I woke up at 6 this morning after going to bed at 8:45 last night. It was a much needed catch up sleep. We went to Paige's gymnastic class. There were bleacher seats above the floor for us to sit and watch. After class we went to Ballast Point Brewery which was a nice brewery restaurant overlooking the water. Libbie and I split a Cuban sandwich with a California Amber beer. It was a lot of food but the bill with tip was $90 for lunch for all of us. Ouch.
Dinner in the evening was a bowl of chicken and beef over rice. We had a bottle of "California Red" wine which was pretty good for a no name wine.

Up at 3:30 AM for our flight to California. We left the home at 4 AM for the 5:55 flight. After parking the car and checking in we were through TSA at 5 AM which was good. Both flights were incredibly smooth. We split a ham egg and cheese croissant at RDu for $10 plus 2 small coffees which were pretty good. On the plane I managed to get the long seat in the exit row with no seat in front which allowed me to stretch out. The guy on the aisle in my row had never flown before. That was hard to believe at his age. The husband and wife were going to Corpus Christi to visit a new grand child. We only had an hour in Houston before our next flight. We had an empty seat between us which was nice so I could sit sideways and stretch out.
Joe and Paige met us at John Wayne. Paige had a nice card for us. We stopped by McDonalds and picked up some egg McMuffins before going to a playground park where we had our meals while Paige played on the playground equipment. During the day we enjoyed some time with Emily and also Paige. Out to dinner to La Capilla for Happy Hour at 5:30. I had a chicken Taquitos and beef Flautas with a Pacifico beer. When we got home i was incredibly tired and went to bed at 8:45 and basically passed out.

Got up at 5:30 this morning to check in for our flight tomorrow. After a quick shower I checked us in and got 'A34' boarding for the Houston segment but 'B09' for the Houston to SNA portion. I did some last minute work on the Huzzah Sprinkler and then devoted the rest of the day to hooking up the replacement Netgear router. This involved getting a list of MAC and IP addresses, a lot of which were already documented on Life Bits II. After about 4 hours I got everything configured and working then tested it from outside by using my cell phone. It all is accessible from the external internet. I also secured our router for the first time using Libbie's cell phone number. This meant logging in with all our wireless devices and adding a password. We had a nice lesson with Robert today continuing our choreography for the Swing dance we will do. We came home and packed then had a tuna noodle casserole for dinner.

I left for a haircut at 8:55 but at Great Clips there was a line so i bailed out. It is Senior Day. Later I went to the bank for MAAVS awards check, went to the CU for trip money, $150, then went to Kroger to get gas and finally got a haircut. At 12:30 there was no one waiting and 3 barbers working. Later in the PM I got on my bicycle and went to Foodlion to pick up a can of peas. I also picked up a jug of Roto Rooter and poured it into the upstairs bathroom sink to unclog it. It worked pretty good. It's a lower temperature day so it was perfect for a bike ride. The cashier in Foodlion was amazed at me, she said she can't balance on a bike anymore. Dinner was leftover Kung Pao Chicken.

This was a busy day. I got the relays working at the proper times in the timer program. This took a little bit of doing working out the functions to select individual relays. I did the MAAVS awards accounting for check deposit tomorrow. We went to Mr Wonderful tonight and had a really nice dance lesson with Gaylord from Esquires. I danced a Rumba with Tess. Boy, she's elegant. Ken and Lana joined us at our table. We split a Salmon BLT which came with Sweet Potato Fries. Accompanying the meal was a Yuengling. We stayed until the end at 9:30. We stayed around because Adrienne and Marie lost their car key and we were ready to drive them home if needed. They did have an extra key.

I started building another sprinkler breadboard from one of the PCBs but didn't complete this effort. Instead I used the breadboard and put a 595 onboard along with a Huzzah and tried the test program with that. It still wouldn't work so I looked at the datasheet and found the line called MR stands for Master reset. When it is held down like i had it all the shift registers are reset to 0. When I moved the jumper wire to 3 volts the circuit started working. I modified the PCB of the sprinkler to make the rest line high instead of low on the 595. The relays all worked perfectly. This is a breakthrough. For dinner Libbie made her pizza but added lots of fresh tomato slices and fresh basil. It was good.
Libbie cleaned the train cars out on the back porch and let them dry on a sheet in the sun. They all fit nicely in the old hard sided suitcase which we will leave in California.

Ran out to Home Depot to get more wire and ran into the Kretchmans at the return desk. They were returning a towel bar from their bathroom remodel project. Finished up the wiring for the landscape lights and installed the timer in the front hall closet. Dinner tonight was Kung Pao chicken. The veggies in the stir fry were pepper, onion, snow peas and broccoli. We had this with Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon. Still no luck with the relays on the sprinkler. I can't get the 595 shift register to accept commands.
We got the old train set out and started cleaning it up for our trip to California. We'll leave it with Joe.

I bought the rest of the ingredients for Chicken Kung Pao Ran the wire under the house for the landscape lights but ran out of wire. It was surprising that the 50 foot roll of wire ran out. Will pick up another tomorrow. I tried in the afternoon to get the relays working on the sprinkler but no luck. All the outputs are at 0 which turns all the relays on. This is unfortunate. I am suspecting the 595 chip from eBay is bad. I have a whole antistatic foam card full of them and tried another but the results were the same. I'm stumped.

Dinner was hamburgers with onion, tomato and baked beans. We went out to dance tonight and had fun although I was tired. I did not want to go out to Brewsters Tavern afterwards so we went straight home.

I got a lot of the pages working on the sprinkler controller. The biggest issue was the NTP time. I ended up using a neat technique which extracts the time from a URL return header. It returns the header reliably. The issue now is to convert this to epoch time in order to set the Real Time Club (RTC). Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled over the top.

We had a pretty good dance lesson today. We started the choreography for our routine at the Winter Ball using the song "Do You Love Me?".
Dinner tonight was apricot chicken from cooking light. I rated it as a 5 out of 10 which wasn't great.

I put in a pretty good effort on the Huzzah based water timer. Today i got the clock displaying on the home page and also straightened out the schedule pages. I took a nice bike ride this afternoon on the Shepards greenway behind the condos and then towards the pool. Dinner tonight was hamburger and baked beans.

I worked on the software for the watering timer all day. It's coming along pretty good. We had Nathans hot dogs with relish and mustard for lunch, a holiday tradition. I talked to Debbie about our Mardi Gras trip. She is going to correct the invoice and also take my $1,000 next installment for the trip. For dinner t0night I made chicken sliders with Apricot chutney. neither of us cared for it very much. there was too much garlic in it and not much other flavor. After dinner tonight we took a trip to the ice cream store, Brewsters and got two small waffle cones. Each cone has two scoops of very rich ice cream.

I booked the Blake Hotel for a night earlier for $161 in New Orleans then bought tickets leaving Tampa on Wed before Mardi Gras and returning Monday.

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.