Today is show time!!! We do our performance tonight. We practiced two times during the day, once in the morning and once shortly after lunch. We're as ready as we'll ever be.
We left for the studio at 7:15 for the 7:30 party. I had a light dinner at the studio consisting of pulled pork and some pasta salad and potato salad. We were in the second act about half way through. This means we didn't see too much of the second act. We stayed until 10:20 in a fun night of dance and friends. Our performance went really well. We had a little trouble with no rock step before the 6 grapevines and also i didn't start turning Lib at the end until 2 steps in but everything worked out well.

I downloaded the Visa bill which closed on Dec 6. The bill was $4,700 which was higher than expected but it did include the last payment for Mardi Gras as well as the hotel, meals and car for the Plano trip. Libbie had about $1200 worth of charges on this one which lessens the burden on the checkbook.
I started work on the gateway code which will translate the moteino wireless devices transmission into MQTT packets by receiving the moteino status over the air then use a Huzzah to put it on the internet. The goal is to replace the LowPower Labs gateway.
I got dressed in my tux and Libbie wore a new evening gown for Esquires tonight. We left at 5:50 but had a very very slow trip because rush hour traffic was horrible like it always is. It took us almost an hour to get to North Ridge.
We sat with Charlie & Terry, Jim and Jane and Gary and Janet. At the buffet I had Salmon, a single piece of beef and some squash casserole. I finished the meal with chocolate cake and coffee. Yumm. We did well dancing and had enough room to practice our swing routine for tomorrow night. We left after the second set by the Tune Swingers, about 9:30. It was a good night of dancing.

I got my temperatures from the new Huzzah sensor displaying on Openhab2 hosted on a Pi 3. This is great. In addition, the sunset outdoor light controller has been successfully turning the landscape lights on and off without a miss. I'm amazed this is working so well.
At dance today we had our last lesson before the showcase. We used the big ballroom to practice our routine which had a few issues but nothing too bad. After that we went to the regular studio and brushed up on some Rumba which was pretty useful. It was another good lesson.
Dinner tonight was leftover chili from yesterday. Good stuff. We finished the Zinfandel from last night with one more glass each.
Later i tuned into the Adafruit Youtube broadcast and got the promo code, bonnet. to get 10% off on 5 more Huzzahs. I'm currently using one for NCID, one for the greenhouse/porch monitor, one for the attic/plantroom and one for the Internet monitor for a total of 5 Huzzah devices. I needed some more. I'm also running out of 5V supplies but ordered 5 more from Sparkfun last week. They are slow shipping.

I finished the new Huzzah based temperature receiver for the plantroom and the attic sensors, a total of 5 sensors. I built the software with bits and peices of code and soon had it reading temps and sending out MQTT packets wit the readings. This is great news. I did the groceries today as usual and picked up the ingredients to make hominy based chili from cooking light. This was good. The original recipe called for using pork but we decided to use stuff we already had so we got out some frozen chicken breasts and made a chicken and hominy chili for dinner. We had this with Ravenswood Zinfandel.

A pretty good day. Libbie went out with Anita dress shopping and I continued to configure Openhab2. I finally got it displaying a frame with my temperatures which it received from MQTT. Success at last. As a final thought I configured the router to do port forwarding to the Pi so I can access the house environment from outside. Hooray. I got a haircut this morning when Great Clips opened at 9. Later at 11 I went to Costco for wine and coffee beans. Surprisingly they were selling stamps for less than face value, 46.75 for sheets of 100 stamps.
I'm so happy with the Openhab display that I went ahead to begin building another ESP based sensor to replace the attic and plant room arduino. It will be nice to get those temperatures onto MQTT. Then I have to get the moteino to MQTT gateway working so the moteinos can report-in properly. In addition, the light sensor in the greenhouse needs to be populated with a moteino so it can send it's data to the gateway.
Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese.
After dinner I worked on the code for the new ESP while listening to Salome live from the Met. I really like Zika Lucic's voice and singing.

I spent the whole day trying to understand OpenHab and it's configuration. It will probably do the job receiving MQTT packets and displaying them on a web page, both internally and outside the house. I found a Pi 3 in the table next to my chair and configured it while watching the CBS Sunday morning show. I enjoyed CBS sunday Morning since they did a promo for the Rolling Stones. They also profiled Billy Bob Thornton and his movie "Bad Santa" which I donwloded today. I ended up installing Openhab several times before I found a great way to install it using the Debian archive thanks to the website "instructables". I put a copy of their webpage on Tom's Life Bits. Dinner tonight was Libbie's pizza on a crust she made from scratch. We went out this afternoon and tried to go to Costco but it was s crowded we went to Walmart for our Christmas Cards after picking up 25 prints of us at Walgreens.

I persisted today and finally got the new temperature board with the ESP8266 working and reporting via MQTT. Now I need to receive this data and display it somewhere. However, only 3 of 4 channels are working. My scope says the 4th channel is not responding so it's probably a broken connection to the sensor. Dinner tonight was shrimp, baked yam and a failure at Crawfish which Kroger had for 3.99 per lb. I bought a handful for $1 to try. Not good. We had the dinner with Columbia Crest Cabernet.

Today I wired up the second ESP sensor board. This seemed to go well. Dinner tonight was leftover Coconut Curry Soup. We went to the studio in the evening for the Friday night party. It has been a while since we were there. It was nice to see everybody. Afterwards we went out to McGregor Tavern where we split a Quesadilla and had 1 1/2 Yuengling drafts.

I fired up the ESP again today in the back shop and used the scope to figure out what was wrong. I eventually hooked up just the sensor lines to the ESP on a breadboard. This worked well!!! I decided to build a second prototype by cutting another proto board and then gluing with expoxy the two RJ45s and the power jack. i soldered down the 4 pullup resistors and the two ESP 0 pin headers.
Dinner tonight was the leftover Rotisserie Chicken from the chicken soup yesterday. We had this with baked yams.

The sunset timer works well. It turned the lights on last night and turned them off again at 3:30 this morning. Next I turned my attention to the flakey temperature reporting from the porch and greenhouse. I decided to wire up an ESP chip to do the job but first I tested the WiFi in the back room by planting an ESP chip in the corner transmitting MQTT packets. I was able to receive them all. I struggled with getting a one wire device working on the ESP. Finally i hooked up a little breadboard and discovered the secret was to turn on the internal pullups in the ESP at the setup interval. This did the trick for the breadboard. When I moved the real thing to the shop and hooked it up to the sensor lines these was nothing. I tried a few different programs but nothing. I may have to get out the scope.
For dinner tonight we made Cooking Light's Coconut curry Chicken Soup. This took quite a bit of prep time with cooking noodles, snow peas and spinach then making the broth mixture with onions, spices, chicken broth and coconut milk. Then the two mixtures were combined with red pepper flakes. The end result was well worth it. We had the soup with half a bottle of Shiraz.

I did the Tuesday groceries and picked up the ingredients for Pad Thai. After lunch Libbie and I went to the Asian store on Kildaire Farm Road to get bean sprouts because Kroger doesn't sell them. this store was a find. We also bought some Spring Rolls to try them. Libbie wanted the vegetable ones.

When we got back I worked on the shop ceiling and installed a 4 foot LED strip light. I'm not happy with the job, too many holes in the sheetrock plus I can't get the strip flush so I put shims in place.

We made Shrimp Pad Thai for dinner which we had with a bottle of Shiraz. The meal is definitely a keeper it was so good. Notable was Libbie adding Siracha to her serving to spice it up. Wow, she has come around to the dark side.

I fired up the chain saw and cut up a small tree that fell in the woods in the back and hauled the bigger pieces away. I used the cart to pick up the small stuff. I have a successful version of the sunset python program running. It also has MQTT publish commands built in. The MQTT gets published when the seconds to sunset counts down to zero. I tested it using MQTT-Spy and an MQTT publish was issued at exactly sunset.

Later in the day I took apart a Sonoff and soldered an FTDI header onto it then hooked up the jumper wires to the programming cable. I put an MQTT based program onto it and tested it out. The program is based on one by Superhouse on YouTube. It was a success and issued MQTT packets on demand.

Dinner was the last of the turkey along with a baked Yam and some gravy.

This morning during CBS this morning I worked on the Stauffacher-Ward genealogy from the files Mary and John sent yesterday. Unfortunately I can't read the box file which comes from the Mac Reunion program. Once CBS Sunday morning was done I went upstairs and finished scanning the Mary Condon 1930s book.

Libbie made her excellent pizza once again. The crust came out pretty thing which was surprising.

Libbie cleaned the floors downstairs. i continued to scan photos from the Stauffacher album and also wrote a Python program that works. The program sends an MQTT publish out for the outdoor lights to turn on. This routine will be incorporated into a sunset program so that when sunset arrives the MQTT command will turn on the outdoor lighting. Thanks to MQTT I can also include feedback to determine if the lights received the command.
Dinner tonight was turkey again with stuffing, broccoli and with Chateau St Michelle Sauvignon Blanc. Good stuff. I'm now researching the python sunset calculation program.

I worked on scanning more of the Stauffacher pictures today and also resurrected the genealogy site on the web. I added plenty of headshots to the program in addition to names and dates and a history. I like te TNG program a lot.
I bought groceries in Kroger today along with a $100 Bean gift card which got me $20 back for the groceries. I spent the giftcard and ordered $130 worth of clothes which came with a 20% off Black Friday discount. In addition I got a $10 gift certificate, 4x fuel points at Kroger and the usueal 2% credit card rebate. Good deal.
Dinner was the leftover turkey with just water.

Thanksgiving Day. I looked for a Black Friday code for ProShow but came up empty handed. Instead I found a portable version on Pirate Bay and used a Sandbox type program called Time Freeze which restores your PC to the point before using the program. This insures you have blocked key loggers and viruses.
Sheetz was running the promo again they featured last year and before, buy a paper and get a free coffee. I bought 2 donuts as well when I got the paper. It's thick and full of Black Friday ads. I'm not very interested in anything. The Sheetz donuts are very good. I built a nice movie today of the photos using the new version of ProShow Gold version 8 that I sandboxed. IT played nicely on our TV.
We had a very nice Butterball turkey cooked in a bag along with stuffing, broccoli, cranberries, potatoes and Brut Champagne. Topping it all was a pumpkin pie with whipped cream topping. Libbie worked hard all day because in addition to the Turkey dinner she also made the traditional annual fruit cakes. Wow, lots of good food.

I got the MQTT thing resolved. I needed to close the previous HTTP connection before it would use MQTT to transmit status. This now seems reliable. I continued with the genealogy work and learned quite a bit more about the program's templates and options. This may work well. For dinner tonight we picked up some Sczechuan 3 flavor and a bottle of Ravenwood Zinfindel. The grocery store was less crowded in the evening then when I went earlier in the day to get Apple Cider, flour and baking soda. It was a zoo in the afternoon. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

I captioned all the pictures today from the envelope and tried making a movie of them in 1080p but it didn't play on the TV USB port. Back to the drawing board.
Next I played with updating the genealogy program. This is slowly coming along one name at a time. Libbie went grocery shopping with me today. We picked up our turkey as well as wine and other things needed for the Thanksgiving dinner.
Dinner tonight was Spaghetti without any wine, just water!!!

MQTT seems to be unreliable. I eventually traced the problem to the initial http connect to one of the 5 URLs. Once the connection is made the MQTT client publish fails. This is not good but the good news is we really want to know when it does not connect and not when we do connect. However, I am going to try an http stop tomorrow to see if this corrects the issue.

Libbie went to the dentist today at 2 which was risky business for our 3:30 dance lesson. The studio is closed Wednesday before Thanksgiving this week so we rescheduled for today to continue our routine. We pretty much have most of it and did well only missing once or twice. Half way through the lesson we switched to Rumba which was great because we did pick up a few pointers. We did the sliding doors which starts with a box then immediately an underarm turn followed by a turnout. We then go back and fourth before getting together and completing with a fifth position to close.

When we got back I spent the evening scanning an envelope of Libbie's Mother's pictures. Next I will read the backs of the pics and label the front with the captions. This will mean each pic becomes 2 pics, one with a caption and one without. In the evening while scanning I listened to Manon Lescaut live from the Met with Christina Opelais. I heard Anna Netrebko do it last week. I like them both.

Dinner tonight was leftover chicken with a bottle of Parker Estates Cabernet we picked up in Kroger today along with baked beans. We also picked up some Triscuits and a brick of cheddar to have a glass of wine along with a pre dinner hors d'oeuvres.

No internet this morning. After the CBS Sunday Morning show I went to Best Buy to exchange the modem for another. The warranty is the best $10 I ever spent.
I worked with Time Warner to get the modem listed on my account. When that wa s done all worked again. In the meantime I struggled with the modem reset. I researched forwarding MQTT to websockets. It's built into the version of MQTT on the Debian repository but not on the Pi Jessie repo.. I followed some online instructions for adding the Debian repo and installed from there. The web page I created seems to work with receiving MQTT messages. Dinner was Libbie's pizza.

I cleaned up the router room and installed the router restart box. I tried doing a few updates from upstairs and hung the thing. I need to look into a watchdog timer for the thing. We went out in the PM first to Loews to look fro bulbs then to Fresh Market to get Ribeye for dinner. Dinner was ribeye, lima beans and baked potato with sour cream. Accompanying the meal was Fess Parker Cabernet.

I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto.

I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto.

I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto.

I prepped the junction box for the Router reset and mounted all the parts. I did this while Libbie was having her vein surgery over at Wake Radiology. I drove her there at 8 AM and picked her up at 11:43. We wnet to O'Charleys for lunch. I had the half a club which had turkey and bacon along with a bowl of loaded potato soup. The soup was cheesy with bacon and potato in it. i had a 22 ounce Red Oak beer with this. Later in the day I got the modem and router reset circuit hooked up in the closet. i also took the opportunity to clean up a lot of the wiring in the wiring closet. This went well but I only got about half the job done. Still more to do. It is cramped in the closet so I got out of there for now. The major components usch as router, modem and switch are mounted. The modem is at the end of it's cable so it's not on the shelf where I wanted it. Will try again some other time. I think there was an issue with the center conductor not making electrical contact so I had a flaky connection. Dinner was leftover Portabello stuffed with Chicken and Pesto.