Went to Krogers this morning at 9:30 because I needed gas and it was Tuesday. Bought some groceries then bought a $25 Home Depot gift card which pushed me over the top for a gas discount. Filled up then drove to Leith for my 11:00 appointment. They applied the TSB which seems to have helped with the jerky ride while cruising a little bit. It didn't totally cure the problem, there is still some engine RPM variation. Called Libbie to check on what she wanted from Trader Joe on my way home and found she was at Logans with Jennifer and Joy. They waited and we had lunch together. Very nice. Came home to watch the 2 PM watering which went off without a hitch. I'm happy with the program. Manually set it for 30 seconds instead of the 15 it was set for today. It's due to activate on Oct 2 at 2 PM for the next watering of 2 benches for 30 seconds each. It seems to be robust. Spent the afternoon putting away the ladder, tools and materials from the backyard construction project. After packing we went out to La Cocina for a Margarita and dinner to celebrate the end of the retail phase of the greenhouse. I had the #26 combo which was chile rejano, an enchilada and a burrito. Very nice.

It was too wet to get on the ladder this morning. It rained overnight and the tar paper was covered with water. Worked on the Tower Timer. The DS2408 seems to be unreliable with occasionally stuck bits which is not acceptable. Libbie needed some trays brought to the greenhouse. Went over there and looked at a rabbit hole in the back as well as a sidewalk with Joe's name and handprints in the concrete. Came back and started hauling shingles up to the new roof. This was killing me. By the end I was really winded and dizzy. Went inside and took a shower then started working on the timer again. I decided to throw the DS2408 chip overboard and wire directly from the AVR ports to the relay driver transistors. This seems to be much more reliable. I'm using the RJ45 connector that was going to be for One Wire and repurposing it for the relays. I can drive all eight relays with the RJ and use an external ground. Dinner was a bean burger. Talked to the Score card people about our missing score card. They said they will look into it.

Did a Home Depot trip with the trailer and picked up another sheet of plywood, shingles, drip edge and flashing. Came home and put the plywood on the roof then covered it with the tar paper and attached the drip edge. I decided not to do the shingles until tomorrow. At least everything is dried in. Libbie took two of Joe's leftover pizza doughs and combined them into one for a very good white dough pizza.

It's still spitting a little bit of spotty rain but I want this job finished. Ripped off the existing corner 1x4 and built a small extension on the roof to make it 25 feet to match the greenhouse gutters. The gutters are 12 feet each but are offset one foot from the porch wall so I need 25 feet of roof. Had a trip to Lake Wheeler rd this morning. Fun. Dinner was ribs with squash and shiraz.

It rained all day today. I used the time for indoor activities. First step was to add an LCD to the Tower Timer. This was a lot of wires but it all worked on the first attempt. the LCD library was very useful. Had to do a few tweaks to my code but in short order I was able to display the current time and also the alarm time. There's some artifacts that need to be cleaned up but it's very functional. We watched the scheduled watering today at 2. One issue is the new alarm time is 2:01 instead of 2. The telephones arrived today. One of them has a bad LCD. I spent some time this afternoon wiring a new phone jack in the closet and then checking the house wiring. Some of the jacks are wired backward. I'll fix this. We had tuna sandwiches for dinner early then left at 7 for the Symphony. We thoroughly enjoyed the Bernstein concert with Jamie Bernstein, the composers daughter. The mezzo was from the Sarasota opera. The 5 singers were quite good, so was the symphony. our conductor was beautiful, she's nice eye candy.

Wrote out a 3,000 check to the credit union for paying Stoneybrook bills. Went online and paid the 1776 membership dues and also the 782 condo maintenance fee. From the Cu I went to Cary to renew the Prius and the trailer at the DMV office in South Hills shopping Center. Came home and worked on digging holes for the 4x4 posts and bolting them to the roof framing. After a lunch of pineapple and apple I went to Home Depot for 2 80 pound bags of concrete. Cemented both posts into the ground.. it was sprinkling lightly which was OK. Found a Facebook BOGO code for the Symphony and bought tickets for Friday night (tomorrow). It's a Bernstein night.

Cut the ends of the roof section that was three inches too long. Nailed the header back on and then started working on the roof supports. Cut 14 of them which will be nailed to the top of the joists to give the roof a 3/24 pitch. went on an adventure to home Depot with Libbie. We bought 16 foot 4x4's which we took home on our 6 foot trailer. Fun!!!! I propped them up in the back on a pallet which stopped them from dragging on the ground as the trailer bounced but all the weight was still not on the ball. the trailer sways badly when driven like this so we went down 64 at 35 MPH with our flashers on. The trip home was uneventful, thank goodness. Tomorrow I'll put the 4x4's up. Dinner was Vegetable Lasagna, frozen from Trader Joes. We enjoyed dinner on the back porch with the fig tree lights on and a single glass of Shiraz each. Nice.

After the grocery run I got to work cutting boards for the rest of the roof. Made a big mistake by cutting the boards to 24 inches instead of 21. I discovered this after I got it up. I decided to bolt it down and cut it in place. Went to Home Depot for a new Skil saw blade but will cut it tomorrow since I'm too tired this afternoon. We watched the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars which Libbie Tivo'ed last night. Donated $20 to Penny Smith for her Mama Jamma Ride in Austin.

I found the TT4 LCD display and checked out the pinout. It includes a PS/2 keyboard interface which only uses 2 wires, data and clock and the Arduino Library supports PS/2 keyboards. I'm going to connect the display/keyboard combo to the Arduino. Went outside and killed myself trying to get the roof section up. The first 3 attempts failed. As I manually lifted the roof over my head with the other end leaning on the wall, the ladder I wanted to rest it on fell over. I had to rethink the situation and used the come along to hoist the roof section. This worked well with more control but it was slow going. I was winded and tired after this exercise. For the next section I'll use the same technique. Dinner was Chile Rejano while Libbie had Mac and Cheese.

It's a rainy day. I stayed inside and put down the three remaining pipes on Tower 1. I also hooked up the relay for shelf 3 to the relay box which I mounted on the wall. Programmed the controller to do a 15 second watering cycle at 2 PM. It did this but we decided it needed more water so I did 15 more seconds at 2:20. The mistake was doing a third watering, this time manually for 5 more seconds. This flooded the bench too much but all the plants are now watered. Libbie said we need an LCD to show what's happening. I agree and started looking into deploying one. Arduino has an LCD library available. This was a successful day. Libbie also talked to a guy named Keith at Family Garden Center about buying the greenhouse steel. I prepared a price list of all the equipment.

Today I mounted the relays into a steel box along with a power supply. I have a single power cord feeding everything - the transformer and a 5 volt power cube. The power cube runs the Arduino and the relay board. It all seems good. Tomorrow I'll mount it all on the wall and wire it up to the solenoids. In the afternoon Libbie and I went to BJ's at crossroads for ribs and cheese then stopped into Home Depot across the street for plumbing pipes and 2x6x8 to finish the roof framing for the new greenhouse. Dinner was ribs, shiraz and butternut squash.

I had trouble getting the relays to work on the card then found that I had the One Wire chip, DS2408, soldered in upside down. After I carefully unsoldered each pin I put it down correctly and fired up the Arduino and was able to run the led strobe program which exercised each relay back and forth. Worked on getting my tower timer program working correctly. At first it seemed like the timer was not working but it really was the while loop handling in Arduino. Another issue was the check alarm. Couldn't get the return working. It turns out that I left out a return statement, I had only set the return value but did not send it back. I had to leave this momentarily because Libbie wanted to go out to dinner at La Cocina. We had the usual Quesadilla and a Margarita. When I came home I worked some more on the timer and had overwhelming success. The thing is ready to be packaged and deployed.

This was a much nicer day. I found the problem with my Arduino uploader. The wrong board was selected in the IDE. I uploaded and finished debugging the time and alarm routines. this can now be used in timing functions. Outdoors I took down the dish from above my workshop then went to the greenhouse and got the smaller extension ladder. This made a big difference. I threaded the new wire for the floodlight, finished cutting the 1.5 inches off the siding and installed the first piece of header. i also cut all the new header blocks. The project is moving along OK. Dinner was crabcakes with Farmers market tomato on a bun.

Worked outside on trimming 1 1/2 inches from the upper siding above the new roof to accommodate a slope. This was hard work. I also decided to relocate floodlight up higher but the satellite pole is in the way. need to remove it. Came inside to work on the tower timer and was bummed out that the thing won't upload anymore. I got online quickly and ordered a new USB FTDI chip. While ordering I also picked up some Xbee sockets and more headers. We had BBQ sandwiches for dinner before we had to go out to the Carolina Ballet rehearsal. The rehearsal was great. We had free wine (3 glasses ), imported chocolates and a very nice performance. We left at 10:30 but it probably was still going to continue. A nice evening.

Worked on the RTC alarm function this morning before going to Home Depot for framing wood for the Downing greenhouse roof. Came back and got ready for TAVS at 12:30. Sheila came early at 12:00. The meeting was nice and was basically planning for next year. After the meeting I spent hours worth of time figuring out how to write the DS2408 PIO. I think I have it figured out. I'm expecting the Hobby Board relay board on Thursday. Dinner was the Eggplant Parmesan again.

Joe left this morning for TN. He was going to white water raft in the mountains on his way there. He offered to come back in Nov to help with the greenhouse. I spent some time getting the RTC running. It seems to work OK. I need to find how to get the library functions to read/write the RAM. I also need some DS2408 programming info for the Hobby Board relay board which will be coming. I went to Krogers for Broccoli salad ingredients for violet club tomorrow. Made the salad and refrigerated it. Libbie made eggplant Parmesan which we had for dinner. I took down the strip of siding on the back of the house where the lean to greenhouse will attach. This went well.

Didn't watch the Sunday morning shows. They were doing 9/11 junk which I wasn't too interested in. Started looking at how I was going to assemble the RTC, Xbee, moisture sensing and relays. Went outside to put away the myrtle and rose of Sharon I cut down. Libbie and Joe went to the greenhouse, Joe returned with the Jade and put it on the backporch. He volunteered to remove the two stumps from the bushes which was great. In the meantime I was putting away bricks and got stung by yellow jackets next to the shed. Painful!!!! Joe had a Panthers pizza party at 4. Cole and Emily, Josh and Kelly with their two kids and us. The pizza was great. I had 2 Yuenglings and a glass of wine. Too much alcohol. In the meantime I cut a proto board and glued two RJ45's on it upside down. Will mount connectors for the RTC and Xbee.

Finished up the water on Tower 1 then went outside to cut down the shrubs for the new greenhouse. While doing this Joe arrived with Libbie. He went to the greenhouse first from his TN trip. We got cleaned up and went to the Farmers Market restaurant for lunch. I had BBQ chicken with field peas and sweet potato fries. I did not care for the peas. We had tuna sandwiches for dinner because we were full from lunch. Joe went to Josh's for dinner with the gang.

Moved Tower 1 away from the wall and installed the manifold. This went pretty well. In the afternoon Libbie and I went to Logans for lunch then drove over to Hancock fabrics. while she shopped fabric I did Trader Joes in front of the place and got wine and supplies. Dinner was chicken Serenada with TJ's Organic brown rice. I bought this as a trial. We like brown rice but it takes a while to cook. The Trader Joe's stuff is frozen in microwave packets. It wasn't too bad.

Went to Home Depot and bought the rest of the fittings and solenoids to finish up the tower irrigation project. Built a manifold for Tower 1 but did not install it. Tower 2 is totally finished. I started doing some programming for the relay timer for the towers. Ordered a pair of plain Jane Arduinos from Sparkfun to get this going further. I really need the hobby Boards relay board. The UPS guy left 2 packages under our mailbox. My Nook color and the Ben Meadows squeeze bottles were left out there. Libbie brought them in. I like the clarity of the Nook color. It came with a charge on the battery although the warnings say to make sure it has a full charge before using. Dinner was Briyani. I'm still waiting for a 4 GB SDHC card so that I could root the Nook and install Android on the thing. It's pretty acceptable right now as is.

Finished up the manifold and also the plumbing to Tower 2. Put a cap in line where it will extend to Tower 1. I used the darkroom timer and did an experiment where I watered the bench for 2 cycles, each of 15 seconds. My future test will be a 10 second cycle. Eventually I will monitor shelf moisture but the goal right now is vacation at the end of the month. Dinner was Pad Thai from Whole Foods enhanced with chicken ala Libbie.

Worked on finishing the lighting on Tower 2. Picked up a box of tubes from Lowes and outfitted the fixtures. Finished wiring the 4 gang outlet and tested the Tower. One of the tubes has a problem, it won't light. I also bought a washing machine hose set to connect the towers to the water supply. Libbie cut some matte material for 2 shelves. Tomorrow i will finish the supply plumbing and will do some fill trials. Dinner was spinach filled tortellini.

This was a 2 different Lowes day. In the morning I went to Lowes N Cary to get light fixtures. I need 4, they only had 2. Picked up some plumbing parts to work on the Tower Irrigation. In the afternoon Libbie went with me to Lowes at Crossroads where we got the two remaining light fixtures. We also stopped at Walmart in Apex to get containers for flour and rice in the cabinets. Finished up the remaining 2 lights. Tower 2 is completed with the exception of purchasing light tubes and building the power cord. I studied the needs of the controller for the tower and decided that in order to get 8 moisture sensors on a controller I need to build a custom PCB with relay switching of the sensors. This same controller will operate solenoid relays via a one wire interface to a Hobby Boards relay board. The dilemma is what to do for communications. I want to use a wireless Xbee but am unsure if i can get this working before we leave for Florida Sept 28. If I use RS485 for communication I will need to run wires. The Xbee however requires a 3 volt interface. Dinner was pork chops, sweet potato and apple sauce. We had a bottle of shiraz with dinner. The end of Labor day and the end of summer.

After the usual sunday morning programs I started working on the lights for the second tower. This is a big job. I started with the hardest first which is the bottom shelf. Finished up the two shelves (four light fixtures). Now I need to get more lights from Lowes. I'll try Lowes North Cary tomorrow. Libbie made her wonderful pizza again which we had with leftover wine. I resumed reading "Exposed" which is a local story aboud sexting. I don't like stories where bad things happen.

Finished up the last shelf this morning then vacuumed everything. Libbie came home and painted the light shelf while I worked on the water plumbing. Drilled a hole in the door frame for the water pipe and glued together the beginning of a Hoson siphon station in the line. Late in the afternoon we made a Lowes trip to return some 1x2 lumber and then bought 4 light fixtures. This was half of what we need but all they had. Dinner was leftover eggplant Parmesan with Shiraz. We even sat on the back porch and talked about the phasing down of the greenhouse while we drank from a second bottle of wine. Not a good idea but we were happy.