We went to the Sarasota Opera lunch at 11:30 today with Eggplant Parmesan at noon with Tiramisu desert and a glass of Cabernet. After lunch 3 studio artists from the Sarasota Opera. They were quite good performing an aria from Walkure, Lehar and the love duet from Boheme. Incredibly good! I wanted more and was ready to go to the opera. Later in the afternoon I took a ride to Walmart to pick up cereal and triscuits. For dinner we had too much because after cheese and crackers I was stuffed and didn't want to eat anything else. We had a salad, leftover brisket with bread, cole slaw and beans accompanied by a glassof Cabernet. Way, way too much.

Today I didn't do much. Replaced a light in the bathroom then installed the board in the kitchen passthrough and applied caulking. Libbie went with Barbara to Dunedin to the quilt store. I heard from Sharon Hammil about the Mardi Gras party. She sent her address and the amount for the bike tour and the tips. I tried using Colts but kept getting a Server error. Will call the Credit Union tomorrow. We went over to Rib night at the clubhouse. I didn't feel like eating but ordered a half rack. Our waiter was terrible. It took a long time to take our drink order. When he finally took our food order he offered bread, After another long wait the bread came but then the food came out at the same time. I was having problems breathing i felt so stuffed. I really need to cut back significantly. Listened to Rigoletto live on Sirius when we came back

This morning I got the photo index posted to the AVM website for January. I found I also needed to modify the view to add 2017 to the dropdown. Once all this was done the photo index was read into the database and now displays properly. Libbie went to the clubhouse yoga class. I took the opportunity to work on the first class updates.
I got all the updates created and uploded the master file but I was not able to upload the map which uses an android app. HTTPUtils is deprecated so I ended up rewriting the software to not use this library. It now uses the FTP built into the NET library. Once the rewrite was done and debugged I uploaded the map files using the built in FTP. Now I only have the IOS subscriptions left to fix.
For dinner we went over to Pub night and got a booth almost right away which was a surprise. I had the beef brisket which had a nice smoked flavor. It came with slaw, baked bens and french fries. I am eating way too much. Need to stop.

The Sonos music has worked very well. I made my first attempt at controlling it via Alexa. I first did a backup of the Pi SD image to my laptop then started adding the Alexa to Sonos install. I also did all the work on Amazon in the Skills service and the Lambda service. Next I created a favorite on the Sonos. It tested well standalone on Amazon but when I tried testing it to the real device I got an endpoint error. I believe this is because I do not have https enabled for the connection. I think I need a setting file pointing to my certificate keys. I have not done this part.
We went for a 10 mile bike ride today to the quilt shop on Clark and Honore. This was a long ride but enjoyable. We also stopped at the Publix on Honore to pick up some more cheese and triscuits. After the ride we decided to go to the Club house for lunch. I had a chicken salad wrap which also had bacon and avocado plus tomato. I had it with a Yuengling. Yummy! This wiped me out for the day so we chose not to go to the Saradance studio tonight. instead we had triscuits and cheese with wine then an hour later a bowl of Clam Chowder for dinner. I spent the rest of the night reading, looking at blogs on Tumblr and also some work on the AVM article index that Terry sent me for January 2017. I got the article index posted but not the photo index. Since this is a new year, 2017, i had to figure out how to add the 2017 tag to the picture.

I was happy this morning. The Pi Samba share showed up on my laptop. Since the power went out abruptly yesterday I didn't know what to expect. I screwed around with permissions and did a chown changing the file permission recursively from root to Pi. This made the music directory browsable. I installed the Sonos app and set the player up. It worked fine. We spent a little time today listening to our music collection on the Sonos. Dinner was a salad with the leftover eggplant parmesan from Saturday night and a glass of Cabernet. Loved it, it was so good.

Struggled with the Samba stuff some more. Decided to use the nodered Pi to do a fresh install of install. Before I did that I made a copy of the image to my hard drive. I then installed Samba but had a lot of "not found errors". I changed the pi to Google's name servers and did a lot better. It found everything but i still had configuration problems. Tweaked the configuration but had to go to the ballet. We left at 12:10 for the 1 PM performance. Got good seats at the AMC 12 at the mall. This is a better theater than Bradenton. The sound is way better abd the picture seems clearer. After the performance we went to Walmart for needed groceries. We ordered a sausage pizza from the italian Grill for dinner which we had with wine. After dinner i worked some more but the storm arrived around 9 PM and power went out. We went to bed in the dark. The power came back about 90 minutes later.

I tried to get Saamba running on the Pi. I got Samba working but trying to mount the hard drive in the right place turned out to be a challenge. i failed. We left for Bradenton at noon for the 1 PM performance of Romeo and Juliette. I loved the opera but not the people around us. One couple next to us talked out loud about how dark the picture was. The guy behind me had awful breath, I ended up switching seats after the intermission. Our host was very good, a Soprano named Ailyn Perez. The music for this opera is fitting, emotional and moving. I loved it. After the opera we went to the Ellenton outlet mall. Libbie needed slacks and shoes. We spent 2 hours there which was 2 hours too much. On the way back we went to the Italian Grill which was excellent. We had a short wait for a table then had Kelly for our waitress who we had the one other time we went there. We both ordered the same thing, Eggplant Parmesan with salad that had Ranch dressing. The bread was excellent, it was yeast flat bread similar to pizza dough. The Parmesan wa over spaghetti and had fresh basil leave in the food. Wow, was this yummy. I had a Stella to accompany the meal.
When we got back to the condo the Sonos was finally there. It took 10 days and it really was new in the box. The real surprise was it was shipped by Amazon from the Amazon warehouse in Ruskin. I got it set up but have not been able to get the Samba share working where I want to serve music.

I finally heard from the eBbay seller about my Sonos. He supplied a tracking number that shows it's in Ruskin and should be here tomorrow. I spent several hours transferring files to the new Hard Drive, 500 Gb worth. The drive is a 1 Terrabyte drive. We spent the whole day watching the Trump inauguration which was good because the files were getting copied while I watched. In the evening we went out to the clubhouse for dinner. I had the Captains platter. The shrimp were overdone and not great but the rest of the seafood was excellent.
i started reading about what it takes for Samba on a Pi since I want to share the Music on the hard drive with the Sonos.

It's a nice day and not supposed to be so nice this weekend so we went over to Spanish Point and purchased 2 $10 admissions. We walked the gift shop which was high quality then watched the movie as in introduction. We then drove over to the gazebo entrance and joined up with a walking tour which was really worthwhile. We learned about the history of the property and the land from the early settlers to later Mrs Palmer's estate. I enjoyed the walk around the property which is 30 acres. The sun, nice weather and the bayfront add to beautiful atmosphere.
When we finished with Spanish Point we didn't feel like going back to a bowl of soup for lunch. The outdoors and the sunshine feel so nice. We drove to Spanis Marina which has been refurbished and had lunch. The plastic chairs have been replaced with patio furniture but the venue is still beautiful and the food good. We started with nachos and chili-head Salsa which was fantastic. I really like the Salsa. Libbie ordered Queso for her chips. The Salsa was the clear winner here. I had the chicken sandwich with jerk sauce and grilled pineapple which was accompanied by fries. It was delicious. We made this our dinner and only had a bowl of tomato soup for dinner.

The disk drive and the usb drive adapter both arrived today. I struggled recognizing the drive until I downloaded the Seagate Wizard and partitioned the drive which was a start. Next I used the Microsoft built in format program and formatted the drive successfully. I decided this was enough for one day, I'll resume the drive loading tomorrow. We went to the clubhouse for pub night. We met Teri and Sue from last year who live in the condos that are not in the golf portion of Stoneybrook. Lucky them!!!! I ordered the blackened redfish which was delicious. I ate it all including the veggies. A Yuengling accompanied my meal. Terri talked about Bocci in the morning at 9:30. We were going to go ballroom dancing afterward but it was 8:15 when we got out so decided not to.

I finally had some luck today with Alexa. I followed an excellent YouTube video where a guy supposedly opened the Alexa Skills and Lambda functions for the first time. He loaded the color example from Amazon so I followed step by step. It didn't work at first but I found when I went one step beyond, into the part that fills out the privacy statements, the app was able to be used. My Alexa worked successfully with the favorite colors I told it. Based on this success I revisited the Spaceball app I loaded yesterday. I discovered the logs on Amazon and found it was indicated a bad intent. Studying the code I found that the intent "spaceball" was case sensitive. I fixed this and everything started working. I'm ready to move on to Downing place apps with Alexa.
We went over to Lowes to get screws for the board I want to install in the passthrough. Next stop was Sears for a vacuum cleaner belt then the seafood store I found online. We bought tuna steaks at the place just before Southgate. I tried to get the grill running but never got it quite warmed up. We grilled the steaks anyway. There were mosquitoes around the grill which buzzed in my ear. I hate that. The steaks came out OK but seemed a little dry. We had this with Mondavi Cabernet, broccoli and rice. It was a nice meal. I started writing again, this time a short story. I feel rusty at the process but I know this improves with time.

I completely failed with Amazon Echo. Today I used a Youtube video that put an app in AWS and also an app in the Alexa Skills kit then hooked the two halves together. No luck other than Alexa seems to think there is a skill there but reports an error response. After lunch we went to JC Penney and shopped the MLK Sale. I had a 15% off coupon as well as a $42 gift card from Christmas a year ago when i returned a Christmas sweater. Next stop was Sears for a vacuum cleaner belt which had broke. Unfortunately I should have also bought the second belt which is the power brush belt. It seems stretched out. Then it was off to Walmart to get our groceries which included wine and triscuits. I checked the frozen salmon filets and found they were from China. No thanks.
Dinner was tuna sandwiches with celery and tomato on the nice Hispanic rolls.

Painted the board today for the kitchen passthrough. It dried quickly so I was able to get a second coat on before evening. Then when it was dry I brought it inside to completely dry overnight. I struggled with trying to get a hello world sample recognized by my Pi. The great news is the SSL is working great. Also, systems at home are working great. I'm able to log in to Traviata and then use the browser to contact the Stoneybrook Pi via https which indicates the SSL is correctly installed. Yes!
We had wine and cheese at sunset then ordered a large cheese pizza from the Italian Grill. It was ready in 15 minutes and was good.

I made a morning run to Publix and picked up Shrimp for dinner along with fruit and cocktail sauce. I did quite a bit of reading about configuring node-red to accept an Amazon request. I cut and sanded the board for the kitchen pass through so I could hang the grow light. I'll paint it tomorrow. We listened to La Boheme live on the radio while running a tutorial on YouTube. The pin fell out of the front door opener so I took it to Lowes and bought a screw and nut of the same diameter and put it in while trying to damage the threads on the screw so it won't come apart. I was mildly successful at this. After our sunset of wine and cheese with Triscuits Libbie boiled the shrimp in Old Bay seasoning. We had this along with Basmati rice and fresh broccoli. Mondavi Cabernet complemented our meal. I bought Moose Tracks ice cream but forgot to serve it.

Libbie is determined to be well so we took a 6 mile bike red to the North end of the trail. In the PM we picked up our newly transferred prescriptions at Walmart as well as dinner fixings. Picked up some Hispanic rolls which were delicious. We had the rolls filled with sauteed onions and prime rib. This was delicious! Previously today we watched the sunset while having wine with cheese and crackers.

Libbie is down and out today. I spent most of the day watching YouTube videos. We did have one trip to Walmart where we transferred our prescriptions then picked up a grow light in addition to replenishing some of our groceries. I'm going to hang the grow light in the space over the kitchen sink but first i need to pick up some hooks and chains. We went over to the Clubhouse for rib night. Tonight i had the half rack of ribs along with a yuengling.

We had lunch here in the Condo, leftover chicken sandwiches then we went to Selby and took a slow walk around. The African Masks are back in the Payne house. Libbie couldn't resist and picked up 3 violets in the Garden shop. We came back and went over to the clubhouse for Pub night. Besides the very nice salad I had a beef and pork Lasagna with veggies which was very good. It was a different kind of Lasagna but tasty.

It's a beautiful day out today. I spent some time getting a Sonos interface configured on the Raspberry Pi. I finally got it all set up, now i need to get a Sonos and also install the skill on Amazon.
Libbie is still not well so i went over to Publix and picked up a rotisserie chicken and some fixings for dinner. Sunset tonight was spectacular. We watched it while having cheese and wine to toast the end of the day. Romeo and Juliet was live on the Met tonight on Sirius. I listened but wasn't too interested. I continued to configure the Pi. Tonight I added back the Nodered which was disabled when I had to upgrade node.js to accommodate the Alexa to Sonos Api code. Dinner was rotisserie chicken with macaroni and potato salad.

There was a WSJ outside the door of our condo this morning! They found me. I wasn't sure if this was going to work. Libbie has a cold today so we didn't go out. It's very cold out today anyway with a stiff wind as well. I ran over to Publix in the evening and picked up some chicken from the Asian buffet for dinner. We had wine and cheese for sunset but the sky was clear enough it wasn't spectacular. Listened to Sirius XM live from the Met this evening.

I tried quite a bit to configure the router and secure nodered on the stoneybrook Pi. So far i have not had any luck. At home it is quite cold after about one inch of snow. The weather station stopped reporting at 8 AM but 2 or 3 hours later it began reporting again. I don't know what's going on but I need to get the wireless Moteino reporting to a Huzzah sending MQTT packets ASAP. In the meantime I fretted about the potential for freezing pipes since our crawl space fan is activating every hour even through temperatures in the lower teens. This is bad and needs to be replaced with an MQTT based controller as well as supplemented with an outdoor temperature sensor.
We had wine and cheese outside even though it was only in the 50s then we ordered a mushroom pizza from the Italian Grill for dinner. While having pizza I watched the Golden Globes which was pretty boring.













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It rained pretty hard this morning after some thunderstorms overnight. We left at 11:30 in a rainy mist for the theater in Bradenton. Got there very very early, there were only 2 other people in the theater. I also bought tickets for the Romeo and juliet performances in 2 weeks. We thoroughly enjoyed this opera. It was full of choruses plus James Levine and Placido Domingo were good. When it was done we went over to Walmart across the street and bought a yoga mat for Libbie as well as a Brita water filter. We then drove over to Bill's condo on a golf course. We had some nice wine and cheese at Bill and Barb's then wnt out to dinner at Anna Maries Oyster Bar. We had coupons for Margaritas. I also ordered Fish and Chips which were quite good. Left there happy and drove home via Siesta Key where we saw what was left of the Christmas lights.

Played some more with configuring a Pi for the HVAC closet in the condo. We went out at lunch time to the club house for lunch. I had a Southwestern chicken salad with a Yuengling. It was good but needed some spice to turn it into a Southwestern dish. We then drove to the Whimsy Museum. It was fun walking around viewing all the art and kitschy stuff on display. I talked to Marietta about her Backus paintings. She must have about 10. and another dozen or more of the highwaymen paintings. She said she is working to catalog the collection.
We came back and had our wine and cheese at sunset then a peanut butter sandwich. That was our dinner.

We took it slow today. After the long drive yesterday which really wasn't too bad, it was just long, we eased into acclimating ourselves into the condo. We unpacked our suitcases, found towels and missing items and set up the satellite radio. Lunch was the leftover fish and chips from yesterday. We then went out for a bike ride around the neighborhood. It's a warm 78 degrees out with a little bit of wind. It was nice to be on the bike again. We had wine and cheese for sunset. Libbie had a very nice conversation with her Dad this evening. He talked about the book he finished reading which made her incredibly happy. We then went out to rib night where we had a nice booth. The ribs and horseradish were delicious which I had with a yuengling that I couldn't finish.

We had a leisurely morning since it doesn't make any sense to leave before 9 AM due to Tampa rush hour traffic. We left at 8 and surprisingly breezed through the south side of Raleigh on the beltline. We stopped for breakfast and coffee just before Florence at the McDonalds/Shell combo station. Once we got back on I-95 we ran into a traffic jam. We lost around 30 minutes creeping into a merge then a single lane over the PeeDee River where there was bridge work. Further down I-95 there was another closing so we went around. unfortunately a bridge was also out on our alternate which was 301 so we went back and further down to June Burn Road to Manning, SC. It was a quirky road through the swamp and wetlands. incredibly scenic in it's own way. We lost a total of 1 hour. Our next stop was Darien, GA for gas and Wendy's lunch. Darien is an old rundown outlet mall and barely any serviceable services. The Wendy's looked like it should close soon, the dining room furniture was in tattered shape. We sailed further down the highway and had a small backup merging from I-95 to I-295 in Jacksonville. We chose to avoid Gainesville at rush hour and kept on 301 to just before Ocala. With the bikes onboard our gas mileage was only 26 so we stopped again in Zephyrhills at a nice Marathon where I also did a bathroom break. We got into our condo at 8:15. After putting away the bikes and unloading some of the car we went out to dinner at Mad Moes. I had Fish and Chips and a Yuengling. I was hungry and it was good. It came with some nice fries and coleslaw.

Today I got a webscraper running on an ESP8266. I was going to work on the garage door sensor but chose to do this instead. The gamble paid off because by late afternoon I had the device scraping the enphase hub page and publishing the solar production numbers via MQTT. I'll do the Nodered portion of this remotely from Sarasota. I spent the rest of the time packing. Dinner was spaghetti using the rest of the tomato sauce and leftover pizza cheese.