Today was our day for the wildflower garden. we questioned how far down we were on Loop 1 but eventually we saw a sign and found the garden. It was spectacular and we really enjoyed it. After a morning in the garden and a veggie sandwich for lunch,, we went to the LBJ Library in Austin. Admission was free and we really enjoyed seeing all the accomplishments of a truly great president. We left in rush hour traffic and creep-ed along on Loop 1 to get back. At the hotel we met more AVSA people and then went across the street to Pokey Joes for a BBQ dinner. After a nice dinner of ribs and beer we went out looking for the Walgreens. Couldn't find it but we did locate the McDonalds which will be our breakfast choice in the morning.

We left the house today at 8:15 for our 10:20 flight. We had lots of time and a very smooth flight. I was reading most of the flight. We got the exit row to Houston, a cramped seat for the short flight to Austin. We had a turkey sub in Houston since we had almnost 2 hoursa on the ground. We greeted quite a few people and then went out to the County Line for ribs and beer. Our group was KAthy Lahti, Barb and Bruce Miller, Kathy Bell, Susan Anderson and her Mother and a young person named Candace from Arizona. We had a very nice time. When we landed we found the GPS cord didn't fit because it was the Verizon cord. We navigated by printed map which wasn't too bad.

More last minute packing and arranging. We leave tomorrow morning. I tried reprogramming the irrigation timers but it didn't work out. The program kept crashing. I'm really disappointed. Libbie made her outstanding pizza again with tomato and fresh basil. Yumm.

Lots of last minute activity. Went to the greenhouse to get a steel pipe and ended up hacking back the holly bushes around the entrance. Installed the pipe at home and ran a strand of wire across the top of the new lower fence to make it higher against a deer invasion. I don't think it will work. Updated the Violet site with the new inventory and also ended up getting a new hosting account with host gator to move newavsa. I'm still not sure why we are doing this. Dinner was Kroger ribs with baked potato and beets. We finished the mixed blend wine from last night and then had a glass from the Shiraz.

This is a getting ready for the final stretch day. We leave for Austin Monday morning. I tied up the tomatoes in the garden and mowed the back yard. In the afternoon we went to the Farmers Market and bought a Dogwood Tree as well as our veggies and strawberries. We had a nice dinner of shrimp "peelers" with beets and potatoes. My weight has finally come down a little more, down to 122.5 lbs. Yes!!!
This twice a week fast diet seems to be working. We had the shrimp with a nice red blend from California. In the evening we went to the Friday night dance party and stayed till 9. We had fun but found we forgot a lot of the steps. Came home at quarter after 9 and had strawberry shortcake. The strawberries were from the Farmers Market and Libbie made the shortcake fresh this afternoon.

John forwarded to me a pretty good rant about the website which has depressed me a little today. He called nothing but a tarted up version. It is certainly more than that. I worked with John's Rose Society web site all morning then finally gave up and purchased my own account. I had a little more success with loading the files but still can't make the links work. There's something wrong with the permissions but i don't know what. This is a work in progress. The good news is they charge monthly so it will only cost $10 per month and I can cancel up to June 23rd and only be charged for one month.
I went out to Harris Teeter today and bought cookies and Salmon. Libbie served the cookies to Jack, Joy and Nancy who were all working upstairs on the violets. Dinner tonight was a salad and Salmon.

I had to call John Carter to get the website credentials again. I got the password wrong over the phone. After getting the correct password I was able to get into the site. Uploaded all the files. It didn't work, lots of various errors. Links didn't work, the css files weren't read, etc. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese sprinkled over the op.

Did the normal grocery run. Libbie is not doing well today. I documented all of the wiring for the irrigation relays. Didn't do a whole lot of anything else today. Had a one hour talk with John Carter about the AVSA website. He gave me some credentials to let me try using the Rose society website to host AVSA. I'll give it a try. Dinner was a bean burger with Vidalia and BBQ sauce.

Another light eating day. The morning started out still rainy. We got over 2 inches of rain over the weekend as reported by the new weather station. For dinner we went and picked up a tilapia on sale. We had it with Panko bread crumbs and a nice salad. This was a good light dinner. We watched the finals of Dancing with the Stars. Kellie and Zandaya seem to be in the lead. We have not watched it much all season.

I got all the solenoid wiring documented today. It took a while, almost all day on and off. I made up a map for the timers, assigning solenoids to the relay channels. I wish the 8 channel timer was in operation. It has not been tested yet. I modified the B4A Help program to display Violet topics. I'm using maavs.org to host the html files that are displayed by the app. It was a rainy day all day today. While on the backporch we saw the new family, Jenny & Mark and 3 kids walking around by the creek. The moved into the Porter's house on Friday. Libbie made her wonderful pizza, this time with fresh garden basil and tomato chunks. After dinner I watched the Billboard awards which were mildly entertaining.

While tying the tomatoes it started to sprinkle. We ended up getting .24 inches is this sprinkle. It was fun watching the weather station record the precipitation. I also did the soldering and heat shrink of the wires for the newest solenoid, the one that waters the Geranium garden. We did a trip to Walmsrt, mainly to get socks and underwear for me and some shorts for Libbie. We spent $85 which was surprising. I managed to find a Class 4 SanDisk SD card for my Nook Color and some cable ties which turned out to be indoors only as well as a 6 gang outlet for the porch. I purchased an Android for Nook image for my Nook Color and installed it. It makes the Nook Color more responsive since it is running Android 4.1, Jelly Bean. I like it. It's still not as responsive as the Nexus 7. Dinner was Lobster tails with peas and a super salad consisting of lettuce, carrots, cucumber, snow peas and Vidalia. We had this with the rest of the French Merlot-Cabernet blend, about 1 1/3 glass.

I worked on the sprinklers today. Picked up some glue at Lowes as well as a new UV tube for the fish pond. Tried changing that first but no go. The light flashed briefly but did not come on. Will remove the UV assembly and check the contacts. Wired up the geranium garden and manually turned the sprinklers on to check the aiming. It wasn't too bad but needs a little adjustment. I need some 6 inch long cable ties. I'm using the cable numbers from Home Depot. I used these to label all the solenoids which was great. We picked up a salmon at Krogers and while there we noticed that Lobster tail was on sale so I picked up 2 of those as well. On this Kroger run we took both cars and filled up on gas using our points. It turns out both cards are really linked so our purchases are counting towards gas. Dinner was salmon and a nice salad with onion, lettuce, carrots, cucumber, snow peas and sunflower seeds. We went to dance at 8 PM and were both tired but had fun. It's amazing how many steps we have forgotten. Repetition and practice is the answer. We stayed under almost 9 before heading home.

Worked in the garden running a water line for the geraniums. Ran to Home Depot for sprinkler parts and another solenoid which we need for the geranium zone. I also bought some cable markers so we could identify the various wires in the timer box. this is a mess. Today is a fast day so I ate lightly for lunch, an Avocado, tomato sandwich and then a big salad with tuna in it for the protein. We went to the group foundations class to learn swing with Erica. The class was great since we learned quite a few new patterns for the swing.

Spread the other bag of bark around the geraniums. The weather station continues to work well. Tried to water the flower garden since it's so hot today. Had some problems figuring out the timer wiring. This needs a complete rework and labeling. Went to our dance class at 3:30 which was excellent. Robert practiced the Foxtrot with us giving us tips on form. We also worked on our twinkles and bigger steps for the foxtrot but still keeping in time with the music. We thought this was a very good lesson. After dance we went to Trader Joes for some supplies. Dinner was chicken, pasta and curry sauce. We also had a very nice salad with the meal.

Sheila gets up at 4:40. We don't get up until 6. We left for New Bern just before 9 and arrived around 11. It was a pleasant day for a drive. BArb taught us about Streps and showed us her plant room. We had a very nice lunch of homemade bread, chicken salad and fruit salad. Desert was a cookie. We got back home around 5:15. For dinner we went out to La Cosina where we had Quesadilla La Cosina with a Yuengling draft. Very good. We did our Tuesday groceries after dinner which worked well.

We did a little cleanup today. I bought two more bags of bark and spread them around the geraniums. I also tightened the shade cloth on the greenhouse. Sheila came over at 5:00 today. We enjoyed her company for dinner which was BB chicken, mixed veggies, salad and strawberry shortcake for desert. Even though it was a fast day I had the full dinner since we had guests.

This was an easy day. The weather station continues to function well. Libbie and I fertilized the garden with Miracle Grow liquid. As usual, I mixed a whole replacement bag of fertilizer into the liquid container. We did the entire flower garden but not the geraniums. Libbie hit the geraniums with Osmocote then we watered them in.
I spent a lot of time on the computer reading about weather software. My favorite is WeeWx but it's Linux based so I may employ a Raspberry Pi to do the job. I also did a lot of Oregon trip planning. Staying at the airport and not renting a car looks like the best way to go. I reserved a room at the Country Suites Airport but found a better hotel for $100 more. The Marriott residence Inn is $100 more for 2 nights but has a train platform in their parking lot. Libbie made her great pizza again. this time it was extra good because she put all the leftover tomato pieces in from the week. This afternoon we took a late afternoon walk through Seagrove Farms. It's a gorgeous spring day with the temperature in the seventies and very low humidity.

Weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised at 224.5
This morning I got the weather console successfully uploading to Wunderground. Went outside this morning and tilled the new garden next to the sidewalk. Libbie planted geraniums in this one inside the new fence. Last year a rabbit ate all our geraniums so this year we installed the fence to keep rabbits out. Next I went on the roof and caulked the new cornice boards and painted it all with the Historic Tan house paint. this went extremely well. It's a clear sunny day today. I noticed the wind speed is a little lower than the one at Surrey Point. This very likely is due to the shielding effect we get from the surrounding trees. After painting and tilling I was wiped out today. Took a long nap after the last opera of the season, Gotterdamerung. We went to Kroger in the afternoon during the opera and found a large wine tasting party going on. We got full plates of ribs, beans, horsdoeuvres and cake. Wow, what a surprise. We picked up some Sockeye Salmon which we had with Broccoli and Shiraz.

The Weather Station will arrive today. I found the cornice boards where I want to mount it are rotted. Removed the boards and picked up a PVC 1x4 from Home Depot as a replacement. The 1x4's went up without much trouble but involved many trips up and down to the roof which was tiring. I mounted a 1.5 inch PVC pipe as the mast. Late in the PM the Weather Station arrived. I assembled it on the back porch and went back on the roof one more time to mount it on the PVC pipe. I setup the console on the back porch and was pleasantly surprised at how good the communication link is to the instrument suite. I eventually put the console in my office and mounted the usb logger inside. I also had to run to Kroger to get 3 C cell batteries for the console. The AC power cube will power the thing but it needs the C Cells for backuppower. I'm having trouble getting the logger to work. Dinner was chicken with roasted veggies and a single glass of Shuiraz.

I put connectors on all the hoses and bought an additional manifold for the new grow boxes. All is now hooked up. I bought 4 bags of bark and spread 3 of them around where I dug up trenches for drainage pipes. We had a really heavy rain last night and the good news is the new drain swallowed it all. After a dinner of salad with chicken breast in it we went to a Foxtrot progressive class. Erica was the instructor. We had not seen her in 2 weeks and so thought she was gone. The class was quite good and we learned quite a bit stringing patterns together.

This was a pretty good day as most of the work I did for the Android version of First Class is now working including the addition of several thousand pictures to the tablet via FTP. I still don't have a reliable FTP program working so I sued one from the marketplace. Robert was sick so dance lesson was canceled for today. Dinner was salmon, broccoli and a glass of Shiraz.

Got FTP working on my Android so I used it to download 100 violet pictures from Traviata for display in the Violet Viewer program. In the afternoon I worked in the garden transplanting the squash and cucumbers and running the garden hose to the new boxes but I still need to build a header to combine the hoses and hook them to a source of water. Dinner was angel hair pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan over the top. Very nice.

Worked the whole day on the Violet viewer software. This was great, Libbie was occupied downstairs with packing violets with Jack and Joy while I listened to Opera in my office and learned quite a bit about how Basic for android works. I got a rudimentary system up and running from an SQL database, retrieving data and displaying pictures. Yeah!!!!!
Dinner was leftover Bok Choy which was great since this is a fast day. My weight is at 226 and holding which is around 10 down from my physical on Feb 7.

It's still cold today. We worked in the yard planting 3 new bush Lantana next to the sidewalk and also the two remaining Lavenders. I also put down some more landscape cloth around the new grow boxes. short and sweet, that summarized our outdoor activity today. I got a second Raspberry Pi running the Squeezeplug software with the new C-Media USB sound cards that arrived from Amazon yesterday. This one will be in my office hooked to the stereo. I'm pretty happy with the system. Libbie wants one now but I'm running out of Raspberry Pis. I probably need to order some more from Element 14. I worked some more on the violet viewer software for Android. I had to remember how this is done. I learned about sdcard memory in the emulator and how to preload jpg images. This is for the storage for First Class. Dinner was Libbies super pizza. I put some shitake mushrooms on mine which were excellent.

I did some research on weather stations. I have decided to add a Raspberry Pi with WeeWx to my mix of web based electronics. Not sure of what instrument package to use. I may go the homebrew route and write an interface to WeeWx but the easiest thing may be to get a Davis and a weatherlink interface. At noon we we went to Crabtree to see the Iris show. It's been a while since we visited crabtree. Bought a microplane in Williams Sonoma. I was amazed at the number of high end restaurants outside the mall. I finished up the fence today and planted the Lavender along the outside. Dinner was Bok Choy with a bottle of Shiraz and strawberry shortcake. Yummy.