Labor Day. I put the package together to protest the chargeback from the McLaughlin's in Alabama. I'm afraid we'll lose this round and over $200. I had quite a bit of success today at descreening the door frames and also programming the fullscreen buffer of the Raspberry Pi. Dinner this evening was spaghetti.

This was mostly a day of relaxation. Watched the morning shows then went outside and did a little outdoor work trimming of the lawn in front before going out for a bike ride around the neighborhood which I enjoyed. The new helmet is nice and secure feeling especially when I go a little faster. Did a bunch of web updates for AVSA by adding the new magazine, etc. Libbie made her excellent pizza once again for our sunday night dinner.

This morning Ken and Anita came over to see the Violets. We had a nice visit, they were amazed with all the projects and we were glad they came over. I worked some more on Nieto II and finally was able to retrieve temperature and solar data and display it. I learned quite a bit about pygame and python which was great. Dinner was ribs with corn on the cob from Kroger and a bottle of Shiraz. For desert I had yogurt with cherry and dark chocolate. Very good. We had our last glass of wine and yogurt on the back porch, enjoying the evening. For August, it's remarkably comfortable.

Went to Lowes and got a new spark plug and a 2.6 oz bottle of 2 cycle oil. Stopped by Lowes food to get a fresh gallon of gas to which I added the oil. Put everything in and on the chain saw and started it up. After some rough running it straightened out and ran pretty smoothly. Took the saw to the back and cut down all the pine trees which were blocking my path and also growing in front of the bird house. Next step was to hop on the bike and ride around the block, coming across the dam and through my freshly cut path. Success! After a dinner of Lloyds pulled pork BBQ and the remnants of the baked beans we went to dance at 8. It was not a bad night, we tried out some of the new patterns we learned with Mitzi this week. Afterwards we went to the McGregor Pub at McGregor shopping center. We had wings and beer. This pub is much quieter than Cary pub and was nice. I like the waitresses in the little short shorts.

Went out to the greenhouse property on Jessie and using the map we went looking for the corner stakes on the golf course. We had success and located both irons. Did not find a stake near the Wrenn driveway but there is one on the corner where our driveway comes in. We got covered with mosquito bites and sticker pricks from the dense brush. Took a walk down the pipeline and found Levi or Raymond Wrenns old electric fence line which approximates the boundary. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with pieces of tomato and cheese.

I stayed somewhat clean today since we had dance this afternoon. Worked on understanding pygame on the Raspberry Pi. This should work for me. Updated the AVSA web site with the 2014 convention DVD info. At dance today Robert helped fine tune our Rumba. For dinner we went out to mariachi night at La Cocina where we had the usual of a Yuengling and Quesadilla La cocina.

Took all the stuff in the side yard tothe dump then went to the greenhouse and got all the scrap aluminum. Hauled it all to the scrap metal place and got $70 for our efforts. Stopped by the farmers market and picked up fruit and tomatoes. dinner was spinach salad and tuna. We had a Rumba almagamation class with mitzi tonight. I learned a proper cuban as well as a box step rock step. I also learned a proper cross body lead which I was doing wrong.

Got the tractor going and mowed some of the front and back. Visited KW offices in Cary and talked about land value with Ann. She stopped by our home at 3 and we listed the property with her firm. She was nice. We won't get as much as we wanted out of the property but it has several problems. I went to Walmart and bought 2 quarts of oil for the tractor. Boy, this stuff has really gone up. It's 4.54 a quart. Dinner was skippers Fish Fry. I had the 2 meat platter which was flounder and clam strips with slaw, hushpuppies and fries. It's a lot of food.

I finished painting the back of the house this morning. It actually was cold outside and felt as if it was gooing to rain any minute. This was a big job finally finished. Hooray!!!! Came in exhausted and lay on the bed for 2 hours after taking a shower. Talked to Anne Kane about going to her office at noon to list our property. Worked on Pygame tutorials in the afternoon. I think I'm getting somewhere with this stuff. Need to try it out on my monitor with HDMI output. I mowed down the Irises which were covered with weeds. I also did a little mowing the backyard and much to my dismay I saw that the septic is leaking again. I need to pull the pump and look into this. Ugggh. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza again, from scratch this time. She really outdid herself today. The floors are all clean and waxed. I tried spraying with the Ortho Max product but had to stop 75% of the way through because the sprayer was clogged. Not sure why.

Went outside and painted 2 more doors in the back. I found the center swing door needs replacing. Lowes said it would be about $350 to order a new one. I was pretty tired when done. We had a pretty good rain, one inch total only a few hours after I finished but the paint seems to be OK. Picked up groceries in Kroger but they didn't have any ribs. Lib and I went to Lowes to return wood, buy a heavy duty electrical cord for my shop and look at choices in doors. We then next door to Target and got our ribs as well as a 50th anniversary card for the Guenthers. Target was crowded. School starts Monday and there were lots of back to school shoppers with long lines at the cash register. Dinner was ribs, baked beans from yesterday, Primal Root wine from Kroger and a yogurt for desert. Yumm.

This was a day off from painting. I spent some time online learning about the Pi then went to my eye doctor appt at 10:45. Surprisingly I passed the Klingon test in my right eye. I never thought this test was valid with the right eye which is not corrected fully for 20/20 vision. I talked with Atkins realty and did not like the guy on the phone. In the afternoon we made the baked bean mixture for the party tonight. Went to the party and participated in the surprise birthday present for Robert - a big motorcycle that Mitzy bought him. He was happy. I ate too much and couldn't get a lot of the dancing straightened out. I don't know what it is but what a mess. Need to really do something since we put a lot into htis and get not much out. Talked with anne of Anne and Paul about listing our land with her firm. The party was nice I had Italian sausage with onions and pepper and some potato salad from the Pub as well as my own baked beans topped with a chocolate cheese cake. It was Dan's 50th birthday and also Jordan's 16th birthday. We signed cards and had birthday cake which wasn't needed after the other food.

Went outside and did the second coat on the new slider and the fixed window. Next step was to set up the ladder and start painting the rest of the doors as well as the soffits and fascia boards. Got two doors done. No work tomorrow since I have an eye doctor appt in the morning and we make a honey chipotle bean salad in the afternoon. It will be good to have a day off. I need to call a realtor and also do the PCI compliance for Bluebird. Dinner was leftover chicken with Lima beans. After dinner we went to Tango foundations. I learned a few good styling techniques from Andy. While at the studio I got my spoon back from Mitzi. We left it at her house when we brought bean salad to the graduation party.

Went outside and painted the new slider trim on the inside and the outside as well as the fixed window. This was not too bad of a job. Libbie was at quilting class all day while I did this. I also went to the greenhouse to recycle a circuit breaker for my solar panels. Unfortunately there was a big wasp nest next to the breaker panel. I went to Harris Teeter on 1010 and bought a can of hot shot wasp and hornet spray. I let them have it for about a minute from behind the door. It worked well and I was able to remove a few breakers for recycling. We need to kill the power feed to the greenhouse since this is costing money. The bill this month was $34 for 8 kw. which is too much. Libbie came back in time and we went to Rumba class with Robert. Today we focused on the bronze pattern and also some spiral turns. We did well for this. When we left Robert was calling a carpenter about a screen enclosure over his deck. On the way home we picked up a rotisserie chicken and had it for dinner with baked beans. I put the correct breaker, 20 amps, into the breaker panel for the solar panels. Still need to label this.

After a lot of work and trials over the past several days I finally got the Mozart 2 controller taking commands from the Honeywell WiFi thermostat and sending out IR signals to the AC across the room. I finally ended up hooking the current sensor up to the ADC 0 input and programmed the Arduino to measure the pin voltage. This is working well. I eliminated the state machine and used a simple timer to hold off retry cycles if the AC toggle did not activate or de-activate the AC box. I caulked the new trim work but did not paint since the wood was still wet. Joined Esquires today by filling out the application and sending a check for $100. We went to amalgamations class at 7:15 but Andy didn't show up, only Jennifer. Duchess and Gustavo came as we were on the way out. We went back in and hung around a while trying the Rumba bronze routine. After a while we finally got it figured out. Before class dinner was spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. We had yogurt for dessert after we came back from our non-class.

I finished up the trim on the sliding door this morning. it involved a trip to Lowes to pick up some more 1x2 trim boards. The work was hampered by on and off raindrops but I eventually finished the job. My Davis solar Sensor arrived today. I found that it was not made for the Vantage Vue, only the Vantage Pro weather station. In the meantime I had climbed on the roof to take the station down. I ended up putting the station back up and requesting an RMS from Rainman weather. This is too bad since I wanted the solar sensor. I found that the Xbee wasn't working anymore on the plant room AC controller. I decided to hardwire the AC status reporting by putting a current sensor inside the circuit panel in my tool closet. I ran cat 5 up into my workshop to try some test circuits. With a 500 ohm burden resistor across coil I measured about .5 volts with the compressor running and 0 volts without it. I need to interface this to the Arduino. Dinner was salad with tuna over it, a light eating day. We had a sudden burst of rain around 8 PM. It got dark, windy and the heavens dumped on us. I measured one inch of rain in this single storm. We sure have had enough rain this year. The nicholas's sent an email saying they received the DVD. I cringe that everything on it has come out OK.

This morning I tried debugging the thermostat interface I started working on yesterday. I first discovered I hooked to the wrong set of wires in the thermostat. I need to get on the Y and common leads. I now get 24 vac when it calls for cooling. Interfacing the HCPL3700 opto turned out to be difficult. The 10k series resistors didn't work. I lowered them to 5 k but still no output change whenn 24vac was applied. Removed the DC filter cap on the front end and was able to get AC out when 24 vac was applied. Added a simple lowpass filter output consisting of a 1 mfd cap and the avr internal pullup resistor. It's solid now but the AC only ran shortly. I found out that the Xbee is not working. I looked through my parts box from Adafruit and found I have an Xbee. Now I have to figure out how to program it to the correct channel unless it's already correct because this was used as the monitor. Libbie made her nice pizza which I doctored with thai pepper, onions and had it with a bottle of Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest. Yumm.

Worked outdide on the patio door and fixed glass window trim. Had to do a Lowes trip to get some 1x3 instead of the 1x4 I had on hand. Finished this job up and also moved the old glass around to the side yard along with the aluminum frames. We left at 6 for the Lauau at the Shriners which was over the top. I overate. We started with cheese, crackers and salasa chips along with a glass of wine. Talked a little to bill Price who stopped by the table. We sat with charlie & terry, Anne and Mike as well as Adrian and Marie and their friend Betsy. I danced a waltz with Marie who is very nice. Dinner was fried and boiled shrimp, salmon, fried fish, pulled pork, clam chowder and an array of salads, chicken and other stuff. I felt way stuffed and couldn't function well on the dance floor. I had a nice time but was clearly impaired.

This morning I worked on the door hardware and the latch. This took a lot longer than I expected, almost all morning. I had to run out to Lowes to get more door trim wood and PVC. Worked all afternoon fitting the frame to the door but didn't finish. We made crab cakes for our contribution to the Ballroom beer and wine tasting. I took an extension cord and a hot plate for the food table. We left at 7:45 and got to the studio at what I thought was early but we were among the last to get there. It was a fun evening, I tasted some beers I would seek out such as the Yuengling Porter and the Don Equus. I also liked the Carolina Pale Ale and the Sierra Octoberfest. The party seemed to go on past 9:30 but we left at 9:40. We met two new people, Rebecca and Marlin. Father, daughter that seemed nice. Hope they stay with the program.

I cleaned up the old window, mounted it in the old aluminum frame and with a lot of struggling, I hefted the window into the opening. Wor, this was heavy going up the ladder. It's one of the hardest jobs I have ever done physically. My body is tired from this one. I finished up the DVD and got it into Priority mail late at night after I took a phone call from Joan Santino. Linda can't make it to our Saturday convention meetings and may have to resign as Secretary. Dinner was salad with tuna on it since it's a light eating day.

I framed out the rough in to fit the door frame and bolted it down. next I slid the doors and the screen door in, allowng me to take down the plastic. I noticed one side of the glass from the old doors is good enough to put into the spot where the glass window is. I removed the glass with the expectation of putting in the old glass from the door. We wnet to our private lesson with Robert which was pretty good. We learned terms for rumba. I learned the fifth position to close where I need to turn the lady 90 degrees. Dinner was hamburger that we picked up in Krogeron the way home. We also picked up beer for the party Friday. Had one of the beers with our hamburger.

Did a pretty big grocery run today - $80. Picked up the ingredients for crabcakes for the party Friday night. It was a pretty good solar day most of the day. The new patio doors came this morning. I took the old doors out along with the door frame and sized up fitting the new frame into the rough in area. We went to Rumba almagamations which was pretty good since Andrew focused mostly on techniques. Mary and Jennifer were the other two ladies in the class. Dealt with the charge back this morning by calling blue pay. got the runaround and found the money was credited back to us but the person has 45 days to contest the amount. Dinner was spaghetti and tomato sauce.
After Rumba we drove home in a blinding rain. We got 2 inches at home - there were many reports of flooding around Raleigh. It was the worst rain we have driven in since the Shriners dance in June.

After GMA this morning I sat down, hooked up the headphones, and listened to the entire convention DVD slide show, marking the recordings that were bad. Almost done with this piece of the puzzle. Talked with the Nicholas's. They didn't receive the DVD until after 6 PM. They had a few corrections for the DVD that I started working on. Today was a light day so we had tuna over salad.

The rain cleared a little. We had a total of 2.5 inches in the last 2 days. Not good for solar production! We made less than 1kwhr of electricity each day. Saturday was only 500 watt-hr, Sunday was 800. I needed to move the ladder off the house and put it away but first I leaned it agains the leaning tree and climbed it to hook up the come along. Made a little cut in the base with a brand new chain then hooked up a second come along and pulled the tree to the side and made a bigger cut. Kept pulling to the side until it eventually fell down. Now I need to move it. Spent the rest of the time indoors reading about how to display graphics on a display attached to a Pi. There's a library called pygame that looks promising. It uses the IDE named Geany. It's made mostly for gamers but should suit me for displaying large letters on the screen for my family room mounted display. Went to Walmart twice for socks - the first time I bought ankle socks. Returned them for crew socks and also picked up some sticky traps for the critter in our cabinet. Dinner was Libbie's pizza. My side had thai pepper and onion. Her side burned a little cause she left the broiler on from warming the stone.

I woke up to rain this morning. The TV station said we might get 5 inches over the next two days. It kept me indoors. I'm cleaning up misc odds and ends that I left hanging before the DVD work. I tried moving the envoy gateway in a few places in my office and didn't have any luck. It will have to live in the garage for now. It's a dark dreary day. solar production is a minimum. Oh well, I should expect days like this. I did some preliminary accounting and we should be able to pay the Visa bill this Wednesday without dipping into savings. I did a lot of catch up work today, scanning an old performance into LifeBits and also making a copy of the squeeze player software run on the Pi in my office. I'm happy with the new version. In the future i won't have to burn a new image - just do an update in place. This is an improvement. They also have some nice web based tools to rename the host name and the name seen in squeezer. Nice. Dinner was Chinese 3 meat takeout from china chef which was very good as usual but a little bit spicy. My sinuses really cleared from this one!!!!! We had a bottle of Shiraz with dinner. It rained a total of 1.47 inches so far at 9 pm and it's still raining!!!!

It's supposed to rain over the weekend so I spent some time spraying 4 gallons of roundup along the fence and along the creek and the side of the hill. The hillside was a maintenance dose.
I did a Home Depot trip and ordered a new sliding glass door to be delivered. It cost $429 with tax, delivery and new screen. We had another poor day of solar production. It was a mostly cloudy day. I'm getting to like the solar system. I'm already thinking of 4 more panels.
We had a light dinner of hamburgers and Lima beans. Went to 80s movie night where Libbie was Gertie from ET and I was Patrick Swazee from Dirty Dancing. We had a nice time tonight. I danced with Atlanta for the first time tonight, a cha cha. After dance we went out to the pub and sat with Nancy and Steve and Ken and Anita. We had 2 Yuenglings and a half plate of wings. Yummy. The talk was for drag queen bingo to be held tomorrow night at the fair grounds.