Slept until 6:30. Had my shower and did the bathroom stuff then gave Libbie her birthday card while the Keurig cup filled. I drank my Keurig and did eMail while Libbie got dressed in the bathroom. We then went to the restaurant on the hotel second floor which is the floor we're staying on. It was excellent. I had a wonderful stack of Blueberry pancakes with a side of Bacon and OJ. Libbie had the Scrambled egg breakfast with English muffin which came with potatoes and bacon. We took a to go cup of coffee back with us. Our next adventure was supposed to be a walk after breakfast which turned out to be quite hike. We walked along the sunflower field and down the other side next to the French Broad River. We originally were going to take the shuttle back but ended up taking a shortcut walking up 2 hills toward the Biltmore house. 2 hours later we made it to the house and collapsed for a while on the steps. Wow, what a trip. We went over to the adjoining carriage house and bought 2 bottles of water then sat in the shade in the courtyard. We met a guy from Minn. traveling with someone from Indiana and chatted with them. We then did the audio tour of the house which was excellent. It was our first time touring the upper floors as well as the basement. The house is huge and after a while i was getting tired of touring rooms and listening to the audio even though it was outstanding. We met a foursome traveling together and used their phone to take their picture. The first time was a silhouette but the next time we shot against the wall and it was much better. We took a shuttle back down to our hotel but it broke down outside the hotel. We chose to walk the several hundred feet back across the parking lot which was nothing compared to what we accomplished this morning. After washing face and hands we stopped into the tasting room and had a wine flight of 3 glasses and a cheese board. The cheese was excellent. My wines were a Cabernet, a Merlot-Cabernet blend called Hunt Red which was a Blanc de Noir rose sparkling wine which was a nice finish. We then walked over to the Creamery and bought waffle cones and sat outside while a 4 piece string and clarinet band played. While in line in the Creamery there was an attractive young couple in front of us who couldn't keep away from each other. They were kissing and staying close. The guy even rubbed his hand over her very nicely shaped ass. She was wearing shorts that seemed to be a thin material, I'm sure it felt good to him. We next collapsed on our bed for a few minutes. I actually fell asleep while reading but woke up when my iPad fell off my chest onto the bed. I estimate my nap lasted 20 minutes but felt very refreshing. I then gave Libbie her birthday present which was a Lavender Spa set from Los Poblanos Lavender Farm that we visited in Albuquerque as part of an AVSA tour. We got dressed up and chose to drive over to the Restaurant at the Inn. The hotel is quite fancy, people are nicely dressed and a piano and bass were playing while a lady sang in the lobby/lounge area. We went downstairs to the restaurant where they gave us a window table as requested. How nice. Guys were wearing jackets which I did not have. I was wearing a new blue button down dress shirt from LL Bean. We started with a Biltmore Blanc De Noir which is a nice sparkling wine I discovered at a tasting at Biltmore winery. Service was over the top. We had a bread man, a water lady, a wine pourer and our main server, Brian. We started with a course of citrus marinated watermelon with bits of Lobster Tail. Next course was a porcino mushroom dusted Filet Mignon with onion and mushroom over truffle mashed potato. For the main course we had a Biltmore Hunt Red which is a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. It's a good robust very nice red wine. Dessert for me was an Opera cake with various fruits and dollops of citrus. it was incredibly tasty. After dinner we waddled upstairs and sat on the sofas listening to the last of the little trio in the lounge before we made our way down the steps to the parking lot for the drive to our hotel about a mile away.

We had our normal breakfast then I packed a suitcase and gathered everything to leave. I previously loaded the car with gas at Costco yesterday for our trip. We got going at 9:30 in a very pleasant drive West. We made one Rest Area stop then finally got off at exit 55 of I-40 4 hours later. We had lunch at a little hole in the wall Mexican place called Cozella's Mexican. I had a chicken Fajita which was plentiful and delicious. We each had a Margarita to start our vacation. The place was crowded, the parking lot full. It is definitely locally run and very eclectic, almost overdone in Mexican paintings on all the booths, paintings on the windows and everywhere else. It was an enjoyable meal with a good Margarita. Next stop was The NC Craft Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway which as only a very short distance from the restaurant. After looking at the crafts Libbie bought a child's bird book. I didn't care for the paintings very much. There were not very many anyway. We found that there is a craft fair in Asheville this weekend. We next drove to the Biltmore where the gate looked us up and gave us a parking permit with our name preprinted on it. Very cool. The hotel is wonderful. The service at the front desk went above and beyond welcoming us. i found we purchased a bed and breakfast package. The room is very modern, spacious and comfortable. It's a nice facility. We drove over to the Biltmore garden shop and walked up the hill through the gardens to the mansion. Libbie loved the greenhouses at the start of our tour. I liked being outdoors in the garden although it was a tiring walk but very good for me. It's a very hot day also. We got back to the hotel and went to the Village next door and did the wine tasting which was pretty good. We tried about 6 wines, some of them very good and others not so great. My favorite was a Spanish wine Tempranilla which was full bodied and had a very nice Tannin finish. I really liked it. We went back to the room, cleaned up and rested a bit before going back to Cedric's Tavern in the Village for dinner. We went there because there was live music but unfortunately the place was incredibly noisy and the sound was boomy. i couldn't tell what he was playing or singing. We both had fish and chips with a Fat Tire draft beer. After dinner walked to the Creamery but they close at 8 and it was 8:20. two woman with two teenage girls also wanted to go to the creamery and were disappointed as well. This place closes early. We did the short walk back to our hotel room and called it a day, a very nice day.

It was a busy morning. I discovered my Visa from Friday Night's Beer and wings at MacGregor Brew House. I tried driving there but they don't open till 11 AM. Next stop was Costco for wine and gas then Walgreens to get wrapping paper and the 8x10 I had enlarged. Libbie walked this morning but her back was in pain. We canceled our dance class for today but I went to my Clarinet lesson. The studio was really busy. Many people, all kids, were taking music lessons. There were several parents in the lobby waiting. This was quite different from Saturday mornings. I worked some more on the weather program but then decided i needed to go under the house and check out the pipe leak. Surprisingly it had stopped. The tray I put under the leak was totally dry. We made the Shrimp Caesar salad again for dinner. We had it with the leftover glass of wine each from yesterday then watermelon for dessert. The weather program has difficulties. I thought I would be in good shape picking up some NTP code from a guy who harnessed a Moteino to receive packets and upload to Wunderground but his NTP code did not work. I do have working NTP code from ealrier this year that I will integrate into my program.

This was paint morning. Libbie did the cut in work and I got out the roller and painted the walls. Next I installed the light fixture with 2 60 watt LED lights and replaced the light switches and outlets in the room. I missed one outlet and still have one more to do. I practiced Clarinet several times today. I still have not mastered a smooth transition from A to B and C. I'm getting better at B and C but not smoothly transitioning up from A to B. I can go down from B to A smoothly. We made Shrimp Caesar salad for dinner. This was with a package of frozen jumbo shrimp I picked up in Kroger. The shrimp were peeled and deveined and wild caught USA. The salad uses a homemade Caesar dressing with Tabasco, Worcestershire Parmesan and other ingredients. We did not use the Anchovies that are supposed to be in it. I thought it had a predominant lemon flavor but was still good. After dinner I went to Home Depot and bought Phillips head screws to screw the ducts back into the bedroom vents. They are 1 1/2 inch long and I wanted to use the portable drill to hang the vent.

I put two coats of ceiling paint on the sewing room ceiling today. It looks great, no gouges or tooling marks. Yay! 80% of the way through the job i had to run out to Home Depot to get more paint. While I put the second coat of paint on the ceiling Libbie put blue tape on all the trim in prep for painting the walls. While at Home Depot I bought yellow paint for the walls.
I continued to work on the Davis Wx to MQTT gateway. This thing is really needed because the console stopped overnight once again. My standard procedure to get it working again is to pull the USB cable and plug it into another port.
Dinner tonight Dinner tonight was the BBQ pork chops with Asian inspired marinade from Cooking Light. This has sake, soy and sesame and is yummy. Our veggie was fresh local corn from the Apex fruit stand on Davis. The corn was especially good.

I had some difficulty parsing simulated Davis data with an ESP8266 Huzzah. My comma parsing algorithm did not work. i ended up suing the built in string function strtok to locate commas and extract individual bytes from the line. Now I need to convert from ascii hex characters to floats or ints. I did the final sanding in the sewing room and Libbie contributed by vacuuming the place. We're now ready for paint. I'm still having trouble smoothly going from A to the B above the break on the clarinet. I practiced twice today. Next lesson is Wednesday so I have convinced myself I need to have this done by then. Dinner was Libbie's pizza. Surprisingly we did not have cheese in the house, I had to go out before dinner to get cheese at Krogers. I also picked up some Chobani with the crunch ingredients. Libbie had mint chocolate chip and I had the nuts and pumpkin seeds.

Another good music lesson with Justin. I paid for the next 4 lessons. Today he encouraged me to go smoothly from A to B in the G Major scale. We also covered dynamics a little, especially for the William Tell.
I started the Smoker this morning and put the ribs inside at 11:15 then added Hickory every 30 minutes for 3 hours before doing 2 hours of wrap and one hour of wet cooking. The Moteino came today in the mail. This was an incentive to work some more on the Huzzah portion of the gateway. I heard from Harry this morning. He was looking for the Glembocki genealogy which was on the Bluebird site but since Bluebird is gone it's not there anymore. i need to finish this work as well as half a dozen other projects around here. Dinner was ribs with Broccoli and Rodney Strong Cabernet. Before dinner I pumped up my bike tires and went for a ride to the High School and took some pre-demolition pictures. The chain link fence is up around the property and some of the driveway lights have been taken down.

I worked on getting a new Pi image built as well as the latest version of Node-Red installed. I spent a lot of the morning doing this then finally decided to address the sewing room. I used the belt sander and removed the stubborn parts of the popcorn that would not come off. I then did the second coat of touch up plaster all around. After a final sanding it should be ready for paint. What fun (not!).
I rubbed a rack of baby backs with Smoking Gun rub in prep for smoking tomorrow.
I got the new Pi image running with Node-red on a temporary server. I'll transfer over to the permanently mounted one and all should be good again.
It was a hot day and we agreed to go to an outdoor concert with the Kretchmans.
Bynum Front porch outside of Pittsboro was not as hot as I thought. Graymatter was the band which we enjoyed very much. It's 3 siblings and a spouse. We always get it wrong who the spouse is married to the girl. It turns out it's the tall lead vocalist who looks like one ofo her brothers. Their website for reference is graymatternc.com We each had a hotdog at the general store for dinner. IT was a highly enjoyable concert. On the way home we stopped at McGregor Tavern and had wings and beer. The Yuengling Draft was on special for $3 tonight. We had 1 1/2 glasses each. It was the end of a very nice night.

This morning I booted the laptop with the new install of Win 10 on the bigger hard drive. I spent on and off most of the day installing the old programs again that used to be on the laptop. Thank goodness everything is pretty much open source free software so I got fresh current versions of everything. I sanded the plaster in the sewing room which was a horrible job. I got covered with dust. Fortunately I was wearing a dust mask. It wiped me out for the rest of the afternoon. We went out to Kroger and picked up the ingredients for dinner. We made Cooking Lights BBQ Pork Chops with an Asian influence. The marinade had sesame oil, sake, pineapple juice and brown sugar. It was a delicious marinade. We had the BBQ Pork chops with Shiraz, Basmati rice and broccoli. After dinner we went out to Brewsters for Ice Cream. I had the Lemon Meringue flavor this time.
When we got home from Brewsters the landscape lights were not on. The Raspberry Pi running Node Red had a problem with Node Red. I suspect it had something to do with me pushing on the device in the closet to get it to stick back on the velcro earlier today.

i spread the sheets on the sewing room floor along the wall and began putting up the Sheetrock mud. This job went well and surprisingly used almost the whole bucket of plaster. Libbie walked with Anita while i did this work. Later in the afternoon I backed up the data files from my Dell laptop and replaced the hard drive with the new 2 Gig one I purchased earlier this month. I plugged the USB drive into the laptop and started it up. the drive contained the Win 10 operating system install image which i downloaded from Microsoft. You can do this from a legitimate copy of Windows which is what came with the laptop. Surprisingly everything went well including the install of all the drivers.
I went to bed around 11 PM while the files were being copied from the external backup drive onto the new internal hard drive. We had a good lesson with Robert covering our Tango routine. Dinner was tuna fish sandwiches on Pita bread that was left over from yesterday.

This morning I applied sheetrock tape to all the spots where the paper tape was torn on the ceiling as well as on the crack on the wall and a few places where the wall separated from the ceiling. The weathernode continues to perform well as I track pressure vs the RDU airport pressure readings. Vicki called today to say that i should get gene tested for a cancer gene signature that both she and Arlene have. She also said that Barbara has the gene signature. We both went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients for a chicken Waldorf salad as well as picking up the normal Tuesday groceries for Kroger senior day. Dinner tonight was chicken Waldorf salad with watermelon for dessert. The porch chair is broken. I'm looking at how to repair it by reinforcing the joints with steel that I bought in Home Depot.

I hooked up the Weathernode which surprisingly has a BMP280 pressure sensor onboard. it worked great with a Moteino. I switched to the Moteino receiving Davis transmissions and it worked there as well. I created a new packet containing the temperature, humidity and pressure. This was happiness. Unfortunately some pins shorted together and a spark occurred. This took out the Moteino. I went back to a Moteino without the correct frequency radio and at least the BMP280 still works. I suspect it took out the regulator on the board.
Libbie finished scraping the bedroom so I went in and scraped around the edges with the smaller scraper. Now I need to put a little plaster on the torn seams in a few spots. We went to the Pittsboro Roadhouse for dinner and dancing to the music of Mr Wonderful.. Left a little before 6 and got there around 6:25. We had 2 Yuenglings and split a Salmon Flatbread sandwich with sweet potato fries. Ken and Lan and 2 people Ken works with joined us for dinner although they came a little later. Ken's friends were ? and Christine. We danced quite a bit. The dance floor was surprisingly crowded. I like the music of Mr Wonderful. We left at 9:15PM. We think he only goes until 9:30.

Libbie started scraping the ceiling in the sewing room today. I put another coat of plaster on the crawl space vent patches in the garage. They surprisingly were not totally dry, especially the one in the tool closet. Libbie made her outstanding pizza for dinner. I'm still struggling with getting a response from the BMP280 on a Huzzah. I tried some 4.7k pullup resistors on the I2C lines which made them look better on the scope but they still are not going fully to ground. Still unsure what's going on but the bottom line is that the device is not recognized on the I2C bus as evidenced by the scanner sketch I ran on the Huzzah. This sketch is supposed to scan the entire address range looking for a response. It reports nothing.

Good music lesson with Justin. I got some tips on making the B come out. He said I'm still pushing down the key between the two holes. It's time for some training wheels, I'll cement some sandpaper to the side of the key. Put the first coat of plaster on the two sheet rock patches. I think I need the baseboard next so I don't crack the plaster while nailing it down. Did a home depot trip and picked up the baseboard as well as screen beading then went back out, this time with Libbie, to get groceries including a ribeye steak for dinner tonight. Cut up the baseboard 1x4 and installed it both in the corner by the closet and inside the tool closet. Will sand and apply another coat of plaster when this dries which will probably be tomorrow. i picked up some rubber cement and glued the sandpaper on the key on the Clarinet as suggested by Justin. It should have a more coarse sandpaper, I can't feel the medium grade paper. The sandpaper fell off a little later in the evening. Dinner was ribeye with corn and Ravenswood Zin. Dessert was watermelon. We sat on the porch and watched it try to rain. There was thunder and lightning but almost no rain which was too bad. The Simpson meter probes came this afternoon. They are very nice. They were expensive but not for the Simpson name brand. Getting new leads was a good thing that was very needed. Also in the mail today was the new bmp280 pressure sensors. They didn't work out as well. I still can't get a reading on the Huzzah. After dinner I went to my office and played with it some more but could not get it to respond.

Piddling around today. Did some Atlanta trip planning, locating venues of interest and logical hotel locations. I settled on Hampton Inn outside of downtown since no one location offers good public transit to the Botanical Garden, Art museum or Jimmy Carter Center. Outside I cut the remaining sheetrock and covered the foundation vent hole in the tool closet. Now I need to purchase plaster and more sheetrock seam tape.
Just before lunch we visited the fruit stand in Apex and bought tomatoes, a watermelon and plums. Unfortunately the plums were from California but they are good. I swung by Home Depot after the fruit stand and bought plaster and tape taking care of that problem. We had tuna salad for lunch then an egg salad pita for dinner. We left for the ballroom at 8 PM and did quite a few dances. Afterwards we went to McGregor Tavern and sat outside. It was quite pleasant outdoors. I had 1 1/2 Red Oak Amber beers and we split a plate of Quesadillas. It was a pleasant evening.

What a productive day. We went out at 9 with the trailer and bought a sheet of sheetrock at Lowes. While there I purchased a brass plug to use for stoppering the pressure switch on the hot tub while I repair it. I also bought some Rose Food and a 10 inch wide scraper for the ceiling in Libbie's sewing room. She wants to scrape the ceiling. This should be interesting. I swapped the micro switch on the pressure switch replacing the one with the broken terminal. Unfortunately the control lacked adjustment as I went throughout it's range. When the pump is off the switch is open and when it runs the switch closes but it should be adjustable to the point of open/closed while running. I hooked it up and closed the panel letting it run as is. Let's see how this works out. Not good I suspect. Black gunk dripped out of the pressure part of the device. I wonder if that's a problem indicating corrosion. The system basically sucks. I would love an electronic flow measurement. I cut the opening on the first of the two sheetrock foundation vents and cut a piece of sheetrock to fit neatly. I'll do the one in the garden tool closet next then spackle them both at the same time.
Dinner tonight was the Quick Taco Salad from Cooking Light. This is ground beef with pepper, tomato, cheese and tostada chips over a bed of lettuce.

Libbie went out walking with Anita and i worked in the garage on patching the ventilation holes in the sheetrock for the crawl space. I have 2 rectangles cut each 8" high by 16" wide. I'll have to cut another 2 inches wider all around to nail a piece of sheetrock over it. I finally decided to make the cut all the way to the corner and just put in one longer piece. This will involve a trip to Lowes with the trailer. I tried some more, several times, to get the correct note to come out for the B in the C Major scale. I did only twice I think but it was a real effort to get the note to come out. Wow, difficult.
Dinner was spaghetti with cheese. The hot tub pressure switch needs adjusting but when I took the wires off the switch the terminal broke off the switch. Now I need to replace the switch. I found the old switch and with luck I can salvage the old micro switch mounted on top of the switch. I drilled the rivets out of the old switch successfully. Now I need to do this on the existing switch so I can replace the microswitch. This may work well. As a backup I ordered a new switch from Arizona. I need a 1/8 NPT brass plug which Lowes sells so I can block the hole while I rebuild the switch. I used to have one of these but the baggie where it's supposed to be in is empty.

This is the Fourth of July. I tried to get the Adafruit pressure sensor working but no luck. I ended up buying a 5 pack of them on eBay. We had grilled Hot Dogs for lunch then decided since it was the fourth we would have hamburgers for dinner. Went to Kroger and got Hamburger buns, a Vidalia and a bottle of wine along with white corn. I husked the Corn in the garage then we had corn, hamburger, Vidalia and tomato slices along with a Mondavi Cabernet for our outdoor grilling. We watched some of the PBS 4th of July program but i fell asleep through it as usual. I tried the C scale on the Clarinet. Wow, is that hard. I'm having real troubles playing the high B which involves the Register key. I also watched some YouTube tutorials on playing the C scale.

Janet and Anita came here with Libbie this morning after a Lake walk. They picked up the boxes we had in the garage leftover from BB shipping. I also gave them a crawl space tour which was bizarre. How many give tours of the space under their house? The humidity is holding at 59% down there all because of the dehumidifier. The "Humidivac" is stupid I think and the business of a tap on the furnace does not put enough air into the crawl space to make any difference. I tried testing the code for the Davis Gateway but it won't get off the ground. I'm not sure what's wrong. I carved out the hinges today and then painted the carved cavities with the blue paint. I'll hang the door tomorrow. Dinner was hamburgers with Tomato and Vidalia and Mondavi Cabernet. After dinner we drove over to Brewsters for Ice Cream.

After the Sunday programs I went outside and pruned the Roses. It's a toasty 92 degrees outside. I ran out of Rose food before I could finish the job. We had Nathans for lunch and then Libbie made her traditional Pizza for dinner which was very good. I spent quite a bit of the day working on the Weather receiver. I finally decided to use the Moteino to decode Raw packets and pass them on to the ESP8266 which will be hooked to Wunderground. The goal is to put some of them on MQTT and also directly upload Wunderground. I want to bypass the Davis console which has a broken barometer and an unreliable USB connection.

9 AM lesson with Jason today. We covered the C scale which is harder than the G scale. I have work to do. We also covered some points about fingering and not taking a break after a half note before the next quarter note. I need ot practice this. I'm still having trouble with a basic G (all fingers down). Need to practice, practice, practice. I saw a young lady lift her dress this morning with no panties on. It was quite a surprise. They of course kicked her off but not before I got some screen grabs. I spent the afternoon studying the Davis protocol learning how I could decode the Rain packet. I think I'll just send it along and let the ESP deal with it. The ESP also has to deal with time and barometric pressure. I;ll rely on the ESP for the majority of this stuff and just pass packets down from the Moteino which is decoding Davis ISS. We did grocery runs to both Walmart and Kroger. Dinner was jumbo shrimp, corn on the cob and an Argentina Malbec that they were sampling which was quite good at $14 per bottle. We sat on the back porch after dinner but it was a little warm and humid. Summer is here but drinking wine after dinner on the porch appeals to me.

I built the Desktop Wx and put it on my dresser. The font is too small to read comfortably. I need to search for a better device. We had our Tango lesson today but it's sort of a waste because we won't make it to the showcase since it's scheduled for when we will be in Oregon. I decided to go through with all the moves anyway since it's about the journey and not the destination. We went back in the evening and danced a little at the Studio party. Dinner before the party was spaghetti with cheese over it. After the party we went out with Ken and Lana to Abbey Road grill. Libbie and i split loaded Nachos because they were out of Quesadilla. i had 1 1/2 Red oak beers.

I practiced Clarinet early before Nancy came over at 10. I continued testing and developing the garage door monitor. I found that recall using the MQTT-SPY drop down for publishing a topic doesn't send out the correct stuff. You have to paste or type the topic in. After a BLT lunch I mounted the device in the garage ceiling and right away discovered I needed a programming change. Open and Closed were reversed. I fixed it from my office and was pleasantly surprised that Over the Air programming let me reprogram the device. It works!!!
Unfortunately I worked on the Desktop Wx app for a while then switched to make a tweak to the garage door monitor and uploaded the wrong code into the garage door because the port was still set to wireless. There was no recovery because the OTA code was not in what i programmed using OTA. I had to take the device down, reprogram it with a cable, then put it back. i learned a big lesson about carelessly programming a device. Always check the port setting.
Next step is to get the Desktop Wx device built for my bedroom dresser.
Dinner was Greek salad which I made from the Cooking Light recipe. I love it but Libbie said it was not her favorite.

I found the undercut tool and carved out the top hinge on the closet door. This was an accomplishment. I continued working on my garage door monitor. Today I'm adding configuration via MQTT and reporting settings via MQTT. Settings are stored in on-board EEPROM.
We got back to the studio today for our Tango lesson. IT was fun as usual and we even may have learned a few things. I was really tired after the lesson. Dinner was the leftover chicken with dumplings.
After dinner we were bad and went to the ice cream shop Brewster's and each had a waffle cone. I had the vanilla with chocolate covered peanuts and caramel. Wow, was that sweet. Late in the evening I studied stocks looking for a replacement for my NGG which is British Power Company that doesn't seem to be doing too well.

The super glue worked great overnight. My relay board is solidly glued down in the garage door monitor. I wired it up and the ESP didn't even boot. I added a driver transistor from some info I googled and the info was totally wrong. I put another relay and Huzzah on a breadboard and played with it. Found out to turn the relay on requires grounding the input to the relay board. About 1.6 ma flows when doing this as measured by my multimeter. I put a 4N32 optoisolator into the breadboard and chose some resistors large enough to still work while keeping the idle current down. The opto output has a 2K and the input has a 200 ohm. The relay switches reliably now. I put this circuit into the garage door controller and it works well with MQTT packets. Now i need to be able to supply config info via MQTT.
For dinner we had a new Cooking Light recipe, Chicken and Dumplings. It used a chicken breast along with bag of frozen veggies, flour tortillas and chicken broth plus a few very mild spices. It was another winner from Cooking Light and is now added to the recipe file. The hits keep coming.