I put the new 1x2 top on a plant shelf outside today and attached the fiberglass tape all around the edges. Mixed up a quart of resin and painted the shelf and glass. I sure was stinky but went well. Mixed another 1/2 quart and finished the job. Left it to cure for several hours before moving it to the garage. I'm happy with the result. had a trip to Lowes in Garner today. Took 401 on the way back to 1010. Stopped at Smithfields and had a BBQ platter for lunch/dinner. It was good along with sides of beans and potato salad. This evening i set up another tray on the saw horses. I built the 1x2 edging and applied fiberglass tape. Tomorrow I'll prepare a second on the trailer and then use the rest of the resin to see how far I get with the two trays. I have more resin on order from the Ohio dealer on eBay.

It was not a productive day. Woke at 4:15 and took Libbie to the airport for her PVD trip which took off at 6:10 am. Hooked up the water tank plumbing and filled the tank so i could monitor it on Pachube. Puttered with the shelf and discovered i cut the 1x2 edging to the wrong size. Came in and found the water from the backporch fish pond had drained onto the porch floor. The fish were in less than 2 inches of water. I went into panic mode and grabbed the backyard hose which luckily I had just repaired. Hook it to the newly installed spigot in the laundry tub and gave then about 100 gallons of carbon filtered water. Went down to Petsmart looking for a chlorine test kit and also chlorine remover. When I returned the fish were still alive which means the carbon filter worked. But in the chlorine remover anyway then topped the pond off with 200 more gallons of water. A while later I was in my chair and heard a crash on the back porch. The yellow koi had jumped out of the pond, knocked the water can over and was flopping around on the floor. I picked him up and threw him back in. Dinner was shitake mucshroom and tofu over jasmine rice, a trader joes entree. I loved it. I also had a Chile Relano earlier for lunch/dinner.

Finished up the plant trays. We now have 5 of them made. Libbie is packing for her PVD trip. I went to Cary and renewed the Corolla registration then stopped in Trader joes for Pasta and a few items. We had the pasta for dinner. It was quick and easy for Libbie since she's packing. in the middle of pasta making Bill called about the arrangements to pick her up and stay at his place. I turned the water and sauce off until she was done on the phone. The market is down over 500 today because of the S&P downgrade of US debt. It's ugly. I'm not going to look until the dust settles.

Loved Sunday Morning the TV show. It was about design and covered some Corning products, buildings, and the Villages where everyone rides a gold cart. Went outside and finished building shelves and the 1x2 tray around them. Will probably paint them next or perhaps build the fiberglass tray next and paint them in the plant room. Pachube continues to record my data. I'm going to add the water heater next. Put the second coat of paint on the remainder of the Plant room. This concludes te painting project. At 5 pm we went out to dinner with the Troutmans, Hanlans and HErners to Tony's Oyster bar. It was quite good. I had a Yuengling and blackened tilapia. We had a nice time with everyone.

We got an unusual amount of rain this morning. Wake County is reporting 2 to 3 inches and a flood watch of all things. I used the down time to get the Arduino web server working reporting the HVAC and attic temperatures. The ethernet wire I strung yesterday from my office table to the closet through the attic is working well. I crimped an RJ45 on each end surprisingly all is working. Meistersinger is putting readings to Pachube every 15 seconds and the web server is being updated every 5 seconds although the page is not refreshing automatically. I need to manually refresh the browser. We put the last of the paint in the playroom although it may need another coat tomorrow. At least this job is almost done. Went to Lowes in the PM for more wood and CPVC plumbing parts.
Dinner was fresh Krogers corn and robs with Shiraz.

The Sony PSP sold for $50. plus $10 postage. I packaged it up and dropped it in the Post Office. On the way home i stopped in Lowes and bought some plumbing parts and a roll of CAT 5 wire. Ran the wire from my work table to the closet via the attic. This will allow me to locate a switch in the closet for Traviata use and also for Meistersinger to monitor the house. Went outside and built a few more plant shelves as well as the sides for the fiberglass tray. When Libbie came home we had BLT's for lunch then hooked up the trailer and returned a sheet of particle board. I bought more nails and a dozen 2x4's. This is First Friday but George and Mary informed us yesterday they were moving next week so Libbie booked tickets to go there.
We went to La Cocina for dinner. Had 2 Margarita's which will effect me tonight. Stopped at Krogers on the way home and got milk. Listened to Armida a little on Met Opera Radio before going to bed. Happily the 2 sets of AVM's we listed on eBay sold, both for $10.

Built a plant shelf and took one apart. I need to cut the long 2x4's by 3 inches each. i found this out when I tried to put the 4x8 sheet of Plywood on and saw that it was short. Had to disassemble it. In the laundry room I got a lot of the CPVC plumbing done. The tank is plumbed to the filter and a line goes to the laundry tub. need a backer board to hook up the laundry tub spigot. In the other direction i need to run the lines for the plant shelf automatic waterers. I put the probes into the furnace and wired up the rest of the One Wire including putting a connector on the wire end. I successfully read the temperatures in the attic and the AC unit. Attic temp was 104, AC output was 58 for an 82 degree input. Dinner was Trader joe BBQ on sandwich rounds. This is nice chopped BBQ.

Hooked up the trailer and got some 2x4's from the greenhouse. Finished up the garage shelves then hooked up the blower and cleaned everything up. When Libbie came home she went out to Home Depot and had them match the blue garage paint. She then painted the shelves. They look nice. Dinner was pasta from Trader Joes. The Arduino came today. I downloaded the FTDI drivers, installed them and familiarized myself with programming on the Arduino. Made the cables for the upstairs temperature but that's a little beyond my level at this point. I'm still learning how to walk before I can run. I tried the UPS on the Arduino. Wow, the regulator on the Arduino gets hot. I need to feed the device with way less than 12 volts with a pre-regulator that has a big heat sink!

I put the brackets up for the filter supports. I'm now ready to start the plastic plumbing. First line will be down to the water tank input.

Did the grocery run and also stopped by the greenhouse to pick up some wood. I also went to Home Depot for more 8 penny nails as well as CPVC plumbing fittings to finish the filter and watering plumbing. At the greenhouse today I took some pictures of Jennifers purple hair. She wanted to match MacKenzie's hair. Did not finish the shelves - there is still a few more pieces to put on as well as trim work. Quit at 4 PM today which was still too long. Dinner tonight was corn and bean burger with Mango Sherbet desert. Very good.

Today starts my enrollment period for medicare! Wow, we've come a long way baby.
I started the day by working on the cold water supply to the carbon filter next to the water heater in the laundry room. Had some trouble with leaks the first time around but rewrapped the teflon and got it on tight and leak free. Behind the water manifold is the 2x6 Libbie painted yesterday. I placed it at a height that the bracket screwed into it will support the carbon filter. After I mount the filter I'll plumb it to the water tank using CPVC pipe. Went to Home Depot with the trailer and picked up a dozen 2x4's and 5 sheets of wafer board. The sheets on the trailer cause the trailer to be unbalanced towards the rear. Had some trouble on 64 coming home because the trailer started swaying back and forth. Pulled over and checked the load but no troubles found so I continued home but slower. Started the shelf building by starting with making the first shelf level. The others on top of that one as a base should be easier. Went back to Home Depot after lunch to get 16 penny nails which I ran out of. Should have also picked up 8 penny nails for the shelving sheets but I have enough for now. Dinner was Briyani.
Received the Gel Cell battery charger today for Meistersinger and also the resin and cloth for the plant trays. Moving forward! The big thing will be when the Arduino arrives Wednesday! Hopefully the software is ready to go.

I finished the Meistersinger 2 program for Arduino today. Learning Arduino is not hard and there are a lot of user written libraries that make it easy to do complex functions such as webserving and Pachube updates. i worked on the new water tank pan and got it plumbed which involved a Home Depot trip to get a 45 degree PVC fitting. Placed the new tank in the pan and started planning the filter hookup. Libbie painted a 2x6 for the support of the water filter and I picked up some galvanized pipes for the plumbing portion. Thank goodness it rained all day today. It's been a while. Dinner was Libbie's super pizza which she almost burned. We also were using up some Kroger cheese which was mozzarella only, no Parmesan.

I went out into the garage early. The guy was coming between 9 and 10 to pick up the posing stools and tables. I sanded the plaster and did a little touch-up. He arrived on time at 9:30 and picked up the stuff for $100. I threw in the camera case and overhead paper rolls. I'm glad to get rid of it all. I painted the outside wall but had lots of trouble. the roller was coming off the handle, using the extension the handle cracked. Worse, the paint can was leaking out the bottom and it's the wrong color. I finished the job with the wrong color paint. It will be OK since the shelves will cover it all up. When Libbie came home we went to Home Depot for paint and plumbing parts. She painted the hot water heater steel tank with Rustoleum Hunter Green. I put the outlet covers back on and picked up the drop cloths. We also did a greenhouse trip to measure the existing shelves that I'm going to duplicate. On the way home we stopped at Krogers for Sherbet and U shuck em corn. We bought 4 pieces for dinner which we had with Ribs and Shiraz. The corn was yummy for grocery store corn. During the day today I worked on an Arduino program. The plan is to measure one wire temps, send them to Pachube and also display them on a web page. There's lots of learning here.

I tried taking the housing off the new water heater and ended up cutting it away then scraped off the poured foam. What a mess. Packed up the garage and the foam and loaded the trailer for a dump trip. We had to wait at the dump for about an hour while they changed dumpsters. I was committed to getting rid of this stuff. We had a late lunch then after lunch I spackled the garage while Libbie sanded the water tank. I put the posing table on Craigslist and got a call right away. Things are moving along. We had stuffed flounder, corn and tomatoes for dinner with Shiraz.

Did some studying of the Arduino shields and decided the best route would be the Arduino Ethernet from Sparkfun since it's based on the Wiznet and is all on one board. I had to order an FTDI breakout board as well to program the thing. The Arduino seems to have a lot of software libraries I can potentially use to implement the monitoring system I've always wanted. i was in Lowes to buy a hose repair coupling and noticed a scratch and dent water heater on sale for $175. We went back with the trailer and bought the water heater as well as 8 sheets of $10 plywood to make the bill $280. I had a coupon that took $25 off $250. After the Lowes trip we went to La Cocina for Quesadilla's and a Margarita then home for skinny Minty ice cream. I stayed up studying Arduino some more.

This morning I mounted a Hobby Boards temperature sensor into a box and mounted it in the attic. I ran the Cat 5 cable to the top of the attic stairs. It looks like I can pry up one piece of plywood and route the cable into my office. The office closet is centrally located for home monitoring. I will order an Arduino Ethernet for this project to post it's sensor data to a web page.

After lunch we went to AgriSupply to research water tanks, picked up a will call at Wyatt Quarle, then went to the Farmers Market and BJ's. Dinner was the corn from the farmers market along with crab cakes. After dinner I started receiving the Nicholas audio files. We got a call at 10 pm from the Nicholas's who had finished sending all the audio files.

Did a grocery run this morning then came back to tackle renumbering the AVSA slides. This is quite a job. The Bayreuth Festival was going on so it was a fantastic opportunity to be seated and listen to Meistersinger, all 6 hours and 41 minutes of it. Exquisite!!!! Next I lightly sanded the playroom seams and put down what I hope will be the final plaster coat. The AVSA slides need the descriptions put into the onboard captions so that this data moves with the slide.

Dinner tonight was pasta. Worked late at night doing fixups and talking to the Nicholas's on the phone walking them through problems with their browser cache.

This was an exhausting day. Did a trip to Home Depot for more plaster, filled the car up at 3.58 using Kroger points and took a trip to Garner. Came home and sanded the playroom corner seam then plastered it. We had 3 deliveries today - the Hobby Board moisture sensors, the whole house carbon filter and our Kodak album. Dinner was Trader Joes BBQ pork on buns. I had two plus some Mango ice cream. I went to bed exhausted.

Watched the Sunday morning stuff as usual then went outside and did some watering of the flowers and general yard maintenance. Tried playing with hooking up a mist sprinkler to the garden hose with some Home depot plumbing fittings but I had no luck. Libbie made her usual excellent pizza using up all the tomato sauce we had in the closet. Need to get some more this week.

Sanded the playroom seam then put on a coat of plaster. Now that the bulk of the AVSA work is done it;s time to tackle the playroom. We had a lite dinner of BLT sandwiches then went to the last night of ADF, this was nite 2 of the student performances. There were no big numbers like last nights jazz band but we saw some wonderful dancing of male and female. Simply exquisite as she did leaps and formations into her partners waiting arms. Good stuff. Goodberry's afterward. It seemed to be High School girls night out. There were gaggles of them around.

I finished the photos of Philly 2011 after a very full day of doing this. In the evening we had a BLT and then went to the ADF MFA performances at Reynolds. It was an entertaining evening. When we arrived there were all these dancers performing movements in the lobby. We weren't sure what this was all about but then caught on. The movement continued down the aisles of the auditorium all the way to the stage. Pretty girls, summer clothes, it was heaven! The last number of the night was a full New Orleans jazz band with lots of colorful dancers and audience participation. Wow. After the performances we stopped at Goodberry's for Ice Cream. I had a concrete flavor of the day, banana, walnut and chocolate.

Libbie's birthday today! Put the Chumby in the PO dropbox then picked up the 8x10 for Libbie's birthday. Did some serious work on the AVSA convention pics. They really came out good but there is much to do. I found that the old Burbank project has op amps and an Atmega128 which will be handy to test the leaf wetness sensors from Hobby Boards. I placed the order today for 2 temperature kits and four moisture sensor boards. Got back to more serious work on the AVSA pics. Got all the way to pic 40 but skipped a dozen designs. The Sony shortwave radio sold on eBay so I packaged that item and dropped it at the Post Office. We left at 6:15 for our 6:45 Pit reservation. The beltline South end was stopped so we went to Western Blvd which was not much of a problem. Got there in plenty of time and parked on the street around the corner from the PIT near the new contemporary Art Museum. Unfortunately we were seated next to a crying baby who seemed to calm down after a while. I had the ribs and 2 glasses of Melbec. Very nice evening.

Dropped the Bee off at the Post Office and when I came home the Chumby One was sold. Wrapped it up and printed USPS postage for dropoff in Priority Mail. Dinner was Briyani. Had lots of trouble using ACDSee on my computer. Tried to Irfanview for a while but it doesn't have the nice database that ACDSee has. Photographed violets for Libbie as well as the Sony shortwave radio and the Playstation for my next eBay listings. Researched moisture sensing by reading the Circuit Cellar article. Will order the leaf wetness sensor from Hobby Boards. This may be what i need to detect wet mats on the lightstand. According to CCI, a square wave drives one sensor lead through a capacitor. The CPU monitors the other lead using the AD converter and looks for correlation. Positive correlation indicates the presence of moisture. No correlation means there is no conductivity due to a dry pad.

On the way to Trader Joe's I went to the greenhouse for a cardboard box to ship the Alien Bees then stopped into Staples for bubble wrap and tape. Took everything to the Post Office and met Libbie there. On the way from there I stopped into Lowes and picked up an entry lock for the side garage door. Painted the door then installed the handle. This was a very full day.
Anne sent the photo list which I need to get started on.
Listed the last of the Alien Bees this evening and it sold right away. Here we go again. I also listed the Chumby. Next I want to list the PSP and the Short Wave Radio as well as misc photo stuff. I have a lot of junk!!!!

After the hotel breakfast we got onto I-81 about 8 am going home. The Comfort Inn in Clarks Summit was pretty old and beat up. Breakfast was cold only, no hot choices but it was convenient. We took I-66/US17 around Winchester which goes over to I-95 in Fredericksburg. Got gas and bathroom stop in 7-11 in Fredericksburg. Gas was 3.58 which was way better than NY and New England. We had the leftover pizza for lunch which we stored overnite in the hotel refrigerator. Libbie took over driving at the NC Visitors Center while I fell asleep. Woke up when traffic was stopped for road construction 10 miles before the US64 exit. The rest of the way home was without incident, even the Raleigh rush hour traffic. We arrived home at 5 PM and were very surprised how clear the pond water was. Dinner was our usual Margarita and Quesadilla at La Cocina with a minor twist. We had a Sopaipilla which was tough and chewy, not like the one in Mechanicsburg last week. Started archiving the pictures this evening.

We left the hotel at 8:30 this morning heading to Dolgeville. Ran over something on the road on the NY Thruway going to Pauls. Lots of people checking their tires at the Rest Area since they all hit it too. Got to Paul's shortly after 1. Talked to Andrea beforehand then met Paul outside his greenhouse. It was a fun time. He said he will close this Fall if he does not get Natural Gas installed. Those old glass houses heated with oil are just not efficient. This is all too bad and would be a loss for the violet world. Left thre around 4 stopping in front of the Post Office to get a picture. Took an interesting road after lunch in McDonalds in Little Falls, NY. We went over hill and dale in a very scenic route straight down to get to I-88. Once on 88 it was high speed all the way to our hotel in Clark Summit. Had some trouble with Visa but got our card unlocked over the phone. Went down the street to a fantastic pizza and beer. They had Yuengling, we ordered a mushroom pizza which was very very good.