I continued working on the Huzzah software for the H2O sprinkler system. I took apart the garage door remote from my car to find out what's wrong. I bought a new battery at Walmart but it didn't fix it. I tried reprogramming it at the base unit. Let's see if that makes a difference. Dinner was Libbie's fabulous pizza once again. For dessert we had yogurt which was the Friday freebie from Kroger this week.

It's the end of yesterday's tropical storm. The sun came out at noon. We ended up with a two day total of almost 2 inches of rain. The driveway really needs a cleaning. In the evening we left at 6:15 for mr Wonderful in Pittsboro. The web said it would start at 8 but it really started at 7. We got there late but had an enjoyable time chatting with Bill, Joan and Jocelyn and Gregg. We danced quite a bit. For dinner I had the fried flounder sandwich with a side of chips which i didn't care for. the chips were salty and overdone. We left at about 9:10 PM.

It rained all day because of tropical storm Hermine. I spent the time working on the OshPark board adding the rest of the hardware and getting it ready for software. Andy put a notice on Facebook that the studio was going to be open tonight because his camping was delayed by a day. We went and found there were only half a dozen people at the studio. We did some dancing anyway while i danced with both Marilyn and Jennifer. It was an enjoyable evening. Before we went over we had a Chinese takeout 3 meat dinner along with a bottle of St Michelle Merlot. The wine doesn't help my dancing but it was enjoyable.

It's September already. I can't believe summer has whipped by so fast. In order to get ready for debugging on the desktop PC I spent almost all day organizing files on the PC as well as transferring files back and forth from the laptop cleaning up things in the meantime. I also watched q bit of YouNow. The things the young girls do is literally shocking. It's a different generation out there. We had hamburgers with potato salad and beans for dinner.

The generator ran a rough test cycle yesterday with lots of backfiring so I did maintenance today. Replaced the plug and changed the oil and filter. I also adjusted the valves but when I took the exhaust cover off to turn the crankshaft by hand i discovered the fan was broken. I don't know how long it has been like that. Ordered a new one for $88 from a place in Alabama. I hope to get it here next week. i also ordered an air filter from AutoZone which is in the store formerly occupied by Apex Ace Hardware. We picked it up after our dance lesson and i installed it. Picked all the tools up and put them in my lawn cart and moved it to the shed until the fan blade gets here. The generator is temporarily out of commission until i get this fixed. In the meantime while playing with it I discovered that i could smooth out the rough idle by playing with the governor. It may be that the idle is set too slow. I have more playing to do. We had a good dance lesson with Robert picking out our music for the Winter Ball . We also learned thhe sliding door Rumba routine as well as forward and reverse twinkle of the waltz. Dinner was Spaghetti, cheese and a hoppy Wheat beer from Sierra Nevada. After dinner i moved the ladder and adjusted the second light. I'll see if this is an improvement. it should be.

Finished the wiring of the new porch roof lights. it's a little disappointing there are hot spots. I went up the ladder after dark and made the corner light better by aiming it more vertical whcih just barely washes the wall. Will fix the other one like this before making a decision. Dinner was the last of the leftover ribs, 2 ribs along with potato salad and baked beans. Dessert was a slice of watermelon. I also made the $95 deposit for our Costa Rica trip which is due on Aug 31. Next amount due is in January.

Worked on hooking up the new lights on the porch roof. Did not finish the job. The lights are mounted but the wires dangle into the porch knee wall. Heard about a problem with the DVD. Have to substitute an audio file to correct a pronunciation problem and swap out two pictures which were wrong. Wrote a quick beg letter for the MAAVS MEmo tonight in an eMail to Ken. dinner was Ribs with succotash and the rest of the bottle of Malbec. We went over to Brewsters for cones tonight after dinner. I had the usual chocolate Raspberry truffle.
Got the Smart Things hub running by calling their support. My ID seems to have been dropped from their server. I don't like the idea that they are in the middle of transactions.

The party was great. Today is recovery. I got the ladder out to add two more lights to the roof but didn't put the lights in. I'll wait till tomorrow. Started populating the new PCB boards that arrived yesterday. The DVD is out the door and the party is done. time to get to work.
Dinner was Libbie's fabulous pizza with a beer left over from the party

This was a busy day. I cleaned the garage and driveway with the blower then mowed the weeds behind the electric fence before repairing the fence. A quick trip to Kroger to get plastic plates for our hors d'oeuvres as well as heavier aluminum foil and colored toothpicks. The smoking went along well along with timing by Alexa. I am almost out of wood chips but made it to the end. The ribs came out delicious. This was a first for me smoking 3 racks at once. We pulled them at 5:30, cut them up and put them in the oven at 180 degrees. The Oshpark board arrived in the mail in the middle of all this but I couldn't touch it. Anita arrived with her Baked Alaska at 6. The others soon followed suit. We had an enjoyable evening of food, friendship and Alaskan memories. I had a little trouble with Anita's iPhone for showing pictures but transferred some of her pics from iphone to a stick using Libbie's laptop. Ken and Lana brought an album of their Alaskan trip from 29 years ago. It was a church trip.
The party was over at 11:30. We were surprised it was so late, we lost track of the time. Menu tonight was 3 kinds of ribs, succotash, baked tomatoes, fresh fruit and a little over 5 bottles of wine plus some beer.

I spent the morning rubbing the ribs and mixing the spices for the chicken rub. I also managed to burn 2 DVDs and send them to Anne with the afternoon mail. My ribbon cables arrived from an eBay vendor. These are for the Huzzah based Sprinkler I have designed. I baked the wings and Libbie made the wing sauce for the party and cook off tonight. We left at 7:15 for the studio with our wings. We did not win any prizes in the raffle and did not win the cook off. Oh well, it was a nice evening with a variety of BBQ foods. I had a little bit of chicken, some pork, one of my wings, some potato salad and 2 beers. It was a nice night of dancing. I managed to dance with Lori and Anita as well as Libbie. I think for our showcase we need to do a Cha Cha since we need more choreography there.

Finished up the AVSA DVD this morning but Manon2 doesn't have a DVD burner. I later hooked up the small PC and burned 2 DVDs but did not test them. I'll do that tomorrow then package them up for mailing. Mailed the first batch of MAAVS beg letters while Libbie finished the next batch. We ended with a total of 180 letters going out. We had a dinner of hamburgers with tomato and onion on buns. After dinner I was pretty tired but spent the rest of the evening making Smoking Gun Rub and Cocca Loca rub. I will rub the ribs tomorrow for the party on Saturday. Uncruise sent a link to 343 pictures which are quite good! It was a fun trip as can be seen in the uncruise pictures.

Today I worked on the landscape lights adding 2 lights aimed at the gable over the garage. Last night I put one temporarily on the side of the little decorative roofs under the gable and liked it so I permanently mounted the 2 lights and tied them into the main wiring. We still need lights on the porch roof and possibly one more on the porch ceiling near the front door. We had a nice dance lesson with Robert ending with a "cliff hanger" which he called sliding doors in the Rumba. Dinner was a practice run of succotash which was fresh corn and lima beans with bacon as well as baked tomato halves. I really liked the succotash but didn't care for the mushy bread of the roasted tomato.

Worked at finishing up the MAAVS beg letter before going out to pick up Lib. I also copied the contents of the WWW folder over to a new version of UniServer. I want to use a version where the configuration menu works. This will help me configure SSL using the certificate i purchased. The wiki has directions on how to enable a freeSSL certificate, I may try that and also check into getting my Comodo SSL money back which i think I can do within 30 days. Picked up Libbie at the airport this morning around 11:30. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese. We broke into my beer stash that I bought for the party this weekend and had a bottle each. I bought 4 racks of ribs today at Kroger as well as most of the other items needed for the party.

Alexa alerted me at 7:20 to check Libbie in for her 7:25 flight tomorrow morning. She got TSA Pre and an A59 boarding position which is good. Today I decided to mount two landscape lights on either side of the garage door. I had to spend $45 and purchase a one inch concrete bit to pass a conduit through the wall. Once I had the bit it went very well. I then ran the low voltage wires and tied in these two lights. I also added another pine tree light on the living room side or East side of the house. When I tested it out at night it was beautiful! The peak above the garage is still not lit enough, it's quite dark. I'll try a few more things to light it. Dinner was the other Kroger wood fired crust. This time I made it correctly with the sauce first then the cheese and then the chopped veggies. I didn't like the taste of the cheese as well. Not sure what the problem is.

A pretty good day! I finished the movies for the DVD, I only need to build the final thing and mail it. I started a beg letter for MAAVS. Need to figure out how to make address labels which shouldn't be too hard. I wired the front porch low voltage lights into the main line. I also replaced the 12V malibu LED light above the garbage can which surprisingly was burned out. I now need to drill a hole in the foundation wall for the low voltage line. For now the power pack is outside under the Camelia bush and running on an extension cord. For dinner I bought a Kroger wood fired crust which was pretty terrible and made a pizza on it. I made several errors including putting the cheese down first before the tomato sauce. What a mess. The good part was the peppers and onions that i chopped up and spread over the top. This really added to the pizza. After dark i took a look at the lighting and I'm not sure I like the porch lights portion of the mix. Also, the garage door side of the house is pretty dark. I may mount some lights on the columns on either side of the door near the ground and pointing up.

Tried to install a purchased security certificate on Traviata. I didn't have much success. I may have to switch to a newer version of uniserver. My concern was migrating SQL but it doesn't look like I use sql for anything on traviata.
This is good. The galleries are based on Jalbum which doesn't rely on external programs or databases. I got ceiling lights wired on the front porch but not tied into the main outdoor line yet so I have not tested them. Dinner was Kroger fried chicken with potato salad. Much of the indoor time was spent on either the security certificate or the AVSA DVD. Dinner was a Hormel turkey microwave dinner. These are the non refrigerated ones given out as a Friday freebie.

I worked on the DVD quite a bit today and eventually uploaded a version to Youtube for review. Libbie reported she found a few things wrong with it. She must have time on her hands in RI. This is good, I'll depend on her for fixups. I went outside and started hooking up the floodlights I started installing months ago. I decided i needed to go to Lowes and pick up more lights. Bought 3 more floodlights and a splice to hook up two pieces of landscape wire. I identified a few more places where I would still like some lights but instead I will hook up the lights I already own to be used on the porch ceiling. This will involve routing landscape wiring in the ceiling which is going to be a challenge. Dinner tonight was some Kroger fried chicken and potato salad. I went to the studio party at 8. It was a pretty fun night. I danced with Janet, Anita, Lori, Shannon and Dawn. Dawn is a terrible dancer. I did a Rhumba with her and she was terrible. Anita is a great dancer, so was Lori. I picked up my new glasses today and boy am I happy with them. I could see really well up close and the distance vision is quite good. I'm more happy with them than I ever thought I would be.

I downloaded the audio files today. It apparently never made it to my inbox when the Nicholas's sent them over the weekend. Most of the day was taken up assembling the DVD with the pictures and MP3s. I also dropped the interview videos into the mix. They were surprisingly integrated in by the ProShow software without a problem. I took the steps today to get a certificate from Comodo for the traviata.dyndns.org domain. I can get my money back in 30 days if this doesn't work out. Dinner was fried chicken and potato salad, both from Kroger. The chicken was an impulse purchase. I was in the store and hungry. The fried chicken smelled good so I went for it.

Took Libbie to the airport for her 8:15 flight. Worked on the Sprinkler for the outdoors. The Pi was bad but not the SD Flash. Later found that the relay board was bad. Turned a solenoid on and later found it was still on, hours later. Wasted lots of water. The hose attaching the water from the solenoid to the outdoor sprinklers rusted out and the hose let go. Will fix this tomorrow. Dinner tonight was a hamburger with tomato, onion and ketchup on a bun.

Finished up the layout and had enough confidence in it, after doing and redoing it several times, that I sent the final off to Oshpark. I paid the extra $5 for priority mail otherwise shipping would be free. The price for 3 boards with the extra shipping is $42.
My BAC preferred was called, I got an extra $20k in the individual account. I ended up spending some of it on a purchase of 500 shares of GAINO, a term preferred that pays monthly but has a mandatory call 5 years from now.
Dinner tonight was hamburgers that I picked up in Kroger. I got fresh instead of frozen. I think the frozen tastes better. We had this with tomato and onion and a garden pepper on mine. Libbie has her bags packed for tomorrows trip.

Did more work on the Huzzah schematic and learned the layout portion of the program. I did some preliminary runs of the wiring program but I still have more to learn.
Because of Libbie's trip we had our lesson with Robert today, a Monday. We did some waltz chassez and lock. I'm going too fast in the lock. He had me slow down a few times. It was a good waltz review.
We had spaghetti with cheese on it for dinner. It's been a while since we had spaghetti.

Created the schematic for the Huzzah based sprinkler system. This is my first time using Eagle for building a schematic and PCB. I started watching the YouTube tutorial yesterday then muddled through the hookup today. I had to locate libraries online for all of the parts. Outdoors I used my rake to pull the rotted logs out of the high grass watching for my friend the copperhead snake. After I cleared the logs I took the mower and mowed the other side of the creek where the big mower missed. this really wore me down. Late in the PM I picked up a Google chromecast at Walmart for $35 after reading that there is a plugin for the Logitech Media Server that will stream audio to the chromecast using the media Server. After fiddling with this for a while I actually got it to work well controlled by the Squeezer app. This is great news. I can put Chromecasts on various stereo systems to stream music to them. Woo Hoo!!! Big news. Dinner tonight was Libbie's outstanding pizza. It came out better than well this time because it was loaded with basil and tomato pieces.

I started watching a tutorial on using Eagle. The goal is to make a PCB for a Huzzah hooked up to a shift register and relays for sprinkler control. We went to Costco this morning to get a new Uninterruptible Power Supply for Traviata. The old one died and won't power the computer anymore. Costco had a CyberPower 1300 for $99. We also picked up a bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet to go with the King Crab we will have for dinner tonight.
I took the tractor across the creek to mow the weeds. while clearing one pile of rotted logs in the high weeds a copperhead snake came out across the front of my shoes. I almost picked him up with the handful of brush I picked up!!!!! This was too close of a call! That ended the mowing for the day although I was pretty much done.
We had a salad which i didn't care for, the King Crab made in the steamer and a bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet. Nice meal to end a nice day.

Took out the pressure washer today to do the front steps. Had to go to Kroger to get gas then dragged it over to the side door to pump up the tires. It started readily. Hooked up the hoses and tried it a little then Libbie wanted to use it to clean the steps. she also did the brick walk which wasn't bothering me very much. It looks much better now. I want to raise it but doubt if I will get around to it with all the other items on my plate.
For dinner tonight we made the shrimp Po Boys again.
After dinner we went over to the studio for the Friday night party. The theme was Southwestern night. I wore a flower shirt and straw hat. Libbie wore a tie dye skirt she had purchased in Huntington Beach. I had to use electronic tools to fish out the string that ties the skirt up. It was back inside the seam pocket and couldn't be reached. My knitting needle was able to snag it and pull it out so we could grab it to be tied.

Didn't do much today. Went outside and mowed the front and back with the tractor. The grass was pretty high. The grass needs the hand mower now to do trimming. I'll do that tomorrow.
I spent some time today with the Robert Service Poem "Yukon", memorizing the first 2 verses. I got out the MP3 recorder, plugged it into the charger, a tried recording the first verse a little as practice.
I used a new cooking light recipe for dinner, Pan Seared Shrimp Po Boy. I bought 10 oz of frozen shrimp at Kroger along with pickle relish needed for the tartar sauce. A 1/2 tsp dose of Tapatio into the tartar gave it a little zing. The sandwiches came out really good. Even Libbie liked them.
Paul posted some really nice wildflower pics on FB today from our Alaskan trip. Beautiful.
Dinner was the Shrimp Po Boys with a half bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet. I decided to book an Uncruise Costa Rica to Panama trip after studying some of the options. I will call them tomorrow.