Lib cleaned the place while I went to the Post Office with our package for Anne and some postcards. Made a list of things we need to bring next time.
We helped Peter and Joe take down the condo Christmas decorations. We stored everything in our storage unit and got going by 12 Noon. We took I-4 and listened to LaBoheme from the Met. Did a McDonald's drive through just before Orlando around 2 PM and kept going. Traffic was not bad. Got gas at exit 15 in Georgia then shortly after that we got into a traffic jam that lasted all the way to Savannah at exit 87 where we got off. Checked into the Hampton Inn and then went in search of food. Found a nice little Italian restaurant called Gianni's. I had a Calzone and Libbie had Lasagna. IT was a small family run establishment and was very very good. We paid $23 including tip for our meals.

I burned a DVD today and after Libbie and I reviewed it we added a few slides and re-ordered some things that were wrong like the cake cutting before the food service. I think the DVD came out nice. When we were satisfied with it, I burned 3 copies and put it in a priority mailer to Denton. We had our last lunch today at the clubhouse. I had a Rueben and Libbie had the soup and a BLT. Her soup was excellent. I took half the Rueben home for dinner. Finished reading the book "Doing It" about a couple that has sex 100 days in a row. It was mildly interesting in how they revved up their marriages with all sorts of romance in spite of kids and the pressures of everyday life.

New Years Day. We did a nice walk to the wetlands out in front of Stoneybrook then picked up some supplies at Publix. Had a new years lunch buffet at the clubhouse which was very nice. I was expecting a grill menu but instead it was a buffet whcih was nice by itself. Our dinner was cheese, crackers and Chunky soup. I spent the majority of the day correcting pictures in Photoshop.

After breakfast we went down to Venice and enjoyed the Venice Rookery again. We counted 6 active nests with herons and either eggs or babies. Very nice. Two of the herons were into nest building. It was nice to see them fly to shore and pick up sticks or pull cattails out of the ground for use in their nests. Next we filled our tank for 1.55 then stopped by Lowes for some plumbers putty so I could finish the drain project. In Osprey I stopped in the produce store for some fruit for lunch. They had Honeybelles. We bought 4 as a trial. They were very juicy and yummy. We ate two for lunch (one each). Will go back for more.

After a lunch of cheese and crackers we went back to the produce store and picked up more Honeybelles. I worked on the wedding pictures some more before we got dressed up for the party tonight. Left here at 7 PM. At the clubhouse we had horsedouevres of mushroom, duck, surf and turf, chicken. fruit and cheese along with glasses of Chardonnay. We took our seats for the salad course. Our table mates were Wendy and husband John from St Pete, Jim and Donna from Deer Creek, and a couple from the Stoneybrook villas. We danced, used our noise makers and had champagne at midnight. Left at 12:15 when they announced the last dance.

After breakfast we took a walk out to the nature trail and boardwalk with our binoculars. Just before that we went to Lowes and bought a new faucet for the Master bath. The old one was dripping so I decided to replace it rather than repair it. After our nature walk we stopped at the clubhouse for lunch. I had the fish sandwich and fries. Lib had the burger with fruit. We ordered 3 glasses of Yuengling draft total. It was a very nice lunch. This is getting habit forming. When we came back Pat said she had a renter for March. This is good news for us. I needed only one month to cover our expenses but the second month is nice insurance.
for our dinner tonight we had crackers and cheese then some corn chowder soup by Campbells (Chunky).

We visited the Venice rookery after breakfast then stopped at the clubhouse for lunch. I had a BLT which I saved half of for dinner. Had a long talk with Anne about the wedding pictures. She had been busy with Helen Mahr and also a trip to Wichita and was now in the assisted living since Helen was sick again. We had soup and I had the leftover BLT for dinner. What a tiring day!!! We took a wlak around Stoneybrook. My camera is still acting up. It only works half the time.

Didn't have enough quarters so I went to Publix to get the Sunday paper. About 10:30 we went for a walk to the nature wetlands in front of Stoneybrook. Enjoyed the warm sun and watching the various birds in the marsh. On the way back we stopped at the clubhouse and ordered lunch. I had the Stoneyburger with a Yuengling draft beer. It was very excellent. Cam home and looked up the birds we saw and finished reading the paper.

This morning we went to the Venice rookery and watched baby herons and egrets. This place is a find. There were others photographing the birds with large telephoto lenses. When we came back we had lunch in the grill room. I had a Stoneyburger and 2 beers, Yuengling on draft. That took care of me for the day!!!! Came back and went through wedding photos and put together a wedding article for AV magazine. Have not heard from Anne in several weeks. Our dinner was chunky soup, clam chowder. We made one Publix trip for egg nog and frozen yogurt. Before dinner we had our egg nog with cheese and crackers.

This morning we went out to Selby but first stopped at the Mall to check out jackets on sale. Went to both Macys and Penneys but did not buy anything. Went to Selby and enjoyed the garden as usual. In the evening we went out to rib night aat the dining room. It was a rib buffet which I did not enjoy although the food was good. Table service was lacking and kids running through the dining room were distracting. Dinner was $84 and not worth it.

Left at 7 AM after breakfast but first had to stop at the darn greenhouse for something or other. Finally got going again at 7:30. We had light rain all the way to SC. Traffic was heavier than I expected. We stopped for gas in GA and then again on I-4 West of Kissimmee in Davenport. The weather in Florida was much nicer. There was a note on our door from Peter and Christa welcoming us and to stop over if we needed anything. We went over to their place and had wine with them in the evening after we had chicken salad sandwiches for dinner that we brought with us. There are no restaurants or grocery stores open for Christmas day.

I went out this morning looking for a belt for the fanjet in house 1. The new belt installed in October was shredded to a thin sliver. Tried Johnstone, RE Michels and PEP Boys. No luck anywhere. Finally drove across town and stopped at Graingers and bought 2 belts. Stopped at Krogers for eggnog before they close for christmas. Went to the greenhouse and installed the belt. It seems to work pretty good. It's nice and even on the pulleys. We had presents this evening, one day early. I got Lib Russel Stover candy and a Debbie McCromber book. Dinner this evening was salmon stuffed with spinach, etc and a yam with a bottle of Shiraz. Had to go back to the greenhouse to check things - it was 64 outside so no heat test. We went to a place down Penny Rd to see Christmas lights and were not disappointed. A house there had 87,000 Christmas lights.

Brought the JTAG over to the greenhouse and successfully put the new firmware into LOGE. Now the thing blinks out the temp correctly. Yeah!!! This version also has some cleaned up code for handling negative centigrade temps. Went over to Trader Joe's and got wine for the trip. IT was a party scene over there. Did a Krogers run and bought Krogers brand wheat crisps which turned out to be stale. Had to return them. Deposited the TDSP check and paid the bills - taxes, Visa and condo. Libbie and I returned to the greenhouse in late afternoon where I ran a generator test. It needs some maintenance starting with new spark plugs. Blew the driveway off since the wind from the past few cold fronts put down a lot of pine needles.

THis was to be a day of working on pictures. Libbie called to tell me the aux heater was on even though the temperature was 26 degrees. I drove over there and looked at it myself. Started building a second LOGE so I could debug the problem. Had trouble bringing up the second LOGE because the configuration silicon fuse was set to clock divided by 8. I wired up the JTAG as an ISP programmer. It didn't work the first time. found I counted pins wrong on the AVR. Fixed the wriing and sucessfully programmed the fuse and the unit worked correctly. Tried all sorts of machinations to get the thing to fail. Rigged it so that it was 26 degrees with the juper in and 22 degrees without the jumper to simulate outdoor temps. It did not fail. Work into the evening when it got cold. Built some probes and put one outside when it was 25 degrees. Just by accident I started looking at variable values with the JTAG and discovered the negative temperatures were not being handled correctly. When it is below 32F, it is negatice Centigrade temps. The probe only does centigrade. Made a trip to the greenhouse at 11 PM and retrieved the card for programming. Brought it back out there at midnight and hooked it up. The temp was 27. The pushbutton readout was always reading 32. Went home at 12:30 midnight but at least the big heater was on. Dinner was shrimp jumbalaya.

This was a squandered day. I have a microwave to work on, the nicholas pictures to organize and the Venus-LOGE circuitry to program but instead I looked at some of my digitized videos and tried uploading one to You Tube. Heard from Harrys daughter Alison from Facebook. I found some of my medical records in the file in the back room so I digitized them and uploaded them to the Life Bits site. Libbie made her traditional pizza but she used white flour instead of wheat which made the crust a different texture but still good! In the afternoon today I went to the greenhouse and tightened the fanbelt on the fanjet of the zux heater. Had to remove the two lower motor bolts and put them into the next lower slot so the motor can now be slid lower to tighten the belt even more. This worked well.

Didn't have much time this morning. Worked a little on Venus before it was time to go to the Met HD performance of Thais which started at 12. The opera was fantastic - we enjoyed the wonderful singing and the behind the scenes stage mechanics. The Meditation received it's own round of applause. After the performance we went to Farm Fresh and picked up 2 chicken Vienna's which we had with yams and Chardonnay. Very nice end to a good day. When we got out of the theater today the ground was wet - it had rained while we were indoors.

Got a lot more of the Usart code working. I can now request status over the 232 and it responds. In addition, it can forward status out the 485. Went with Libbie in the morning to get a coat at 60% off at Macys. Libbie got a nice London Fog coat and we had a $10 off coupon. At 1 we went to Dickeys BBQ in crossroads after seeing a review in the paper. Our last time in Dickey's was in Dallas. This one wasn't as good. Printed more pictures at Walgreens because we used the first 30. Had to pick them up late at night. While I stood in line to pay for them, Lib took the pictures out of the pack and stuffed envelopes in the parking lot. We then dropped them into the Post Office slot and took a ride around looking at Christmas lights. It was 64 degrees at 9 PM. Dinner was frozen Canneloni from Trader joes.

I traced through the Usart 232 code on Venus and made some changes so that the incoming packets from the terminal program on Mazeppa can be decoded. I even got the address recognition functioning. It determines what to do with the packet routing. Libbie tried vacuuming upstairs and in the process, the circuit breaker tripped. I had 3 computers powered up and all the violet light shelves in the playroom. In the evening I built an address list for our violet friends. I then used this list to write Christmas cards. My card writing is done for another year. Dinner was tortellini pasta in tomato sauce.

Worked on the Usart of Venus and finally got it to send Hello World to the terminal program on Mazeppa. This means a lot is working. Had no trouble with baud or tx, rx connections but the UDR empty interrupt was missing in the code. Added this and now use the tx complete interrupt to turn off the LED and all seems to work well. Next step is to send a packet from the terminal and have the Venus program interpret it before moving in more hardware such as a second Venus to communicate and possibly a LOGE to pass status polls down to. Worked on Marantha's pictures today and uploaded them to Walmart. When I went to Walmart to pick them up they were out of 8x10 paper so no 8x10, just the 4x6's. I also ordered a batch of our family wedding picture for Christmas cards. Wrote out cards to my side of the family and finished this task.

Did the groceries this monring. Couldn't find yellow raisins for the Babka Lib wants to make today. Scanned both Mom and Dad's funeral registry books and converted them into PDF's. I emailed the pdf's to Arlene and also posted them on Google docs.

An interesting day. Received Mom's funeral guest book in the mail from Arlene. I plan to scan it into a pdf. Worked on defining a packet protocol for Venus to act like a gateway from the radio and also poll the local 485 network for alerts. Went over to the greenhouse to check the Fanjet fan belt. It's loose. Stopped to get gas at the 1.59 station but they were out so I paid 1.65 at the BP. Not bad either. We went out to La Concina for dinner. I took home half of my Pollo Chipotle which I had with 2 Margaritas. Lib paid for dinner - $24 with a $4 tip.

Got up a little later than normal. Went out and got a newspaper while Libbie made ham and eggs but I already had cereal. We did egg and ham omelets for lunch then took a walk back to the Seagrove house which is getting a new foundation. Went to the library this afternoon. Lib had a book come in and I found a book called "Doing It" about marriage and sex. Lib said she should be embarrassed. I thought it was funny.

I spent most of today trying to get Venus running. The Jtag does not recognize the device. Tried replacing the CPU - a daunting task but my last resort. Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem. Took out the scope and started probing the interface. Found that the resetline was a hard zero. Found a short where the reset trace went under a decoupling cap and it was shorted by the cap leads or the solder. Cut the line and wired around the short which fixed the problem. Used the scope to set the timer so that I now have a one second heartbeat. Next step will be to get the Uarts running.
We went to Trader Joes to get ribs and raspberry orange cake for desert. Both were yummy. We had a bottle of Shiraz with the meal. Went up to bed early to read my T Boone Pickens book.

Libbie finished her book, the grapes of wreath so we watched the movie tonight after dinner. The movie was so so - not bad, especially after reading the book but not the greatest. Tried to get the Venus to respond to the jtag today but no luck.

Spent a lot of the day working on the build of the Venus card. Everything seems to fit OK. I don't have the resistors for the 485. Dinner was yams and ham with apple sauce.

Worked on the Nicholas photos today. They're not too bad although I wish I didn't have to do so much photoshop work on them. We have some controversy with the convention chair and co-chair listing and Rich Follett. I designed a pin with Libbie today. Drove over to Krogers and dropped the Esotherm off for shipping to Pat today. It will be $35 which includes them packing the device. Dinner was bean burgers with lettuce and ketchup. No onion which was sad.