Did a lot of studying of ESP8266 today on Youtube. I have a pretty good handle on this thing. Need to get going on the IOS Project again. Time is running short but the awards took some time. Dinner was a homemade pizza using the good sauce with onions and peppers. No more Pepperoni left. I went online and got the New Orleans tickets straightened out. I accidentally booked March 27 a while ago instead of Feb 27. Corrected the booking and paid an extra $176.

Did some proportioning of awards money. Kitty sent a list of awards which I spread the money around for. Got a bill for the colonoscopy that was lower than the previous one so I paid it. That should complete this phase of the doctor stuff. Took a ride to Glenwood Ave today, spent an hour. Nice. Dinner was a homemade pizza with a new tomato sauce I found plus plus onion and pepper and pepperoni. Very good.

This is my first full day back. I did a lot of catch up work on MAAVS awards and updated LSAVC then worked on the Growing Tips page. Lunch was a piece of chicken. Dinner was the fried chicken and potato salad. I talked with John Glembock this afternoon and then listened to Don Giovanni live in the evening from the Met. During the day today i sold all of the Ferrelgas because it is doing so bad. They are cutting the dividend and can't meet their debt obligations. It's a risky company. The worst is yet too come. I joined Motley Fool income investor which is not very good. i may request a refund.

I got up at 5 AM today. We left the hotel for the airport at 5:25 AM. Traffic was very light. Libbie stayed in RI so she took the red corolla back to the hotel from the airport while I checked in. The Southwest counter was empty, the woman just wanted my last name and looked up my reservation and took my suitcase. I breezed through TSA Pre and stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and a bagel. It was the worst bagel i ever had with an odd taste. I wanted cream cheese thinking it would be on the donut. it was in a little tub i had to juggle and put on myself. How awful. I sat at the bulkhead in the middle seat on the flight to BWI. The flight was mostly smooth with some light chop going into BWi. In BWI I picked up a bacon egg and cheese in McDonalds as well a s a coffee. I think it was mindless eating since I wasn't very hungry. The flight home was smooth as well. I was struck by how much water was on the ground after the storm. There were huge muddy bodies of water everywhere. I picked up the mail in the box, there was no mail today because it's Columbus day so it was just Friday and Saturdays mail. The driveway needed cleaning so i blew it off. There were lots of sticks everywhere. That was our only damage. I went to Costco and picked up wine, coffee beans and garbage bags. Stopped at Kroger and got some fried chicken and potato salad for lunch as well as dinner.

Breakfast was sausage this morning. We were woke up at 1:30 when the wedding party came back and talked outside our room and in the lobby. We fell back asleep and woke at 7. After breakfast we went to Brookdale since Libbie had to get George ready. We left for the funeral home by 10:30 for the 11 AM service. The service was beautiful. Bill talked about Mary packing lunches, his cheating on a book report and other childhood events. John talked about Mary and her easy going attitude no matter what happened which matched my subsequent poem of contentment. Libbie talked about Love and Steven read a poem. Nate read the Clock of Life Poem. Later I gave the story of the poem to Heather. We went to the Foodworks restaurant where I ordered a Portuguese omelet. I was expecting the sausage to be hot but it was very mild. We dropped George off for a nap then picked him up at 4:30 and went to Bills for hamburgers. By then it was pouring rain and very windy. It was a nice gathering at Bill's house. Lots of reminiscing, all of the somber sadness was gone. Mary would have loved it.

I had bacon and eggs for breakfast in the hotel lobby. Good thing we flew in yesterday, one day early because we found our flight was canceled for tdoay. Not sure why. We were booked on the 8 AM flight today but changed it to yesterday because of the storm. We watched the rain on our cameras. There was 6.5 inches at home and the backyard was underwater with white water running through. We had lunch at the Assisted Living. I had something called ratatoui which was onion, peppers and eggplant. It was delicious. I also had a tuna sandwich on wheat which tasted more like a salmon salad than Tuna. I helped Bill pick up the Pizza from Famous Daves. We had a nice party in the Pub. Steve and Lesley came later in the evening with the girls when we were finishing. On the way back to the hotel from the parking lot in the rain we met Holly and Darrel just checking into the Quality Suites. They flew to Hartford and drove to Portsmouth. Strange!

We left for the airport at 6 am and were through TSA by 6:52 which was a few minutes earlier than planned. We even had time to have a bowl of cereal and make coffee. The plane is the same plane through Baltimore so no chance to get off the plane for breakfast. The flight was choppy all the way to Baltimore but very smooth after that, so overall it was OK. We got a red Corolla rental car in Providence and went to Bills. We picked up Subway sandwiches before going there. Libbie and I split a 12" turkey sub. At Bills I repaired a window shade which had fallen out of the sheetrock. We ended up going to Home Depot and picking up some Mollys to hold the shade up. This job took longer than expected. Afterward we stopped at Brookdale to visit George who was still very sad and crying over Mary's death. We went to dinner with him in the dining room. I had the Flank steak sandwich with steamed red cabbage and Boston Cream Pie. It's amazing how the people there can't hear. The same menu choices are repeated over and over. I would go crazy there. We went to the hotel and put our suitcases in the room. The Quality Inn is much nicer than I ever expected but it will be expensive. The 3 nights is going to be $714. Ouch. Add to that the plane tickets and rental car and it is painful. In the later evening we went over to Bills and had a glass of wine and reminisced over the past years of Mary's life.

The storm changed tracks, it won't be as bad in NC but we're going tomorrow anyway. We checked in at 8:05 and got 'A' seating. I got together a bunch of background music that Bill had requested. On the IOS app, I finally have a contract in the Apple iTunes console. Now I need to create a new certificate, compile a sandbox version to test the shopping cart. Lots to do and time is running out. We had spaghetti with cheese over it tonight as an easy dinner. Packed for our trip to RI shortly after dinner.

I started working thorough getting the IOS app into Apple with in-app purchases. Called Amy at AVSA and got the routing number and the account number to fill out the Apple forms. Once again we had another good lesson with Robert extending our showcase number. Robert started by hugging Libbie for her Mom's death. This was nice. I ripped a bunch of YouTube videos for Bill for the Memorial Service. I had to use the small computer I built for Multimedia because it has the correct audio drivers for MyMP3. I'm still studying bridge emulators for Alexa. This clearly is the way to go.
Dinner tonight was the ribs leftover from Saturday along with a baked sweet potato and the leftover zinfindel from yesterday.

I got Alexa to put out MQTT via a php script interpreting commands. The MQTT is interpreted in the NCID display and scrolls forward and backward in the history. I made a youtube video and sent the link to jack and Tod. I'm happy with the results so far. The hurricane is now predicted to hit the NC-SC border as a Category 2. We changed our flights to go to the funeral on Friday instead of Saturday because of this. For dinner tonight I made a Cooking Light recipe which had pork chops smothered in apples and pearl onions and covered with chicken broth, butter, salt and pepper. Libbie has been sending family pictures to Heather for the Mary Condon memorial service. I scanned a few pics of the 50th anniversary back in 1991 for her.

I found some Youtube videos of xlfights sequencer software and did some timing marks of our "Do you love me" song. I like the technique in general and the software seems to be easy to use. I ordered some driver chips for the Huzzah to drive an LED strip. I'm getting the DIP version. Dinner tonight was hamburger on a bun with tomato and a Vidalia. We had some leftover Shiraz with the meal and Bush's Southern Pit BBQ which surprisingly had a little kick to it.

I studied flights for Central America from Costa Rica and to Panama. We did our bookings for Southern California for Christmas. Prices were pretty good to John Wayne so we went for it. We tried to communicate with Joe who is in TN but he wasn't interested in Christmas flights so we went ahead with our plans.
Libbie made her pizza again for dinner which was quite good as usual.

I worked in the morning on fixing the FC4A password. John Carter reported there were no updates for Jul and Sep. After fixing this I also fixed the crash problem with advanced search. I uploaded it all to Google Play. Communicated with Joe about his Xmas lights that he posted on YouTube. I'm toying with the idea of doing something like this for "Do You Love Me" for our showcase in the the Winter Ball.
After lunch today Libbie received a phone call from Bill and her Dad that her Mother passed away during a nap after lunch, somewhere between 1:30 and 2:30. Sad times in the days ahead. I called Arlene then Vicki with the news. Libbie was calling extended family members. Nowadays this has to be done before it is on Facebook. I started the ribs smoking today at around noon. Pulled them out of the Smoker at 6:20. We had the ribs with Buttenrut squash and Mondavi Bourbon barrel aged Cabernet. This is my favorite of the Mondavi line.
After dinner this evening Libbie talked with Christa about MAry Ellen and her last few hours. Later we went out to Brewsters and got a waffle cone. There were 2 young ladies in summer clothes in the store. One had tiny and tight short shorts and the other form fitting leggings. I'm going to miss summer.

In the morning I worked on preparing the ribs by removing the membrane and rubbing some Smoking Gun rub on the meat. I wrapped it and refrigerated it for smoking tomorrow.
We both worked on preparing some Cashew Chicken for dinner. We grated Ginger roots this time instead of bottled spice and used oyster sauce and real garlic to make it authentic. It was incredibly delicious and a real keeper. We had this with a bottle of Shiraz. It rained in the morning during which I went out to Home Depot in Cary to get lever handles for the upstairs doors that Libbie is in the process of painting. since I had a 10% off coupon I also bought the paint, a total of almost $300. I forgot the coupon but not a problem. I took the sales receipt to HD Apex and got my 10% off.
We were too tired for dance tonight so we lay in bed after our showers and just visited side by side on the bed. It was a nice end to the day.

I spent the day assembling and configuring the new i5 computer i will be using as a multimedia home theater PC. I ended up ordering a new DVD burner from Newegg for $13. Late in the afternoon I made some chicken wing rub and prepared 8 wings for oven roasting. Dinner was the chicken wings with sweet potato and a bottle of Shiraz, three buck chuck variety.

Lots of time reading about MQTT today and tried setting this up on the Pi in the closet. It does recognize commands from Alexa o turn on and off an LED. Now I need to send out an MQTT publish command.
We had a very good Swing lesson with Robert today continuing our choreography for the Winter Ball. I ended up paying the extra $348 I owed. This was a charge I didn't want on our credit card this month but better now than later.
I need to purchase plane tickets to Panama and back from Costa Rica yet. In the meantime i sold half of the Ferrelgas stock at a small loss because of a really bad earnings report. The scary thing to me was them stating loan repayments are in jeopardy. I suspect a dividend cut is in the works which will kill this stock. I got out at $13 and put the money into a CEF muni which only pays 5.5%. Dinner tonight was hamburger with vidalia onions and tomato.

I spent a lot of the day tinkering with the python program running on NCID that emulates a Wemo switch. I finally found a typo in the device list. I only had one device named Sprinkler but the REST address was typed wrong. Fixed it and now I can turn an LED on or off onboard an ESP8266. The other issue was the Python script not running when the command window was closed on the Server. I found the & sign added to the end of the startup command gets it to work in the background. I still haven't gotten the program to autostart. So far everything I have tried has not worked. The great news is I have a template to get Alexa to recognize devices and I have a method to issue commands to a device. Next step is to end out an MQTT publish to a broker. Dinner was spaghetti with cheese on top. After dinner I listened to Don Giovanni live from the Met. I didn't make it to the end though. I went upstairs at 11 PM.

I spent most of the day studying how to interface Alexa to an ESP8266 to turn on a relay. Once I can do this I can do a lot of control things. I found an emulation of a Wemo switch which I'm basing my work on. I also fine tuned the newsletter archive on avsa.org dressing it up a little. It's ready for prime time. Dinner tonight was eating lighter. We had Salmon on a salad. The Salmon was leftover from Saturday. Too bad I had lots of other things during the day upping my calories. Tonight was opening night at the Met. The Opera started at 5. I listened to all of it and really enjoyed it.

I spent most of the day studying how to interface Alexa to an ESP8266 to turn on a relay. Once I can do this I can do a lot of control things. I found an emulation of a Wemo switch which I'm basing my work on. I also fine tuned the newsletter archive on avsa.org dressing it up a little. It's ready for prime time. Dinner tonight was eating lighter. We had Salmon on a salad. The Salmon was leftover from Saturday. Too bad I had lots of other things during the day upping my calories. Tonight was opening night at the Met. The Opera started at 5. I listened to all of it and really enjoyed it.

This was a pretty good day of accomplishments. In the morning I fixed up the Android program to eliminate the crash in the semiminiature listing of results of the Advanced Search. I also got the NCIDdisplay running using some tips that Tod had sent me. When the ESP credentials get corrupted it's hard to restore functionality unless you flash other credentials into the device. After lunch we went to Lowes for a new door opener they had on sale. We also got out Fall bulbs and a shopping cart of bargain plants from the $1 table in the back of the garden department. The total for everything was $117. Once home Libbie planted the Salvia and other plants while I mowed the lawn and then chopped down the Japanese Irises with the mulching mower. The hose broke on the pond pump and half the water in the pond got pumped out. I added a splice to the hose then I checked the chlorine level and was not happy. I changed the Chlorine filter and was still not happy with the results. I used the hose and brought the pond up a few inches then turned the pump on for an overnight run mixing the fresh and old water while aerating the mixture to get rid of the Chlorine. We'll check it in the morning.
Dinner was Libbie;s wonderful pizza after which I listened to the Met Opera encore of Elektra with Nina Stemm. I loved this performance. While listening I fine tuned the Growing Tips section of the website. For the rest of the evening I read some blog articles of how to control a relay using Alexa and an ESP8266.

I tried getting the NCIDdisplay running but had lots of trouble. I sent a query to Jack for help. He forwarded it to Tod who sent some suggestions i will try in the morning. Outside I installed the new generator fan and then bolted everything back together. I did a test run and was happy with the results. The generator seemed to run pretty smoothly although all I thought was wrong was a slow idle speed in addition to the broken fan. Now it has a new air filter, oil filter, fresh oil, new spark plug and a valve adjustment. Dinner was Salmon with sweet potato and another bottle of the Mondavi Bourbon Oak barrel aged wine.

Today is a slow day of recovery from our California trip. I did a lot of paperwork in the morning backing up the photos, copying entries to my journal, processing the mail and other activities of day to day life. I registered for both the LSAVC and the MAAVS conventions. The envelopes will go into the mail tomorrow. A pile of awards came in while we were away. They all needed to be put into my tracking spreadsheet with names, addresses, etc. Once done with this I ran the checks over to BB&T, $260 dollars total.
One of the mail items was a MyPublisher album that i put together before we leaved. It's not great. The cover is badly over exposed, I shouldn't have used it. The cover makes a difference in making a good book. The Roku came today as a result of a prepaid subscription to Sling TV for 3 months. Not sure if I really need it but it will get the Met Player on our TV. Dinner tonight was Chinese 3 meat takeout with eggrolls and rice. I bought a bottle of Mondavi Bourbon cask aged Cabernet Sauvignon which is really good for 11.99. Kroger was sampling it.

A relaxed morning, our last at Joe & Christa's. We packed up and left at 10 for John Wayne airport and got there in less than 20 minutes. Joe and Paige drove us. Our first flight left Orange County on time at 12:10. It was pretty bumpy but downright scary landing in Vegas. We had to pull up at the last minute after a gust of wind pulled us off course while at tree top level. The pilot went back around and tried again. i certainly did not like this flight. Our next flight was delayed out of Oakland due to wind. We ended up taking off an hour late. The plane was 100% full. We finally landed at 11:45 PM and waited a while for a Park and Relax shuttle. Libbie called them because the card said to call after midnight. We got home around 12:30. Everything looked great. We lost connectivity with the house during the week. Fortunately it was only a cable modem reset. I need a UPS on the modem and router for this reason.

This morning we went to Paige's gymnastics class. Libbie joined in on the fun down on the floor. There were quite a few young mothers with their kids also in the class. You need to be in shape to do this stuff as Libbie found out. After gymnastics we picked up Jersey Mikes subs. I had a turkey and provolene "Mikes Way" which makes it easy to order a sub. Debbie and Craig, Granny and Mike came over later in the afternoon for pizza. Joe bought us a bottle of wine to have with dinner. The pizzas that Joe made were over the top delicious. I had too many. Christa had picked up some vanilla and peanut crunch candy ice cream which was pretty creamy and quite good. I lay down around 9 and passed out with my clothes on. I woke up an hour later and finally went to bed.

We went to dance class with Paige and Christa. Charley was there
making it a private lesson with two girls and 2 instructors.
When it was over we went next door to Lucci's. I liked the
sample of Bread Pudding. The bakery is over the top with yummy
looking treats such as cannolis, raspberry Jelly rolls and butter
cookies. We next went to a park over by Cliff Side Country Club
and watched Paige play on a very nice jungle gym. We went to
the 1531 Sub place and ordered sandwiches for lunch. Libbie and
I split a turkey and provolone with avocado and Basil Pesto.
Earlier today I created a new custom search module for Drupal in order to
search the growing_tips page. I'm having trouble submitting it to Google
for indexing.