I checked in at 8:35 this morning and ended up in the B group at B3 and B4. Amazing. Unfortunately weather is showing rain tomorrow morning. We will have to fly through this stuff on the way to New Orleans.
Spent the day packing and gathering our things. It's supposed to rain tomorrow in Tampa so it'll be a bumpy flight getting out of town.
Didn't do too much of anything else. Sunset was nice, I had triscuits dipped in the Chili Head Salsa which worked out well. For dinner we had our leftover Thai food from yesterday. I had leftover Chicken Pad Thai which I washed down with 3 glasses of Cabernet. That was a bad thing to do since I was trying to cut back but delicious! Went to bed around 10 and set the alarm for 5 AM tomorrow.

Bill and Barb came over after breakfast. Bill forgot his hat yesterday so he picked it up on the way to Fort Meyers to visit Carrie's parents. After lunch we went to Benderson Park which is the Sarasota Rowing facility. We had some trouble on I-75, the traffic was stopped so we got to Bee Ridge and got off then took honore to the top of the lake. I was looking for the road at the South end but couldn't find it. We ended up at a small parking area at the North end. We had an enjoyable ride around the lake then found the little roadway which is called Athlete Dr but turned around and took the 4 lane Cattleman to Fruitville then onto I-75. For sunset I ate the chips from yesterday but mainly I wanted to taste the chili head salsa. Next we went to the Party Store to look for Mardi Gras stuff. Lib bought a Boa in green and gold that was a little pricey at $10. On the way back we went to Bangkok Thai where I had a glass of Cabernet and Chicken Pad Thai. We started the meal with 2 Spring Rolls, one each. During the meal i found not to put the hot sauce on that is on the table. That stuff is hot, hot, hot. It burned my lips and required tons of water to put out the fire. Very good.

Bill and Barb came over today around 11. I previously picked up some cheese and triscuits at Publix. We sat out on the Lanai and had the cheese with strawberries and the orange juice she fresh squeezed from our second bag of Honeybell Oranges. The oranges previously were obtained up in Citra on 301 where they were buy one get one free. The juice was great. We then went out for lunch at the Spanish Point. Our server Brittany was nice and prompt. The girls were wearing some pretty short short almost exposing their cheeks. I loved it. Libbie and I split a plate of 3 shrimp tacos. We also ordered chips and chili-head salsa. I love the salsa. When we came back we went to two Open houses in the estates that were just listed. One had a realtor from RI that Bill talked with. The house was nice but in a bad location facing Tamiami. You can hear the traffic whizzing by out on the street which was too bad. The other one was by Charles Offer. The house was priced at 349 and had a much better location. The layout was a little weird and the furniture had been removed because the owner moved over to assisted living. In the evening around 6:30 I ordered a Dominoes pizza online using the 3 toppings for a large pizza for 7.99 coupon. This time I paid online and went over to pick it up. Libbie said this was her new Sunday night favorite. It was very tasty with very good mushroom flavor but once again the crust was soggy mainly because it's a Brooklyn hand stretched pizza that is not cooked on a stone but instead they use a conveyor belt.

Today I worked on the vintage violets forms and got them working correctly. The request loads the database and a view will display the data. I tried some test data and it worked. Now I need to design the admin screen to be able to delete the data. Lunch was leftover quesadilla then We had a simple dinner of salad later in the day. We left for the 7:30 performance of Italian Girl in Algiers AT 6 pm AND GOT THERE IN GOOD TIME. We sat out in the courtyard on wet seats while we waited for the theater to allow people inside. I was wowed by the dress, especially by one young couple in a tux with silk scarf and a beautiful woman in designer dress and perfectly coiffed hair. Wow.
The opera was a total delight. Campy as expected with lots of Rossini fast singing and very good acting by the singers. Wow, was this ever a great opera. I want to see it again. We got home at 11:30. It was pretty long with 2 intermissions but entirely enjoyable for every minute.

Libbie went for lunch at Bill's then her TSA appointment at the airport. I stayed around and did a lot of tutorials on putting stuff in the database using a taxonomy form and reading the data back using a view. For dinner tonight we went out to Mad Moes. I had the quesadilla which came with fries and I had a Yuengling.

This was a "slow" day. I worked on the vintage violet database for the violet preservation group. I think I can add a group of violets to the database. We shall see. Lib and I took a short walk since it was windy. We only went around Forest Circle. Because the golf course was closed we walked the cart path behind the houses on Forest Circle. Dinner was a salad and the leftover quesadilla. It was a more than adequate dinner.

I did a lot of reading and watching videos of crawl space ventilation. It looks like a traditional vented crawl space is not a good idea. An encapsulated crawl space is much better. Before I can think about encapsulation I need to see if the water issue has been solved with the regrading I did outside the porch where I redirected the roof water to flow downhill instead of against the foundation. Heard from Tina about her requirements for the vintage violet listings. I told her i would look at using Drupal for this. I would like a temporary site with Drupal installed that i could use to test this out.
We did another 2 mile walk today. It was pretty windy out but we went all the way around. For dinner I had 3 pieces of Swiss at sunset then we went over to Pub night for night. I had the Smoked Pork Quesadilla with a Yuengling.

WE did a 2 mile walk today. I worked on the AVSA website and finally found the problem with the Colorbox. IT had the wrong name. Instead of plain Colorbox it was named colorbox1.x After a rename it started working normally which was great news. Dinner was leftover fish and chips with a salad. During the evening I read about crawlspace encapsulation vs crawlspace ventilation. In general encapsulation is bad and ventilation with a huge exhaust fan is bad if it's humid outside. I need a smart system that compares the outside humidity with the indoor humidity and only exhausts when the outside humidity is lower than the inside humidity. The blogs insist that I need to compare dewpoints instead of humidity. i agree. The indoor dewpoint will need to be calculated whereas the outdoor dewpoint can be scraped from weather underground using either my website data or a nearby site or possibly a combination of the two with one serving as primary and the other as backup.

We got going at 8:15 but got hung up in traffic on 64 going to the beltline. It was stop and go until Route 1 then it was clear sailing all the way, The two construction zones on 95 in SC were a normal one lane merge unlike last month when we did this trip. We had a bathroom stop at the SC visitors center just over the border then stopped in Ridgeland for gas and lunch. Gas at Marathon for credit cards was 2.39, ouch. For lunch I had a Wendy's single with half of a small fries. Our next gas stop was an emergency. it wasn't until we were in the deserted section of 75 next to Tampa Bay that I noticed the gas gauge had only 27 miles until empty. We got gas in Ellenton at a Circle K then continued the rest of the way, arriving at 7:30. After unloading some suitcases we went out for dinner at Mad Moes. I had fish and chips with a Yuengling. It was quite good. Everything looked great, i thought i forgot my camera but found it in our dance bag. Good deal!!!

After the morning programs I went outside and put up a fence guard around the tulip magnolia which appears to have a few buds coming along. Went out to Walmart after lunch for storage tubs and pizza cheese. Walmart had neither of these but i did pick up a jug of antifreeze. My level was down to the low mark so i wanted to top it off. I decided to get the oil changed in Sarasota instead of me doing the job. It's 1,000 miles away from an oil change.
Came home from Target with 4 tubs and a package of cheese. It was crowded. The tubs were in 2 packs for 4.99 which was excellent. I built two probes with DHT-11s on them and built 2 perf boards with terminal strips and Huzzah processors. I packed up a meter and the label maker along with the wires and electronics. Libbbie made her pizza for dinner with fresh tomatoes, the 6 cheese Italian cheese from Target and Shitake mushrooms we picked up in Kroger yesterday. It came out really good and the crust was perfect. Spent the rest of the night doing a little packing and watching the Grammys.

I was having trouble getting the enabled status of the crawl space fan controller. I found that the MQTT callback was never getting to the enable/disable status because of a bracket error in the if then else statement. Fixed that and did some testing and a tiny bit of cleanup and reinstalled the device into the audio closet. Hopefully it's now doing it's thing. Next project is to get a temperature sensor working on a Huzzah for stoneybrook both indoors and outdoors as well as a Prius timer for the charger.
I finished the Prius timer but it's possible I don't need it because the Prius battery is now at full charge and the battery maintainer is now blinking with a green light that indicates it has switched into float mode. I even unplugged it and plugged it back in to see if it was repeatable and it was. I can confidently leave the Prius plugged into the charger without the need for a timer. I will repurpose the timer I built into a one wire temperature sensor but I really want a DHT temp sensor that does temperature and humidity which means one more wire. I'll look at the possibilities of adding another terminal. Libbie and i went to Kroger to get Salmon but ended up buying large 21 count shrimp which were on sale. We also sampled a red blend from Australia called Dark Side which we bought. Dinner was a salad with shrimp and a glass of the Dark side wine.

I made some headway this week in the war against obesity. I weighed 238, down 4 from my worst moment Tuesday morning. Today is only Friday but the pounds are coming off but the clothes still don't fit.
I went to Bunky's and got my car washed this morning. I'm happy with the cleanliness but not the $20 which ended up being $17 because of a $3 coupon. I stopped into Staples and bought the WNDR4500 Netgear router for $83 which will be used in Stoneybrook to replace the Verizon I don't like. Will have to run an ethernet cable to where the fiber comes into the box in the spare room so I can use the router.
I installed the crawl space Huzzah but can't get enabled status back but I can get fan on/off status. I hope this thing works out.
We left at 5:45 for Esquires and arrived at 6:20 without any problems with traffic. My car was shiny and new looking tonight. At Esquires I tried to make wise choices. No wine, a large salad and some fish and squash with one piece of beef. For dessert I had a half piece of Key Lime pie. Dancing was hard. I tired out quickly during each dance. This was probably because I have gained too much weight and need to lose it. We stayed until 10 PM and sat with Gary&Janet, Terry &Charlie, and Jim and Jane. Met a lot of friends including our neighbors. It was a good night.

Wow, it's significantly colder and windy today. I went over to Great Clips and got a haircut at 9. I was the first one there, the lady was a roving substitute. It was her birthday so the manager gave her a balloon and a cupcake while she cut my hair. I like the haircut. For lunch today I had the Corn chowder which I found was high in calories - 190. Dinner was only a salad with tuna sprinkled on. I finished the crawl space controller today. Hope it all works. Ran out at night to Northern to get a Battery Tender. They had a Battery Minder for $24 which I bought with reluctance. I hooked it up to the Prius and it is showing charging but not topping off after a few hours. The Prius battery was dead today. I learned how to jump start it which is what led to the trickle charger decision.

Two of those pounds went away so I'm now an obese 240. Keep working on it. Built the ESP-Crawl relay board this morning with a Huzzah. This will be an MQTT controlled fan relay for the crawl space. The hope is to not allow venting during cold weather. I also updated the magazine on the AVSA website with Susan's latest teaser for Jan-Feb.
Picked up Libbie at 3:30 this afternoon and did some catch up but no real work on projects.
For dinner we went to Chipotle where we each had a Burrito Bowl. We also stopped at Kroger to get eggs and muffins for Libbie.

I slept until 6:30 which was quite surprising. The driving must have worn me down. I got on the scale and was shocked at 242. This is horrible. I need to stop eating!!!!!! Did some catch up work today. Payed the Stoneybrook and Frontier cable bill. I also researched a new router for Stoneybrook. Staples has the WNDR4500 for $84 which is a very good router at an attractive price, probably because it is discontinued. I went to Staples but it was $89 in the store so i didn't buy it. I bought a $10 Dymo label maker. When I got home I fixed up a 9 Volt AC adapter for the thing. I needed to revers plus and minus leads which I soldered and heat shrinked. The labels are fantastic. I wanted this for Stoneybrook but can't remember what I wanted to label. (It was the bicycle batteries and chargers). I'll bring this down there. I also need to bring a plastic tub or two for the storage unit to efficiently organize misc condo things. At home I started building the crawl space fan controller and also researched crawl space encapsulation and what is involved regarding installation and materials. i found a company in Nashville,, TN that looks pretty good. I have to use butyl tape on the walls then affix the plastic to the walls before drilling a series of holes every 2 feet and fixing the plastic sheeting to the wall with a plastic anchor. I had only an orange for lunch then a whole can of vegetable barley soup which is only 60 calories per serving. I went to Kroger and picked up milk and a cucumber. Libbie will need milk when she returns tomorrow. i checked her in today on Southwest. She got TSA Pre and B11 for her boarding position.

Did last minute packing and loading of the bike onto the rack. I am taking Libbie's non electric bike home to get it out of the way in the shed. Left at 8 AM. Had a little trouble with slow traffic an exit before I-4 but all cleared up as I went through Gainesville onto 301. There was heavy truck traffic on 301. I stopped for gas in Jacksonville on I-10 at an easy on easy off Pilot gas station. I continued and was happy at how empty 95 was through Georgia. I listened to a combo of Met Opera and 50s on 5 as well as a touch of 40s on 4. Next gas stop was exit 170 just past Florence. I wasn't sure I could make it that far but when I pulled into the Pilot station my range showed 70 miles to empty. I only took 10 gallons, the light wasn't even on. Gas was 1.92 per gallon. The remained of the trip was easy, twilight struck as I turned onto I-40 and by the time I got home at 7:33 it was dark. The trip took 10 1/2 hours which is excellent and is due more to the fact that I didn't stop for food. At home I went over to Chipotle for the first time and had a Burrito Bowl. It was outstanding. I would like to do that again. Because Iw as a first time customer my meal was free. Hard to believe.

Did not lose a single pound. Still 240 which is incredibly fat. Measured the cereal. Half of the bowl is one cup so I must have been having 2 cups every breakfast. Bad, bad, bad. This is a 500 calorie breakfast. Debating about going to Swan Lake today vs staying here to visit some Open Houses. All the Silly Bowl hype today may limit the number of Open houses. I'll check a paper.
Bought a paper at Publix along with some salad greens. Checked out the open house listings but nothing stood out. Online is quite a bit better. I got on the bike and went to two Open Houses. Visited Lolita on Knightbridge. Didn't like the house, it did back up to the woods but i prefer a more open feel onto a lake. Visited an expensive house which was 4 bedroom shown by Charles Offer who lives in Stoneybrook Estates. The house had a pool overlooking the lake and updated kitchen with wood laminate floors.
For dinner I ordered online a Dominoes pizza advertised as 3 topping for 7.99. I got onions, peppers and cheese. It was incredibly tasty, especially the sauce. The crust was a Brooklyn hand stretched but was a little soggy. This is probably because it's done on a conveyer belt instead of a stone.
Packed my suitcase and am ready to take off tomorrow.

Drove down Honore and went to Nokomis Groves where I picked up some Oranges (Honeybelle) and a jug of Orange juice. I had the spinach and Kale salad from Walmart but I didn't like it because it seemed slimey. I'll get a bag of Spring Mix from somewhere. Listened to the Met broadcast this afternoon of Rigoletto. It was great as usual. I like this Opera. The router and/or the internet keeps crashing here. It's so frustrating. Spent a few hours reading ASSTR instead of technical stuff. Dinner was a can of Light Chicken Corn Chowder, 200 calories total. I was still hungry later so I had a bowl of cereal. I'll have to measure the cereal quantity in the bowl. It's 180 cals per cup without the milk. Yikes.

Need to really try hard with this weight thing. I thought I was cutting back but weight has not changed even with long bike rides. Rode to Mer Del Lago and went inside scoping out some villas I found on Zillow. Price is attractive around 300k and maintenance is all inclusive including landscaping and building exterior for $275 per month. I really like the place, it covers all our requirements including a garage. When I got back Bill called. He's at the bike shop in Sarasota with a dead battery or a dead charger. He came over and I determined it was the charger because on my depleted battery it was green and not charging. Bill borrowed Libbie's battery. Dinner tonight was leftover Lasagna from the Italian Grill several days ago.

Watched the rest of the "On the Edge of 17" movie this morning and then played with Sonos presets some more. I started work on the crawl space ventilation program. I need this to be able to be controlled remotely. Hopefully I can install it next week when I get home, probably on Tuesday when I'm home alone.
Libbie will come on Wednesday. Did another long bike ride this afternoon, this time on the Venice waterway. Took Honore and then Pinebrook all the way to Venice Rd which is the road with the train station. This is a superior way to go to Venice. Weight has not changed so today was another light eating day. Salad and an orange for lunch, leftover chicken parm for dinner. I need to lose some weight somehow. Maybe when the last of the leftovers is gone tomorrow I'll really cut back. I still can't believe I got so fat. Watched a poor movie, "Good Kids", this evening.

Got up at 4:30 today thanks to Alexa. Libbie's cell didn't go off, she set it for PM instead of AM. We left at 5 AM and had no trouble except i missed the turn onto 60 for the airport. Got off at the next exit and used navigation on Libbie's cell to get to the terminal. Arrived there at 6:20 for her 7:30 flight. Coming back was a lot longer due to congestion at Bradenton where I was in stop and go traffic. Got back at 7:50. I saw a beautiful dawn over Tampa Bay and then the Sunrise when I was on 75 in Sarasota. Weighed myself and was shocked I was at 240, an incredible setback from 220 of last year. Decided to do something about it. Took a 10 mile bike ride today and only had an orange and a salad for lunch. Dinner was the leftover ribs. Sonoos is really doing well with Alexa. I burned a new SD card and got some autostart going for the node.js program of alexa and also for the drive mount of samba. Samba needed a chron job with a delay because the usB takes so long to initialize before the external hard drive could be used.

I'm happily controlling Sonos with the Pi and Alexa. I decided to do some enhancements today adding another preset. Of course it doesn't work, I still need to figure this thing out. We went to the Nokomis Groves before lunch and got some more oranges, a jug of grapefruit juice and an Orange peeler. Libbie bought us 2 cones. Mine was pineapple. Wenwent out for dinner to the italian Grill where I had Chicken Parmesan and Libbie had Lasagna. Both were incredibly good. This comes with a salad, i chose ranch dressing. I wanted a simple Yuengling so ordered a Stella. No luck, she came back and said it's warm. next I ordered a crafter beer but they were out. Tried to order a bottled beer, she brought me a dark Porter chich was too bitter for me. She removed it from the bill after Libbie spoke up. Our waitress Kelly was incredibly slow. It took a long time for her to take our order and then a long time for the bread which ended up coming with the meal. Finally the bill took forever, she said it took so long because she tried to get the beer removed.

Struggled all morning with Sonos and Alexa integration and then finally I had a breakthrough when I found my skill was in upper case and the Lambda was sending lower case to the pi. In addition, I simplified the preset itself reducing it to it's minimum. We went this afternoon to the Opera House to buy apprentice tickets for March and then to Ringling to see art. It was my first time in the new Chinese section. There is a bunch of interesting Cyprian art objects there as well as a few dozen traditional Japanese watercolors. We came home around 3 then had an open faced grilled cheese with a tomato slice for dinner. We left at 6:00 for the ballet and got there at 6:52. Traffic is pretty heavy on Beneva and downtown. No problems at all coming home. We found a new way to get to Beneva using MacIntosh to Palmer Ranch Parkway. It's a lot nicer than going around the mall streets. The ballet was a tribute to Ashton, The first piece was a grouping of Ashton waltzes which was the least interesting of the program. The next was by Graziano and was Before Night Falls, a sequence of Pas de Deux between two lovers and their relationship. It was lit in blue with movement being diagonal. I really liked this piece. The last was Changing Light and involved the whole company in shades of oranges and blues with lighting ranging from the bright white at the opening to darker shades in between. I liked this very much as well as the second number of the night.

I got up early this morning and burned a new image of Raspbian with Samba that I had previously saved on my laptop. I had to mount the hard disk but once this was done it was functional. I then did some port forwarding of the new IP for nodered on the condo router. It was a success, after setting https to false in the Alexa skill I was able to control the Sonos via the web and logging into Traviata. Next I got the voice skill working successfully. I am able to pause, change volume and select various favorites. It won't select anything in the music library yet but this is still a work in progress. Earlier this morning the two used Panasonic cameras I was watching on Amazon were 15% off today so I bought them. The seller has 100% feedback so I should be good except that they are used. They are BL C10 models which are exactly what I have on the Lanai now, an older technology that are only 640x480 but they are PTZ and adequate for monitoring the plant shelves. Lunch was a new (for us) variety of Progresso soup called Chicken Tuscany. It's a white bean in a clear broth which was delicious.
On the home control front I heard from Joe who has successfully gotten nodered running on his Pi. We did a short walk today around Forest Circle. The sun came out and we had to remove our jackets for a very pleasant walk.
Alexa is successfully controlling Sonos in the condo. Now I want to get some presets built to select our music library favorites. After a reduced cheese and crackers without wine we ordered a large pizza from the Italian Grill.

It's cold out today, only in the fifties. While Libbie went to Yoga this morning I struggled with the Alexa device. I moved it to a static address at 192.168.1.140 but lost the ability to recognize the device name of SBnodered when I try to start the sonos app with "npm start" in the sonos directory on Pi.
This is frustrating. i spent a few hours doing a reblog on my new Tumblr of only a few days. Sometime in the afternoon my account was terminated. I'm not sure what i did but I suspect some images may have contained minors? i'm not sure but I tried not to reblog anything that looked questionably young. I guess I'll never know their reasoning. Several other blogs also were gone that I was following so maybe they just cleaned house?
We made an attempt at eating lighter. Our nightly wine, cheese and crackers had no wine and half the cheese. Dinner was left over prime rib sauteed with onions and put into one of the delicious Hispanic buns. It was delicious, even with cold water. We did a walk around Forest Circle in the afternoon because it was cooler today so we didn't do a big walk.