The story of the day of course is this is the day for our trip to Calif. There are some storms West of us, I hope the flight gets it over with quickly and that we settle down into smooth air. It's going to be a long day with arrival around midnight if everything goes OK (which it didn't).
We left home at 3:30 to go to the airport. This was a half hour earlier and I'm glad we did. The checkin line was long, it took almost 15 minutes to get to the counter. SEcurity was also long but I had TSA pre so I walked straight through without any problems but waited quite a while for Libbie. The flight was full, we had a young college student in the middle seat between us. We landed in Vegas a few minutes early but found our next flight was delayed until 11 PM instead of 9:10. The flight was pretty bumpy but smoothed out a couple of times so that I was able to order Tomato Juice and have some cheese crackers. in Vegas everything was closed except for a pub where we ordered a Chicken Quesadilla with a Sam Adams Boston Lager on tap. The bill was $42 for the beer and one Quesadilla that we split. Waitress was Heather, a tall young reddish blonde who was very nice. The second flight came from Sacramento and was only an hour to LAX but we waited between runways for almost a half hour waiting for a gate. Picked up our Enterprise car, a Dodge Dart, and drove in a light rain down the 405 at 1:30 aM. Made it to Joe's at 2:20 AM Pacific time, very tired.

Met the guy who bought the two broken heaters in our driveway. I helped him load them into his trailer then he paid me $200 cash. It was a bargain for him and OK for me since I was going to take them to the scrap yard. I feel bad they weren't working. He brought a friend who told me he was one of the people who picked up clay pots earlier in the month. He said to thank Libbie for the nice pots. In the afternoon I tried checking in to our flights tomorrow at 5:55. My check in went OK but it turned out Libbie had a different reservation number than me which caused a problem. I ended up signing into her account and finding her reservation number. By the time I checked her in they were up to the B boarding group. I got TSA Pre which I guess was because of my prepay status with TSA on Dec 8. It only took 4 days to get a known traveler number. I worked on the IOS program until Libbie made her yummy pizza then took a break for dinner. The inventory section of the program is working out OK with no problems so far.

I continued working on the IOS program. In the late afternoon we got ready to go out. Gary and Janet came to our house at 6:30 PM, then we drove. The bad was the Back Beat Boys, a local Chapel Hill Beatles tribute band. They were really good, I enjoyed the music and even danced on the tiny dance floor. For dinner I ordered the Flounder on Flat bread which was a flounder BLT since it had bacon. I had slaw on the side and we split a bottle of wine with Gary Carlson. Cover charge for the evening was $6 each which Gray paid for us because he said we gave the house warming gifts to his Son Andy. We actually were cleaning the attic. At the Roadhouse I never thought I would enjoy Beatles music so much, it was that good.

I took apart the sweater I built yesterday and started all over again. It came out much better this time. I made some more progress on the IOS program today. It's coming along nicely but there is still much to do. For dinner we had leftover chicken from yesterday along with potato salad. Libbie had the beans, there were only enough for one serving of them. Went to the party at 8. There was quite a crowd, I had fun. The sweater was a hit on the dance floor. We did a lot of dancing. Robert managed to play ballroom Christmas Music which was unusual that he found so many good songs that were traditional. I did a Rumba with Linda Martin. Afterwards we went to Spirits in Cary. We split the shrimp tacos which were outstanding. At the bar were the Rumleys, Cains with Son Edward, and Ken and Lana. I had an Amber Oak beer along with the tacos. Love the way the shrimp was done, fried with some kind of sriracha chile sauce. Yumm.

I made an attempt at the ugly sweater today but failed. I used the dress form and it didn't match my body very well. I spent the day doing a lot of IOS work. This was a great day, we didn't have to go anywhere, I got to stay on work on the program. I need more of this instead of running around everywhere like we have been doing. Dinner tonight was a rotisserie chicken from Kroger along with beans and potato salad. It was cold and rainy all day which lept me indoors all day. this was a good thing.

This was a good day for the IOS program. I added the missing menu items and got the advanced search working correctly. Still have a lot of features to add. Wrote the majority of the Christmas cards for my side of the family. Still missing a few such as John Glembock and maybe others. We had a good waltz lesson today. We concentrated on the back progressive twinkles. I tried making my christmas sweater using the dress form. The hula hoop went on easily this way. Dinner was tuna noddle casserole. Had a guy come over about the heaters and found that neither is in great shape. One has a broken control card and the other has 2 frozen fans. Will probably scrap them both.

Didn't need much in the way of groceries today even though it was grocery day. Rounded up some materials to make my sweater. I want a Christmas Tree. We reviewed a few videos about waltz before tomorrows lesson. I also go tLibbie's PC up to speed with all the missing videos. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on.

I scanned some stuff that accumulated on my desktop, didn't too much other work today. Went to Walmart and bought a sweat shirt to convert into an ugly christmas Sweater. I first bought two and some dye then went back with Libbie and returned the two and the dye and bought a green 2XL that looks like it will accommodate the hula hoop base. In the evening we went out to Mr Wonderful at the Roadhouse. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. We sat with Bill and Joan and Tess of USA dance. We split a bowl of coconut curry, sweet potato, carrot soup. Bill loved it, I thought it was too sweet. I ordered a fried flounder with bacon and a side of slaw. Got to dance a Rumba with Tess. She's pretty elegant. We stayed until around 9:30. It was a fun night. On the way home I saw a meteor, we were supposed to be having the Geminid meteor shower but the East sky was too cloudy for good viewing. The one I saw was a lucky find out the front windshield.

Another do nothing day. Last night we talked with Gary and Janet at our table about their son Andrews' new house. He has a lot of old antiques. We decided we will gift him a power meter lamp and the old milk can. At the end of today I couldn't figure out what I did, it wasn't very productive that is for sure. I watched a video on making a Xmas tree sweater then found out I didn't have a sweater base to use for it. Libbie made her excellent pizza for dinner, it's been a while.

Stayed in most of the day reading about various projects online including Moteino and other software projects. We left for Century Club at 6. I wore my tux yet again. The dinner is less than Esquires but still way more than adequate. It is also BYOB which helps with the costs. We sat with Jane and Jim, Gary and Janet, Mike and Anne and Charlie and Terri. IT was a nice crowd. The music was a DJ but quite varied and also very excellent. A great evening of food and dance. We took 540 to and from since I didn't want to deal with Christmas traffic around the malls. It was a pretty good choice, fairly easy ride. I went online today and found I was TSA-Pre. This was quick! It took about 4 or 5 days which was a surprise.

Stayed in most of the day reading about various projects online including Moteino and other software projects. We left for Century Club at 6. I wore my tux yet again. The dinner is less than Esquires but still way more than adequate. It is also BYOB which helps with the costs. We sat with Jane and Jim, Gary and Janet, Mike and Anne and Charlie and Terri. IT was a nice crowd. The music was a DJ but quite varied and also very excellent. A great evening of food and dance.

Worked upstairs on the computer looking at the NCID software. I opened an account on Call Centric to get Caller ID but it doesn't always work. I ended up disconnecting it and just using Google Voice. We made the crabcakes at 4 but they weren't firm enough and fell apart. I used too big of pieces in the crab mixture. should have chopped it up smaller. We went to the Xmas ball. I wore a tie, no jacket. Many were dressed in coat and tie. The food was good including our crabcakes. Saw Gary and Janet there. They were just returned yesterday from Gary's Mother's funeral. We won one of the grand prizes - 2 bonus lessons. Now we have 20 in reserve. Dinner was the studio foot of shrimp, meatballs, crab and everything else.

Went to Kroger in the morning to get ingredients for crab cakes for the studio party. Over to the airport at 3 to pick up Libbie. Had to get ready for Esquires which means leaving at 6. There ewas an accident on the beltline at Western Blvd backing up traffic so we bailed out at Jones Frnaklin and took the side streets over to Hillsborough St where we got back on and got to Esquires at 6:45. It was a nice but tiring evening of food, drink an dance. The Tuneswingers were the orchestra. They played mostly Foxtrots.
Can't access Open Cnam on an Arduino. They need https which requires an SSL certificate. This needs to be run on a Pi or real computer. It was so nice out that when I put the garbage out I took the blower and cleaned the driveway. Dinner was the leftover BBQ chicken from yesterday's Kroger trip.

The oil patch got worse today. Kinder slashed their dividend by 75%. This is not good for my investments. I have been afraid to look but will get over it soon since I have to log in to pay taxes. Took out an account on Open Cnam and funded it with $5 for caller Id lookups because Google doesn't provide the info.
Dinner was BBQ chicken from Kroger. I have enough for several meals. For lunch I made the Trader Joe Biryani.

I did the dirty work under the house and ran the ethernet cable. The end at the closet was on the ground, it had not been run upstairs. I pushed the cable through the hole in the floor into the closet and added an RJ45 connector inside the closet to this cable. While under the house I also found the fan was turned off so I turned it on so now both fans run periodically. The display runs now using the wire under the house. This is good news. Dinner tonight was cheese and spinach ravioli in Marinara from Trader Joe.

I built a case for the NCID display then painted it black. Once the paint dried I mounted the LED panels and attached the Arduino. Everything worked well. Next I moved it to it's home on the TV and hooked up the ethernet cable at the TV. Couldn't find this cable in the router closet so I ran an external cable and tried NCID on it. Everything worked!!!! I made a phone call to the house and the display showed my number. Very cool. I didn't feel like going under the house to trace the cable, I'll leave that for tomorrow. Dinner tonight was more of the fried chicken. It's pretty good with Tapatio sauce. Saw a Newegg special for an HDMI monitor for only $69 with free shipping so I bought it. I need a monitor at the desk where my old computer is located as well as for Raspberry Pi work. This should fit the bill although it's only a 20 inch screen.

Fixed the mirrored connections on the display and tried it out. It works!!!!! I now have large LED characters in the display. Next step was to get NCID working on the Raspberry Pi. I used the binary image onto a new NOOBS install and it worked well with my new modem. Did not try the NCID functions yet but the server definitely works. I can log into it from my laptop. For dinner today I had Fried chicken from Kroger. It's an 8 pack so I have more than one day's worth.

I spent all day wiring the LED display interface. I tested it after dinner and found the connectors to the display are mirror imaged. Will fix it tomorrow. the Uno Arduinos came today from an ebay vendor in Atlanta. They work perfectly. I plugged one into the computer and programmed it with no problems. Fo dinner I ordered a Szechuan Three Flavor and Eggroll from the china place next to Krogers. I bought a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet to accompany dinner. i found that it is $2 cheaper in Walmart because I paid 7.95 yesterday in Walmart for the party and 9.95 in Kroger tonight for dinner. For dessert I had the popcorn that was left by one of the political guys.

I spent most of today working on the LEDs for the NCID display. I should be doing the IOS stuff but I want this to work as well. I also need to get the greenhouse and porch monitoring off the ground. It's currently not reporting again. This thing is not reliable. May have to switch to an Ethernet based transmission from the workshop to the office closet. We had a tuna sandwich for dinner then went to the Dance party with a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet because it's a pajama party and wine tasting. I skipped the pajamas and only brought the wine.

I had some good success today on IOS. The thing finally recognizes when I have 2 different hybridizers for the same violet. This was a struggle but finally accomplished. The reason for the difficulty was that I was expecting the RefID to be unique and it is incorrect in my database. We went to Esquire in the evening and had a very good time. Charlie and Terry were sick and Gary and Janet were at Gary's mothers funeral so it was a smaller crowd. The Tune Swingers play a lot of foxtrot and not much of anything else.

We had an excellent lesson with Robert today. We added a chasse to our routine followed by a lock. I think this will really jazz up our waltz steps. For dinner we stopped by Kroger coming home from dance and got some more chicken thighs and made the mustard glazed chicken again. This time no wine. We bought lessons today. 10 to start then Libbie spun the wheel for 2 more free lessons and a chance to buy 6 more at half price. We went for it and now have 18 lessons in the bank.

It's surprisingly warm but cloudy today. Worked on the IOS app of course and then did a grocery run. Picked up the ingredients for chicken thighs with a rub and mustard glaze. Yummy. Broccoli accompanied the meal.

It's a cold rainy day outside. I stayed inside working on the IOS app. I'm having some confusion over page management in IOS vs what it was in Android. I did a lot of studying and possibly came out with a solution. Dinner tonight was a delicious turkey casserole that Libbie came up with. It included turkey, celery, chicken soup stock and saltine crackers. It was yummy.

This is the last of the nice warm days. Went outside and raked pine straw in the driveway and then painted the sewer pipe in the back black. Making great progress on the advanced search function of the IOS app. I'm not 100% yet but am feeling much better. Learned today that my friend Irwin died yesterday. He was 80. It was quite a shock since I just saw him at MAAVS in October. Libbie made her pizza today from a dough ball she had previously frozen.

Still not feeling terrific. My intestines really hurt. Fooled around with trying to focus the SLR onto a Film Frame. It's too far away to focus well. the more extension tubes I add the closer to the lens the object has to be which is a problem because i can't get the camera very close. I have been continuing to work on the IOS app. Today I worked on laying out the screen for the advanced search. Just found out there is no spinner control to implement a dropdown but I found a code module to achieve this. Dinner was more leftover turkey with the last of the stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli. I only had water with the meal. yesterday I ordered the displays from Adafruit for NCID Display. They were having a 15% off Black Friday special. I also went on eBay and ordered an arduino uno since I didn't have any and the display needs one. The server can accept messages to be broadcast to all clients. I will use this to send temperature and other misc status.