Woke to another morning of coastal rain. I decided to install the Android SDK but spent 4 hours downloading over a crummy 3G connection and it's still not up to date. I will start over again but from home on a good connection. I oiled the bike seat and took a ride around the neighborhood. the squeak is gone - much improved. Now, if it will only last. I also got my watercolors out and started painting a landscape. As usual, I was dissatisfied. Finished reading "Dress Not required" which was a cute 50 page sexy ebook. I enjoyed it. For dinner I warmed the leftover ribs and baked potato from last night which I had with a bottle of Yuengling. Wow, it was very good. the Tero ant killer is working well. Hundreds of ants are gathered around a drop of the stuff I put on the kitchen counter. Started gathering my things and running the washing machine for my trip home tomorrow. I can be productive at home so I'll drive Saturday. When I get home I want to try installing the Android SDK and also fix Libbie's hot tub.

Continuous thunder and lightning from 7 am until about 4. Didn't go out except for a trip to 7-11 on Lockwood and Clark. got a fillup at 3.62. This was a place that has the same price cash or credit which is why I go there. Stopped at Sears and got 3 pairs of shorts and a polo shirt for $35. The shorts were 7.99 each and the polo was 15. I also got a $5 discount for multiple purchases. Ride my bike alll the way round Stoneybrook at 4:30. the sky is clear blue again. I had the salad from dinner last night for lunch today but at 4 PM. I was hungry. Worked some more on the main slide show. will finish it up tonight after dinner. Lots of ants in the kitchen. I've been fighting them with 409 cleaner. May have to see if they still sell Taro in the stores.
Ordered a rack of ribs from the clubhouse. Ate half the rack and put the salad away for tomorrow. The cranberry walnut roll was to die for. I had this with 2 bottles of Yuengling Black & white. Yummy. On the way to the ribs I stopped in Lowes and picked up some Taro and put a few drops on the counter to get ants. Let' see how this works. It's not supposed to be uised around food prep areas. My new shorts and shirt fit perfectly. I may want a few more of the shirts from Sears, they're that good. List price says $50 which is crap. I paid $14.99. It's already broken in with rib sauce down the front.

Hooked the analog up to the living room TV. Channel 17 hAS a beautiful blonde weather babe with an hour glass figure, Shay. I did the hookup to watch GMA this morning. No milk for cereal. Did a Publix trip at 9 and got milk, fresh pineapple slices and more broccoli salad. It turned out I wasn't too hungry and dumped half the cereal bowl into the disposal. Wonder what's up with that? Anyway, it's a good start to a diet. Got to work on the AVSA photos. Selected and processed the extra photos then started adding them to a slide show with audio and captions. It's going well. Got the bicycle out and pumped up the tires then rode to Oscar Scherer when it started rumbling towards the West. HHeaded home, I was tired anyways. Total mileage is 8 today. Oscar is 897, Central Sarasota is 894 for 6 miles roundtrip plus one mile to the trail and back for 8 miles. I'm glad I have energy since this was long but not too bad.

Left for Sarasota this morning at 6:48. Because I have so much to do at home I really don't want to go. The Nicholas's sent the MP3 files late last night and I saved them all onto my laptop. Need to spend time and assemble them. The trip almost went well until Daytona where I hit heavy rain as I turned onto I-4. The thunder and lightning stayed with me off and on until Tampa. I lost over half an hour due to 100 miles of rain. Got to Sarasota at 6:12 PM. Everything looks good except they turned the wrong water faucet off as expected. Did not stop except for gas at Florence for 3.39 and St Mary for 3.57. Traffic was not bad except for a car fire near Disneyworld wich caused us to creep and crawl even slower than the rain.
Went out on a shopping trip to Walmart. Picked up salad ingredients and detergents, both dishwasher and laundry. I probably should keep our laundry detergent in the lockup. The salad was not great. I had too much vinegar and it wasn't nearly as good as Cami's.

This is a busy day. The A/C controller went through the night without error. this was a nice accomplishment. Lib also tested it by turning it on manually. A little while later it managed to turn the A/C back off. It samples the power every half hour. If it gets a synch error, it samples it several times then changes the synch status. This causes the temperature routine to notice and correct the A/C power state. Lots of different processes here. Built the people picture section of the AVSA DVD this morning then went outside and finished putting the hot tub back together. Everything seems to be working again. Filled the tub with water and set up a temperature monitor. It doesn't seem to be warming very fast.

Made a few more changes and corrected some errors today for the Mozart controller. I think I have it performing reliably. Did a Lowes trip to get a shelf for my closet and light tubes for the towers. Researched foggers and ended up buying one from Amazon which was highly rated. We shall see. I think I will try for Florida on Tuesday. Today the mosquitoes were pretty bad so I mixed up some Malathion and sprayed the garden at dusk in order to not kill butterflies and bees. Libbie made her pizza with fresh basil and it was super yummy. the fresh basil flavor made it delicious.

Worked quite a bit on wewriting the state machines for Mozart inot something simpler and less kludgy. It still is failing. Reprogrammed Wolfie to more reliably report power. Dinner was leftover eggplant lasagna.

The A/C controller is getting to be a pain in the rear. It was on again today when it shouldn't have been. We got some more rain this evening. The bugs are getting bad. Still able to get my 2 mile walk in around seagroves pond. Worked all day on AVSA pics. I want to finish up the orticulture, actually the whole DVD. Dinner was eggplant freshly picked form the garden. We had a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc whihc was left over in the refrigerator.

The photos got finished this morning. Still have the rest of the DVD to put together. Glenda of Austin sent a CD of her photos. While all this was going on, Kitty sent a boatload of stuff for the website for the MAAVS convention which I promptly posted. Dinner was 3 bean salad with watermelon and ice cream for desert.

All day today and into the evening I did the AVSA horticulture photos. Wow, this is a lot of work. Still doing the 2 mile walk through vintage Grove. It is significantly cooler outside. This is unusual for august, accompanied by almost daily rain. Dinner was Ramen noodle salad. Yes! We did a Farmers market trip this afternoon and got a watermelon, fresh corn, peaches and blueberries. Had the corn for dinner.

Took Christa to the airport at 5 am today for a 6:30 flight. Came back and did the Tuesday groceries after watching some GMA and Olympic crap. Went back upstairs and did a bunch more photos. As of noon I'm up to 20. It rained on and off all day but the total was only 3/8 inch. This will do. Took my walk, cleaned up then went back to pictures. I'm now up to 56. Dinner was Ramen Noodle salad that Libbie made. It was very good. Ice Cream for desert, Blue Bell Century Sundae.

Got up early and found that the Mars lander "Curiosity" made it. Checked Christa in at 6:30 am for her flight tomorrow then got on with the day. Putting together AVSA photos then took a nice walk. For dinner we went to Skippers Fish Fry in Apex. It was pretty good but pricy. $38 for 3 of us. I had flounder and shrimp which came with fries and slaw. While being served I dumped a whole cup of water on myself. Bad news but it was OK. It started raining on the way home. There seems to be an upcoming period of cool wet weather which is unusual.

Up early, Joe was already up when I came down just before 7. Started working on the AVSA collage. This is seriously overdue. Moat years has this done in July. Took my walk up and around Seagroves pond. Met Joe and Christa on the dock in the pond of Seagroves. They were fishing turtles. Saw a nice bikini face up at the townhouses pool. After a shower, etc it was back to work on pictures. Lots of comments on the birthday party pics I posted this morning. Christa's cake was delicious. For dinner Christa made Boc Choy stir fry with onion, garlic, chicken over Brown Rice. Joe left around 3 today to resume work in Tennessee. The mars landing is 1:30 this evening. I hope it makes it!

Joe said Christa is very hot and uncomfortable. It's not even really hot outside for August. I got my software on GitHub. Now I will have backups and snapshots. I got tired of reflashing the router all the time. Found the Rosewill router I bought and flashed it with dd-wrt. Had a hard time getting to Traviata via external dyndns but finally solved the problem thanks to Google while in bed for the night. Had to add an exception to the port forward commands to allow a specific domain to a specific IP address. In the evening we took Joe & Christa and Cole and Emily out to dinner at Tonys Oyster Bar in McGregor Village. The damage total was $180. After dinner we came back and had birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to Libbie.

Screwed up an Arduino trying to do wireless programming. ended up replacing the Arduino which took a while. The Uno needs a different bootloader to reprogram wirelessly. Did not have a good copy of Mozart code. Started learning GitHub to resolve this situation. I need backups of the software. Joe arrived from Wilmington this afternoon and started prepping his pizzas. Earlier today I bought some ingredients and Libbie started making dough for the pizzas. Josh,Kelly and their kids arrived, Cami with her two and joe, Christa and us. Josh's kids are totally out of control. I'm surprised something did not get broken. We had pizza and cupcakes which were delicious. I had one beer and went to bed stuffed.

Wired Mozart today for wireless programming and to receive and transmit over Xbee. Had lots of problems. Built a model for programming using a Mega because it has more serial ports. Used one port to monitor communications. Dinner was Tilapia with corn Mach Choux.

Submitted my story to ASSTR and read some of the other highly entertaining (and erotic) stories on ASSTR. Some of them are trash, others are quite good. There's so many it's hard to find the few good ones. Tried to get my Arduino mega going. I'm able to get it to load but not sure about the Xbee yet part. In addition, the Xbee on the end of an FTDI won't communicate with the current Monitor. Not sure what's wrong. Did a nice walk this afternoon, it's relatively cool for August. For dinner we had simmer sauce with whole wheat spaghetti and Blue Bell for dessert.

We hung out with Joe and Christa today. I was able to get my walk in while Libbie and Christa went to Rex for water aerobics. We found Joe and christa did not eat fish so we had grilled chicken with corn mach choux. Libbie and I shared a bottle of Shiraz.

Worked some more on writing a story on Google Docs, "Stay at Home Mom". Also worked on the query response software some more. I will hook up an Atmega Arduino which has extra serial ports to monitor the query and response. Not sure how to address the extra serial ports. Joe and Christa arrived in mid afternoon after spending the night in Asheville. We sat on the back porch and chatted a while before going out to the Pit in downtown Raleigh for dinner. I had a Lonestar dark beer and a half rack of ribs with beans and sweet potato fries.

Watched CBS Sunday this morning and enjoyed a story about the 15 cars that changed America. It was from a book by Simon and Shuster, "Engines of Change". I read part of the first chapter on the S&S website. will read the rest and mark this book as something for my reading list. Tried putting the hot tub back together and put a hundred gallons of water in to test it. Found the pump screws were not installed and ended up dumping all that water on the floor. What a mess. Soaked the carpets and made a miserable mess. We got it all cleaned up and hung the carpets to dry in time to leave for Joanne's Art Crawl. We started at her neighbor's Darryl's "Garage collage". His art is not very good. We met Jim Fatata there with a friend whose name I couldn't remember. Joanne's of course was spectacular. We met Ed and Hanna there. He was playing his sax, flute and harmonica. Ed also gave us a CD of classical music which was nice. JoAnn had a nice spread of ribs, pulled pork and slaw with lots of other fixings and Yuengling. We came home and had Blue Bell MooLineum ice cream.

Worked on the software for Wolfie in the morning. I can now request power status using a '?' or request actual voltage with a '#'. Took my 2 mile walk around Seagroves Park then got cleaned up and started on the hot tub pump repairs. Installed the seals and the heater element but did not finish the plumbing part of the job. Dinner was Salmon from Kroger with fresh corn on the cob and Shiraz. For dessert it was Blue Bell Moo-Lenium ice cream. This was one of Libbie's favorite. After dinner we had an evening thunderstorm but the power stayed on. I started writing a short story, "Stay at Home Mom" to practice writing. I'm pretty rusty at it. Went to bed at 11:30 fooling around with the story.

Changed the Wolfie hardware to add a diode and filter cap to the Current Sensor AC output. It's now a DC signal and is detected much better by the Wolfie software. I settled for the routine that reads the A/D voltage X number of times and presents the average reading to the calling program. I'll probably go with this. We had a slight rain this evening but not enough to measure on the rain gauge. We went to Cary, the former Sorrells, and ordered a custom book case out of Oak with Early American stain finish. We paid for it and found the man we were dealing with was Mr Sorrell. Next stop was the Farmers Market for corn and peaches. Dinner was fresh corn and Pork Chops with Apple Sauce and Shiraz.

Today after some fiddling I was able to get the FIO programmed wirelessly. Mounted it in a plastic box and put a rope on it to hang it then installed it in the knee wall. It's pretty neat to load programs into the thing from the next room. Spent all day working on various algorithms to smooth out the AC measured by the A/D converter and try to detect when the A/C is running. So far it's a mixed bag. I even tried doing 100 samples of the AC waveform to get a better average. I applied a formula to calculate Irms but it wasn't consistent. I really need to convert this to DC. Dinner was the Tex Mex caserole I purchased at Trader joes. Libbie couldn't take it. I liked it. Oh well, she has been a trooper with spicy foods but has hit her limit I guess. Dessert was the Blue Bell christmas in July Ice cream. We had a decent thunderstorm this evening giving us a healthy dose of rain which is good for the garden.

Went to get the car registered then stopped at Trader Joes on the way home. Libbie was in the flower garden tie-ing up flowers blown over in the wind. I cleaned the driveway which was littered with twigs from the storm yesterday then I mowed the back lawn. Wow, productive!
After a 2 mile walk I started looking into programming the Xbees for wireless programming of the FIO board. Got power wired to a FIO and programmed the transmitter half of a pair. Not sure what to do about addressing.
Dinner was Lobster Pasta from Trader Joes with Christmas in July ice cream for dessert.

Worked on building Wolfie this morning. Wolfie will monitor AC current and send the results across the room to Mozart. Mozart has needed a way to determine whether the AC is on or off. Wolfie will fill this need. It uses an Arduino FIO and an Xbee module for both wireless programming and status reporting. I'm looking forward to getting something like this going. In the afternoon I took a walk through Seagroves and back through Vintage. I used the shortcut reducing the walk to 1.5 miles. Once home I had to do the Click N Ship. this was miserable. I was sitting with the sweat dripping off my body into a puddle on my chair while trying to keep salty sweat off the PC. It was a relief to jump into the shower and get cleaned up even though there was an approaching thunderstorm. The storm hit fiercely with powerful winds. We lost power but the generator did us well for over an hour. Not really needed but it was nice to have. Dinner was Briyani. After dinner I read the Devil in the White City while Parsifal was playing from the met on Sirius. Very nice. I'm really getting into the book. It's pretty interesting to see how the chicago Worlds Fair came together in 1892.