Got the timer wired up on the porch and tested it with the manual software. It works!!!! This is happiness. The software interface needs help but other than that I like it. I had a really nice time with Erica this afternoon on the dance floor. She taught me about leading for the waltz and foxtrot. She's a patient girl. I'm going to miss her when she goes off to college. Came home and had a quick avocado sandwich before I had to leave for sculpture. At 6 the sky darkened and the winds were really severe so I waited out the line of storms before leaving for sculpture. Kim's class at the art center of Cary was pretty nice. She's a really nice teacher. Our ballerina is Abby. This is my first sculpture of someone in clothes. One of the ladies in our group said the same thing. After class I helped Kim put the modeling stand away. During the class I got really nauseous. Took a break, got a drink of water and sat down for a while.

Crimped an ethernet connector on the porch cable then went under the house and traced the wire from the porch. I found that it went up into the closet. Found the cable in the closet and attached an RJ45 carefully. Plugged it into the router and hooked up the Open Sprinkler Pi to the outdoor cable. Nicely the device showed up on the LAN. The cable worked the first time!!!! Southwest is having an airfare sale with attractive fares to San Antonio. The sale ends tomorrow. I may do it. Went to Carolina ballroom. Atlanta was supposed to be my partner but of course Robert forgot and there was no partner. I am rescheduled for tomorrow at 4:15. Dinner was leftover fried chicken from the other day.

Took Lib to the airport at 9:30 for her 11:00 flight. I prepared a second version of Raspbian with the OSPi software since the one I modified had problems. The new version, which is stock, works flawlessly. Did the Tuesday groceries and picked up a box of fried chicken which I had for both lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, I also picked up some Southern hospitality Bluebell ice cream which I had for desert. I need to stop eating this stuff!!!

This morning I belatedly checked Libbie into her Southwest flights tomorrow. Check-in started at 11 AM but we did it at 11:05. I also found she had a missing 'B' in her last name. Libbie called and had Southwest correct the ticket since TSA may catch it. I spent the day playing with a Jason script to make the Open Sprinkler page more attractive. I picked up some Salmon for 3.99 per pound at Krogers that Libbie cooked for dinner. The fish was under-cooked and didn't sit well with my stomach. I'm having stomach craps. Don't know what's going on there.

Went out to Kroger to pick up bread for lunch. Checked the mailbox on the way back in and discovered the Saturday mail was there, today is Sunday but I didn't get to the mailbox yesterday. The Open Sprinkler Pi circuit board arrived. I spent some time hooking up a Raspberry Pi in the plastic case. I'm impressed with the quality of the case. The Pi mounts right inside. I'm not thrilled with the Triacs hooked directly to the solenoids without any transient protection. I got a lot of customization done to the home screen and am pretty happy with the result. this also gave me a better understanding of the program. The program is buggy and could use a good rewrite. Libbie made her pizza again but this time with fresh basil. I watched the Tony's after dinner and enjoyed the performances. they were quite good.

We went to Home Depot and bought 6 bags of replacement mulch. Libbie and I spread it around in the garden. I continued to work on adapting the demo interval software for the Raspberry Pi. I also used the blower and cleaned out the garage and the driveway. It's been a while since this was cleaned up. Dinner was Kroger ribs with brocolli and Malbac.

It's a wet one. We recorded 5.2 inches of rain in this storm. The backyard was under water for a while and quite a bit of our mulch washed away. I'll need to pick up a few more bags in Home Depot. I tried the Occidentalis version of Raspberry Pi operating systems but the Open Sprinkler demo program didn't run so I set up a brand new SD card with wheezy and successfully installed Open Sprinkler. I also was able to document the procedure. We planned to have a salmon dinner before dancing but as the salmon was coming off the grill we got a call from Caroline that the power is out at Carolina Ballroom and they were canceling the dance party. We wanted to practice our hustle at the party!!! This afternoon I registered with the Town of Cary and and then registered for Kim's sculpting class which starts this Thursday at 6:30 PM. The salmon dinner this evening was accompanied by broccoli, salad and a glass of Shiraz.

Went online this morning and transferred some money from Scottrade into the bank account and paid the condo fee for this quarter. Worked on the garden today. The tomatoes look great and need tying. There are some squash almost ready and a cucumber almost ready. Discovered one hot pepper on the pepper plants. Nice. Deadheaded the roses then came inside. supposed to get a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow as Andrea blows through.
The rain really came down around 5 PM today. When it let up we had salmon with broccoli and a salad. Then we went to a group hustle lesson. It was my first time for the hustle and I think it went well. There were 2 other couples, the Terry and Harry from Cary pair and Shaun and Monica who seemed to be new.

This morning I played around some more trying to configure the Open Sprinkler program on the Pi. I learned a few things. There is this concept of reserved IP addresses maintained by the router. It will assign the same IP to a specific MAC address when encountered. this saves having to get a static IP and all the fuss that doing this entails. In the afternoon we went to our ballroom lesson. I was very happy with the stuff we learned. Today we focused on the swing, specifically on the Swing. I learned to swing wider, we learned some turns and the cuddle. Very good. After dance we went to Trader joes for provisions. dinner was Briyani. We talked about us doing staging tonight for Nashville AVSA. I would like to use the Grand Old Opry and some LED's synchronized with music.

This morning I went to the grocery store right away then started getting a Raspberry Pi ready to host the Open Sprinkler project. I ordered the hardware to do this and started setting up the software. Really learning a lot about Linux and Pi stuff. Had to go back to Kroger to get my prescription which I forgot to pick up. Dinner was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on.

It was hard getting up this morning on East Coast time. I felt like sleeping in. Total rainfall was .31 inches as measured by the weather station. This is not much since it hasn't rained all week. Did a lot of unpacking and organizing. Dinner was an avocado sandwich which was also our lunch. Today is a light eating day.

We accidentally got up at 4 AM because my Tablet was on East Coast time and we were in Austin on Central time! I reset the tablet and actually fell back to sleep before we were awoken again at 5 AM. We promptly got ready, checked out of the Marriott Renaissance and got on our way in a light rain which got heavier with thunder and lightning as we reached the airport. We had to make a run for it from the rental car lot to the terminal in a steady downpour. Once through security we looked for breakfast and found a Tex-Mex place selling bacon, egg and cheese tacos for $3.50 for two. Our plane left 30 minutes late but made up a lot of the time on the way to Nashville. The flight from Nashville was choppy and then pretty rough as we crossed the mountains but was very smooth when we got to the other side of the mountains. We got in early which was nice, 12:09 instead of 12:35 noon. It had not rained all week so I did some manual watering using the irrigation timer of both flower gardens. Dinner was a La Cocina Quasadilla La Cocina with a Yuengling draft. I was tired and fell asleep on the floor catching up on my computer.

This morning I photographed Streps and then we helped run the Nashville fund raising table until we went to the Nicholas presentation at 1 PM. Anne and Richard gave a wonderful and smoothly running presentation of how they grow the big plants and the small. After the Nicholas presentation we went to the annual members meeting and sat through that. Next was the showroom breakdown where Libbie collected a lot of leaves before getting cleaned up for dinner. Social hour was at 5 PM and dinner at 6 which caught some by surprise because it was earlier than usual. We enjoyed sitting with Teri Post and husband, Laurene and Walker, Randy Duesch and wife and a lady from Syracuse. Dinner was bowtie pasta with chicken strips and a chipotle sauce. I thought it was tasty and had 2 glasses of Cabernet with dinner.

Once again I did some miscellaneous photography of the show trying to catch plants I missed. I attended Brenda's presentation of species which was excellent. I can tell she is a teacher. We had to get ready to get on the bus at 5 for the bat cruise and dinner. I wasn't too interested in Bats. They were interesting but seeing the skyline was more interesting as well as being on the lake with friends. The lake is Lady Bird Town lake in Austin and fronts the skyline. Dinner was a Fajita buffet. We sat with Bruce and Barbara Miller, Bonnie and Andrea, Beverly Powers and a lady named Cynthia from Panama. After the cruise the bus gave us a nightime tour of Austin which included the Texas State Capitol lit up at night which was pretty spectacular.

After a breakfast at McDonalds where Janet came along with us, Andrea and I set up the presentation at a little AFTER 10 FOR OUR 10:30 talk. It went really well, we had a lot of positive comments from the audience. It was satisfying. For lunch it was Zoes kitchen again where I had a turkey sandwich. We did the photography during the afternoon into the evening. It really went well. I hope we got good pictures. In the evening we went to the Broken Spoke but found the live music didn't start until 9:30 so we drove to the County Line BBQ where we had a really nice dinner of BBQ ribs with the sides and a bottle of Lonestar. At 9:30 we went to the Broken Spoke. We entered via the back door and avoided the $7 cover charge.

We went out to McDonalds for breakfast this morning. We met Anne and Richard in the hotel plaza having breakfast and then went to the board meeting at 9. It was pretty terrible, Winston made inappropriate comments towards me and also the AVSA employees who are only invited guests stood up to speak which was inappropriate.
We had lunch over at Zoes Kitchen where I had a turkey sandwich which was excellent. Afterwards we went to an Internet Committee meeting which was a waste of time. It was just Winston trying to show how Plone was. For dinner at night we went out toPokey Joes across from the hotel. I had ribs with cornbread, potato salad, beans and a Lone Star beer. What a day.

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.