After the grocery run I worked out in the yard with the chain saw. Moved half of the log from the front yard that fell this Spring. Also cut up some logs in the back that fell but did not move them yet. Had some success talking to the new Conexant modem with Arduino. Still have not tried sending and receiving command strings. That's the next big step. Came in tired and slept for an hour. dinner was BBQ on a bun with sherbet for desert. Spent some time online figuring out how to pay the 3300 Visa bill. This included plane tickets to RI and Dallas for $1,000.

Had a few home depot trips about water faucets for the plant room and a UV tube for the outdoor fish pond. Installed the new tube and also did some cleanup of the flower bed. I want a bigger flower garden next year. We had a nasty thunderstorm late in the afternoon. Power blinked once and I think the fish pump turned itself off. Activated the remote control to keep it running. We'll see if the new UV tube clears the water by next week. Dinner was pasta in tomato sauce.

Libbie raked the driveway of all the debris. I took the cart and picked up all the pinestraw using it to mulch the large dogwood in the backyard. I also used the cart to pick up several loads of twigs around the yard. Came in and took a quick shower and then we were off to our first RLT performance of the season, Ruthless. I didn't care for it. The singing was awful, the acting pretty good. Libbie made her wonderful pizza again. We heard from Bill that all the power in Portsmouth was out. Also heard from Mary that they had no power in Waterville.

Watched the approach of the hurricane on TV. It made landfall at Cape Lookout at 7:45. We had light rain all day and breezy winds but according to local weather stations, nothing above 20 MPH. By late afternoon everything had calmed down. I used the time to install a temperature sensor in the Plant Room and I also got the Pachube feed update working in Arduino with my own code in a simple function instead of the library which I had trouble getting to run. We chose to stay inside because of the nasty weather and thawed some ribs from the freezer which we had with brown rice, broccoli and a bottle of Shiraz.

Supposed to be a hurricane this weekend, beginning this evening with rain. Started outside putting down resin on the plant trays. Tried to use up some stuff I had in a one quart can. This can was bad, congealed and came out lumpy. I discarded it, losing the brush in the process. Started over with the AgriSuply resin which ran out before I could finish. Made a quick trip to AgriSupply and picked up another can. Finished the job by 1:40 then took a shower and studied USB programming the rest of the afternoon. It started to thunder around 5 so I quickly brought the trays into the garage. The storm started with a pretty heavy downpour. Received some shocking news from Arlene that my cousin Tom Kawejsza died of a heart attack yesterday. I went to Trader joes and it was extremely crowded. The cashier said it was all hurricane evacuees coming inland and buying party food. Dinner was scallops in cream sauce over brown rice. Yummy. We also had a bottle of Santa Barbara Chardonnay which was an impulse purchase while waiting in the long checkout lines at Trader joes. The hurricane eye should hit NC tomorrow morning around 7:30 on the Outer Banks.

I set up 3 of the shelves out in the yard this morning for fiberglass. I had to install the 1x2 rail around the top of each of them then staple down the fiberglass tape around the edges. I chose not to do the resin today but instead did some reading about the USB host shield which I don't understand at all. This will be an adventure. This evening we left at 5:45 for a 6:10 movie in Apex, "The Help". It was excellent. This was one of the best movies I have seen in many years. The movie didn't get out until 8:50. We had a very late dinner at the Longhorn Steakhouse. We chose the 2 dinners for $29 which included salads and an appetizer. We had chilled shrimp, Salmon with baked potato and a glass of Woodbridge Cabernet. When I came home Janet Castiglione had called and left a message that she needed a new picture for the cover of the DVD. I called her back and chatted about the Movie then listened to what she needed. Went upstairs to the desktop computer and changed the background on picture 1 so that she would have a collage with a compatible color to the rest of her artwork.

This was a long morning. After playing with the Pachube stuff for a while I went to Garner then to AgriSupply for Resin and bolts. this took a while since the bolts had to be counted out. NExt stop was Northern Tool. Big mistake. They only had 2 of the 4 casters. why couldn't I have bought them in AgriSupply? Worse, they are repaving Buck Jones road and getting out of there was gridlock. To make matters worse I was stuck in line and the gravel truck was next to me receiving the road milling junk from the conveyor belt. Uggh. Sand and pebbles falling everywhere and it smelled awful. Used the resin after lunch and coated 2 of the plant shelves. I may have to get yet another can of resin!
Watching the track of Irene. It seems to be on a track for a glancing blow to the Outer Banks. Dinner tonight was Trader Joe's BBQ on a bun.

Finished building the last two shelves however it required a trip to Home Depot for more 6 penny nails for the sheets of plywood. Set up 2 shelves outside on the saw horses for resin which I don't have. Will have to make an AgriSupply run for more and also pick up the bolts for the shelves. While working on my computer at 1:53 this afternoon the hose started shaking. We had an earthquake. It was 5.9 centered in VA. Wow, how unusual. Worked on Pachube code. Still can't the server to recognize me. Frustrating. Dinner was fresh pasta tortellini from Kroger.

Built 3 more shelves. The design is a little different this time. I will center the lights over half the shelf instead of every 16 inches over a 4 foot shelf. Ran out of materials so after dinner Libbie and /i picked up plywood and 2x4's with the trailer. It was dark on the way home which is a problem because there are no lights on the trailer. Dinner tonight was Chicken Pad Thai which Libbie made with noodles from a box and our own chicken. Very nice.

This was a pretty busy day. I flattened the cardboard from all the light fixtures and fit it into the recycle bin. Next step was to finish changing out the old receptacles in the plant room. As a bonus I put a receptacle in my office closet. I badly needed one in there for the monitoring computer. When i hooked up that one I also mounted the power strip and the Trendnet Ethernet switch. traviata is now on this switch eliminating the wire running across the floor. In the plantroom I used borax and washed the shelves. this seemed to eliminate some of the tackiness of the fiberglass resin. Libbie moved the "tower" into place. All is well. We finally got some rain tonight just as the yummy pizza by Libbie was coming out of the oven. I don't think it was much rain though. Our plant room project is moving along.

This morning I finished the corrections for the AVSA DVD then packaged up a flat rate priority mail envelope with Click N ship postage to Dallas and set it out for USPS pickup. Next step was to move the remaining plant tray up into the plant room. This went pretty easily. With a little bit of a struggle I put the shelf on the top of the light stand and drilled all the holes to insert and tighten the bolts. Installed the last light fixture which went well and tested it. Next step was to build a 4 way receptacle set on the side of the stand and plug all the lights in. Fired it up and our wattage was 880. as measured by the Kill A Watt. Libbie took over the project and painted the shelves. Dinner was ribs with Broccoli and Shiraz.

This was a tough day. i essentially spent the whole day installing light fixtures on one shelf - the bottom shelf. This was a job I did on my back and it was truly a struggle. At least I got the thing in. Now all that remains is to install the top shelf and then install lights on the underside of the top shelf. Dinner was a very nice Scallops in cream sauce with a Brown Rice base. The Brown rice took 45 minutes to cook but was very very good. After dinner spent some time on the phone with Anne about the DVD. She wanted the captions corrected for a few of the exhibits. There were extraneous commas and periods throughout. She sent a list of changes needed. I'll make the changes and turn it around in tomorrows mail.

Went out to Lowes to pick up more light fixtures. I bough one 4 foot and two 8 foot strips. It took a while to get a procedure for hooking up the lights but after getting the 8 foot strip mounted and running I liked it enough to abandon putting up the four footer and did another trip to the store to get 6 more 8 foot strips. After lunch Libbie and I took a trip to JoAnne fabrics for matting. I wanted 18 square yards. They sold me 18 linear yards so we got almost twice what we need. This is OK since the second light shelf will be coming almost immediately behind the first one. Libbie worked on wash and waxing the back porch this afternoon after the fish tank emptied onto the floor last week. Dinner was BBQ on a bun. I still felt energetic and wanted to get the second shelf lights running but I needed wire nuts. Made a late night run to Home Depot. It was 8:30 and dark enough that I needed to use headlights. Summer is quickly slipping away. Returned home and got another shelf up and running. I also mounted the quad outlet on the stand but still need to wire it up. Went to bed happy because we're making forward progress on all of this.

Juggled some finances this morning. don't have enough in checking to cover $256 car payment at the end of the month. I'll have to do some creative juggling. Installed a shelf on the plant shelf rack before I went to pick up Libbie. The internet went out at 10:30. Cable crew on the corner made it go out. Left to pick up Libbie from her 1:05 arrival however I couldn't tell if the plane was on time since the cable is out. Stopped by Ace on the way there to get screws for the drill press stand wood top. Picked up Libbie and listened to her tales of dealing with the sibs. Lots of emotions and conflicts and stupidity. When we got home the cable was still out so I talked to the Troutmans who are not happy. Called Time Warner who had no record of anybody calling them. Escalated the repair - they eventually got it running a little after 6. Put up more shelves on the plant stand. The total is now at 4. We went out to dinner tonight at La Cocina. They put us in the back in a booth for 8. It was OK but noisey because of the carts of dishes going by. Had the usual La cocina Quesadilla and a Margarita. Libbie brought half of hers home for lunch tomorrow.

WooHoo! Finished the AVSA DVD and burned 3 copies. Sent two to Anne via Priority Mail using the USPS Click n Ship, paying for postage online. Put that out plus a Birthday Card for Aunt Helen. Her 96th birthday was yesterday! Moved to the garage and set up the 5th shelf out in the yard. Fiberglassed the whole thing before the sun got on it. This is now going well. UPS delivered another roll of Fiberglass tape. Checked Libbie in this morning. she is on a B list to Philly tomorrow and has an A seat on the flight to Raleigh. Spent a lot of time this afternoon trying to install some sort of Linux on the Windows Server. Tried andLinux twice making further progress each time. Still can't install the device drivers which kills this whole project. Did the normal Tuesday grocery run then talked to Libbie. Mary is about to arrive and they are all going to meet in the empty condo. Dinner was a chicken sandwich with pepper and tapatio. Very nice. Orange sherbet for desert.

Mowed the lawn today. It's been a while, especially for the lower half by the creek. finished the entire back. It's looking good. Had an interesting trip to Crabtree today. Enjoyable. Before that I worked some more on the AVSA DVD. I sure would like to finish this thing. Got the DVD Styler menus designed and finished. Now I need to create the backstage tour and it's done. Dinner was prepackaged ribs in bbq sauce from Krogers. Not very good. Won't repeat that one. Listened to Hoffman on the Met in the evening. Made a run to Home Depot around closing time to get bolts for the upright supports on the plant shelves. They need 5 inch long carriage bolts which I didn't have. All set to start mounting shelves now. After Hoffman this evening I listened to Aida until Midnight.

Today is another spotty rainy day. Moved some furniture around in the Playroom and laid the base shelf on the floor. This was after I attached wheels. It seems to roll around pretty good. I calculated the height of the support studs and set up outside to cut them. I only had 2 straight boards, the other two were warped. I'll see if I could use them for building more shelves. Went to Home Depot and picked up 4 more new studs. I cut each of 4 studs to 77.5 inches then painted them all blue. Used the remainder of the paint in the roller tray to paint some of the shelves in the plant room until I ran out of paint. Cleaned up and moved on to the Arduino. Hooked up the proto board i built and plugged all the sensors in. The H2O sensor does not work. It reads 85 all the time which gets converted to 185 Fahrenheit. Will probably have to put a scope on the line to figure out what's going wrong. Dinner was potato salad and the leftover rotisserie chicken. Not bad.

Got up this morning and got back to learning Spanish. It's probably been a week since I last did this. It's raining out so I probably won't set up the fiberglass outside today. It's also supposed to rain tomorrow. I may paint the supports in the garage instead.
Well, the rains did come. I moved 2 more plant shelves into the plantroom. I also picked up some sliders for the sofa so I could move it to the other side of the room. Went to Kmart for a new filter for my vacuum. The store is pathetic. I later learned it will be closing. Dinner was also lunch. I picked up a pulled pork sandwich in Krogers for 1.99. this was a pretty good deal.

After GMA I went into the shop and cut the protoboard and mounted the Arduino connectors as well as the RJ45 connectors. The RJ45's are epoxied down. Hope that holds up. Next I went outdoors and set up to begin fiberglass operations. The new fiberglass comes with tubes of hardener. You're supposed to count 14 drops per ounce!!!! Since there were 2 ounces of hardener for a gallon of resin I calculated that the needed amount it 1/4 oz per quart. I'm mixing the stuff a quart at a time to coat the panels. Just as I was preparing the last panel which was on the trailer it started raining!!!! I covered everything with the unused sheets of plywood since the resin was still wet on some of the panels and the third uncoated panel I did not want to get wet. Dinner was a rotisserie chicken from Krogers. On sale for 3.99 and I also had a 0.80 coupon making it 3.19. Wow. Moved the panels back into the garage - one unfinished and 2 finished panels. Will resume tomorrow. In the evening I wired up the RJ45 connectors previously glued to the Arduino board. I also watched "The Proposal" with Sandra Bullock. I liked it, it was a cute movie. Went to bed at midnight.

I had a pretty good morning. Went to Overtons but they were out of resin. Went next to AgriSupply in Garner and bought a gallon of resin. I'll try this out and cancel the resin from the eBay company in Ohio. Mixed up the old can of resin which had a little over half a gallon left. My first batch was a quart but it started hardening before I was finished. The next batch was half a quart. This went along better. Mixed another half quart for the second tray which was on the trailer. It's a lot easier with the tray on the saw horses. My back hurt from bending over to the panel on the trailer. I finished both panels with the remainder of the one gallon can. That makes it 3 panels per gallon of resin. The new gallon should get me through the next 2 panels with resin to spare although I will run out of tape before I'm done.
Dinner was stouffers French bread pizza. I ate too much this evening.

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.