixed the leak under the sink. I'll keep the extra parts in case something else breaks but I don't think so. Tonight is First Friday. I have dinner reservations at Cafe Luna downtown tonight.
We had a wonderful time at first Friday. Found street parking in front of Exploris then walked to Visual Arts where there was a "perspective" art show. Had some wine then went over to ArtSpace and had more wine while browsing various galleries. Talked to Judy Crane about her painting in the Marriott. She's a nice lady, we chatted a little about her art and the nice work she does. Next went to the quilting lady. I wish I brought my camera. Many nice night scenes with lights to photograph as well as some indoor shots. There was a pretty good street band playing some Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones music. I also enjoyed some of the scenery - nice looking woman in pretty clothes. Had dinner at Cafe Luna - I ordered the veal cannelloni which was a nightly special. Libbie had the Totelli cruscettia which is a seafood dish in a rich cream saucee. After dinner we went back to listen to the band some more and went home at 10 PM.

Finished the layout and sent it to AP Circuits in Canada. I made A change so it would accommodate a push button switch so that it could be used on Genny as a generator controller. I'm also looking into using this as a crawl space vent timer possibly tied into a humidity sensor to fine tune crawl space venting. I spent some time putting together orders on Digikey and Mouser. I ended up using Mouser but found out they don't carry Maxim parts. I ended up requesting samples from Maxim for both the A/D battery converter and the RS485 transceiver. Mouser will supply the resistors I don't have and the Max202 RS232 transceiver. I found that I have some surface mount LED's from my IBM days that I can use. The RED one was an SOT23 package which I tested and also tried on the LED pads and all looks well. I don't need the RS485 transceiver from Maxim yet and the Battery Monitor is for a photocell circuit which I haven't worked on yet. Dinner was the Trader Joe's Eggplant Parmesan which was very tasty. I programmed John's controller card and it ran away to 78 degrees C before I shut it down.

Tried reading the netlist into the layout program but there were some issues with the footprints. I ended up making a footprint for a solder cup DB9 rather than order a normal through hole one. Fixed some drill sizes to match the AP standard drill list. Libbie and I walked the lake so I could take bat house pictures then we went to Home Depot for divider wall plastic. I paid the rental money today for our Huntington Beach rental house and also paid the quarterly for Stoneybrook. This is getting expensive. Found out the $300 check never made it to David Kazan. Am investigating with the credit union. I successfully made a wiring run of Loge. Will sit on it overnight. Dinner was crab cakes with macaroni salad. I watched Adrift in manhattan on the Movie Channel.

I spent the morning working on the footprints for Loge. Around noon I noticed it was Tuesday so I needed to get groceries. Did the Trader Joes and Krogers runs then went over to the greenhouse to debug the generator. Found that a wire broke off the battery which resulted in no power to the relay box that enables the starter, ignition and transfer relays. Went back home for a soldering iron since the original was a crimp connection which got loose. I don't like the other crimp connections either although they seem to be tight. At some point I'll replace them with solder connections for reliability reasons. Got on a ladder and used my rake tied to a rope to clean the valley over the garage. Got a wheelbarrow of pine straw for the front then blew the scraps off the driveway. Dinner was Trader Joes pasta. In the evening we watched Dancing with the Stars that we missed last night and then I stayed up to watch the results show. Kim Cardashian was kicked off - I didn't really like her.

I worked on the software for Loge, the furnace selector. Also spent some time adding the PCB footprints to the design. Need to create some footprints for the relays and possibly some of the headers. Went to Krogers and picked up a chicken and potato salad and macaroni salad for dinner. The market had a meltdown today - down 777 points. Interestingly, the one preferred I was looking at from Lincoln National was only down .07. Why is it the stuff I own goes down several points while the stuff I want to buy never seems to be at a bargain. Dinner of course was the chicken and the two salads.

I worked some more on the Loge controller. Did a footprint for the relay I'm going to use. I also managed to find a pdf spec of the thing on the web which is good. Had to go to Ace hardware to get a replacement spring for one of the greenhouse shutters. The spring broke where it attaches to the shutter. This is a natural wear point. Libbie and I went to the greenhouse and measured and also discussed where and how to add an auxiliary heater. Modine makes a 125,000 BTU Hot Dawg heater that is also available in a 2 stage model. With some intelligent control algorithm I may be able have an AVR measure outside temperature and make a decision on which heater to use including using them both for really cold temperatures. When we got back we took a walk back to the Seagroves farmhouse which they are preparing to move. Pacific Standard also seems to be building a few spec homes which I think is foolish. Only 2 of the homes under construction have SOLD signs on them. There are also a few with Open House signs. I need to go back to the greenhouse and troubleshoot the generator auto starting circuitry. It seems to not be able to start the generator from the AVR controller card but manual starting works very well. This could be anything including bad Solid State Relays, low voltage on the relay coils, bad wiring to the relays, bad wiring from the relays to the generator. Libbie made her usual excellent pizza for dinner.

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.