Most of the day was spent learning PHP for the membership database on AVSA. I'm learning a lot about this language starting with how to execute programs and printing to the screen for debugging. I have it reading a CSV file which was difficult in itself since I originally had the file with an extension. i found that the CSV extension was preventing the file from being read. Once I deleted the extension it was all a go. I now have all the pieces to read a file line by line, extract the relevant data, insert it into a record as required by the Drupal API. I tested this on a subset of the AVSA database with some success. I also need a way to submit a list of member IDs and roles to the website for inclusion into the database. I may have to write an app to do this which would call a PHP program under the covers. Lots to do and think about. I think it's all fun.
Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese and tomato sauce. Libbie is getting better but still has a bad cough.

I started looking at writing a Drupal database with php and was successful at adding a user with a role of member. In the process I learned how roles are stored in the database. I used this info to store a user with a role. This is great news for me but still a long way to go for a membership database.
In my office I tried to get a Pi 3 running. Eventually I got it working when I changed power supplies to one i took from the stereo in the plant room.
Libbie is still suffering the effects of her cold and spent the whole day sleeping. Dinner tonight was the leftover roasted chicken along with Bushs's Baked beans. I listened to the Magic Flute live from the met this evening. It was quite enjoyable.

We put 2 strands of warm white LEDs on the corn plant today and removed the strand of cool white leds. I went over to Lowes and picked up another smart things outlet. We now have three outlets on the back porch. I was able to make a smart things group by making a virtual switch inside smart things which Alexa recognized. The group of 3 trees can now be turned on and off via voice. "Alexa turn on the porch trees", etc. I evaluated Imperihome today for home automation but instead decided on using Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi.
I went to Home Depot and used my 10% off coupon and bought a battery operated impact wrench to help with the trailer hitch. Unfortunately it didn't work out. I don't have enough 1/2 inch extensions for my impact sockets. I also do not have any metric sockets, only a set of standard ones. I used the manual ratchet to remove the bolts and then used a hydraulic jack to jack up the hitch assembly so I could bolt it in place. The job went well. Later in the evening I ordered a keyless chuck adapter for a half inch drive so i can use the impact wrench as a drill or driver. Drill bits or driver bits for deck screws could be used in the chuck giving me two tools for the deck next year instead of changing back and froth from drill bit to driver bit. Dinner was the bacon and chicken wrap sandwich wrap again from Cooking Light. Libbie is still under the weather with a bad cough and cold.

Did the grocery run today and picked up the ingredients for a chicken and bacon wrap sandwich for dinner tonight. I hooked up the heater and controller for real today and then started moving back the stuff in the shop. This pretty much concludes the backup heater project. Dinner tonight was a bacon chicken wrap sandwich wrap from cooking light. The Mayo had lemon juice and fresh chopped tarragon in it. I served it with the recommended sweet potato chips. Libbie didn't like the chips but she wanted her other half of the sandwich that she only thought she could eat half of.

Today is Cyber Monday. I bought a $9 voucher for a photo book. We finally visited the Western Wake Crisis Center when they were open. On the way home we visited Publix where Libbie got her cough syrup and lozenges. We went the long way around down Kelly and stopped in Lowes for a Smart Things socket and a can of spray foam. I sealed the hole where the cables enter the wall below the electrical box. I did this to thwart rodents from building a nest in there. This morning I made the booking for our Road Scholar trip to London and Amsterdam. The price was an attractive $2000 for all the flights. Great deal!
We put the lights on the tree on the porch and I hooked up a Smart things hub to a device named Christmas Tree for Alexa to turn off and on. Dinner was warmed up turkey slices with stuffing and cranberry sauce and a sweet potato. We had a glass of Cabernet with the meal.
I tried browsing AirBnB listings but the site was pretty slow. After an hour or two I gave up. I'm looking for an apartment for the week in London for our trip there in the Spring.

I was up early but Sue and Bruce didn't get up till 8. Sue is unbelievably tired looking in the morning. She looks like death warmed over. I don't get the issue. They left at 9:30 and then we watched CBS Sunday Morning before I brought the heater into the greenhouse and live tested it with 240 VAC. I had a few minor changes to make before I mounted it overhead and ran the control cable and spliced the thermostat cable to also go into my shop.
Libbie made her excellent pizza again. She is having trouble with a cold with all night long coughing spells. Dinner was her fabulous pizza from scratch. Our lunch today was the ham and turkey sandwiches with the Dijon and mayo and tomato grilled. Quite good!!!

I did not have a Clarinet lesson today. Justin is on vacation, he said he is going to bring a camper to Pennsylvania to visit relatives. I powered up the controller card and could not program it. I found a wiring error that stopped the device from being programmed. Once I repaired that it was a go. I found quite a few mistakes in the code. MQTT was not working, there were some logic errors in timing and handling of if statements. Later in the evening I found the optocoupler wired worng. I think I now have it all straightened out. I drilled a hole between the house and greenhouse and installed a conduit. My control cable will pass through the conduit as well as the thermostat leads. I may also mount a camera in the greenhouse up by the heater using this conduit to pass the cable to ethernet. I finished up the garage part of the heater wiring including labeling the new breaker. All day long we have been following the travels of Sue and Bruce who are coming to stay tonight. They didn't get going until around 8:30.
They arrived at 7:45 PM, 11 hours of driving, a much longer trip than it would have taken us even with stops. We had wine and cheese before dinner then for dinner we had grilled turkey and ham from cooking light along with tomato soup.

I started constructing the board for the heater controller and got it all done today. It was not bad wiring it up. I took a break in the middle and installed the piece of painted plywood to cover up the hole below the electrical panel Libbie and I went out to Western Wake Food pantry to donate the leftover depends diapers from her Mother. They were closed on Fridays. Two days ago we tried this and found they were closed the day before Thanksgiving. While there we went to Publix and got bread for our turkey sandwiches and a bottle of wine for tonight. The Publix looks similar to the one in Florida. The Macintosh APples i bought there by the bag were excellent. The best of the season so far. The store is a little pricey. Dinner was leftover turkey with mashed potato, cranberry sauce and the bottle of Mondavi Pinot we picked up in Publix. The Pinot was very smooth as Pinots go. I started reading Artemis, the Andy Weir book. It's quite good. I really like the Apollo 11 visitor center on the moon. Tourists can go by on the train or can go out on an EVA and get a guided tour,

Today is Thanksgiving. Traditionally I go get the Black Friday paper which is published today with all the ads but I chose to skip that this year. Instead I worked on the controller program for the heater. I pretty much know what i want to do. I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade which was pretty good as usual. Libbie had a few crises throughout the morning as she tried to make fruit cake. First she lost a piece of plastic in the mix. I helped her look for it but we didn't find anything. Next she needed some help putting the turkey in the bag. This was not a problem. i held the bag open and she put the bird inside. We had a very nice traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, gravy and Cabernet Sauvignon. I had to run out an hour before Kroger closed (they close at 5 PM today) because there were not enough eggs to make the pumpkin pie which was our dessert with a whipped cream topping. The heater is going to take some time before everything is gathered together to make this thing work.

Today I installed the relays and an optoisolator in the heater then wired it all up to an ethernet cable repurposed as a control cable. The ethernet has 8 conductors of which I'm only using 6. I'm thinking of adding a DS18B20 temperature sensor to the other 2 leads although it's unclear if the ESP82266 has the timing resolution to do one wire measurements.
In the garage I cut the remaining plywood for below the electrical panel and put a coat of white paint on it. It may need another coat of paint since the wood seems to be showing through.
Libbie made chicken parmesan ala cooking light for dinner. We had this with a side of spaghetti and mushroom pasta sauce. Accompanying the meal was a bottle of Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon.

I did our Thanksgiving grocery purchases including a very expensive butterball turkey for 2.99 per pound. I also went to Walmart for toilet paper and paper towels. I had to go back later for a shower curtain and progresso soup, things I had forgotten. Libbie is under the weather today with chills and a headache.
I modeled the optoisolator and found that I can detect the relay activation -12V signal. I'll package this up and mount it inside the heater. I'm going to have a 6 conductor cable going to the controller box. The 2 relays and opto will be inside the heater. Dinner tonight was the cauliflower curry from last night with a squash substituted for the Yam. It was different but good. We had this with cabernet sauvignon. Once again, before dinner we had cheddar cheese with triscuits and wine.
Today I ripped the stack of CDs that Libbie brought back from Sakonnet.

Up early. I have a lot of stuff to do today. Put my clothes from yesterday into the dryer after breakfast and was able to pull them out before I went to pick up Libbie. Her plane was on time as i picked her up at 10:30. I resumed on the heater, fixturing it with some wires to see how it operated. Great to see that it does cycle down when the thermostat and power are off. The fan does it's one minute timeout before turning off. This means i can remotely activate the power switch when heat is needed and turn it off when done. The surprise was the turn on relay signal is -12 VDC. An optoisolator can still detect that. I'll model that and hook it up. We did a grocery run for dinner tonight. We made the Cooking Light curry fall veggies which has tomato, sweet potato, cauliflower and curry in a veggie broth. Wow, yummy. We had this with Cabernet. We also had cheese and triscuits with wine before dinner. The Kroger cheese guy told us this cheddar was well aged. We bought it for 7.99 for a small brick. It really was good. I did some research about SSL certificates responding to a query from Richard via a members concerns. I can get a website from namecheap for under $10 including an SSL and xxx.website name. I'll choose glembocki.website.

I studied the heater and discovered the thermostat wire which carries 240 VAC was pinched to ground which caused the flash bang explosion. i cut the bad part of the wire away and hooked it up so I could remotely activate the heater. First time I powered the unit up it displayed a "P" and the fan ran without heat. Closing the leads with a jumper turned the heater on. I pressed the power to off. The "P" went away and the fan stopped running. I then jumpered the thermostat leads and nothing or so i thought. While doing a few other things in the greenhouse i noticed the overheat light came on. It looks like the fan doesn't turn on but the heating elements do. This is wrong. I took the heater down and started tracing out the controller board so i could add some enhancements to make this perform like a conventional furnace.
Dinner tonight was two mini pizzas that i made using Kroger crusts and some tomato, pizza cheese, frozen onions and tomato mushroom sauce. I did not taste the mushrooms.

Ran the thermostat cable along the upper conduit in the greenhouse and wired it into the hanging unit. I did not install a thermostat yet but i picked one up in home Depot. I flipped the breaker and nothing so i climbed the ladder and pressed the power on switch and there was a huge flame with a bang that blackened the siding in the greenhouse. I decided to let this go for the day. Obviously some more debug is needed. Dinner tonight was some St Louis ribs precooked in BBQ sauce that I heated and ate. I treated myself to some Cabernet with the wine. I did not drink the good wine I picked up in Costco, saving that for hopefully when Sue and Bruce visit after Thanksgiving.

Inside the garage I Fastened down the armored cable from the panel to where it goes into the duct leading to the upstairs workshop. I need to cut a piece of plywood for under the panel but have not done that yet. I had 2 clarinet practice sessions today since it's been a while since I've seen Justin and I want to be in top shape. In the afternoon I mounted the heater inside the greenhouse. This involved moving the ladder inside the greenhouse then locating a stud and drilling 2 holes for the bolts. I decided to use the wall mount since it seemed simple. I had to run out to Lowes to get 2 4 inch galvanized lag bolts which I screwed into the wall stud. The bracket seems sturdy. Mounting was easy and consisted of lifting the heater onto the bracket then placing the bolts in to hold it in place. While in Lowes I picked up some fittings to fasten the BX cable to the unit. Also in Lowes I found a woman who was doing similar, hooking up BX cable with #8 conductors to a new oven. For dinner I went to Chipotle and got a Chipotle bowl with carnitas and all the fixings such as rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, etc. Yum.

I spent the whole day working on the sheathed 8/2 going to the greenhouse. I almost had a disaster when I drilled into the sheathing for a live cable. I nicked the neutral with the drill. It could have been worse. I had to take apart the entire plywood where the cables go into the electrical box. I'll have to cut a new one to replace it. I did a lot of running around up and down the stairs pulling the cable a few inches ata time. Eventually I got it where i could hook it up but discovered the circuit breaker was too wide. I exchanged it at Lowes for a thin 50 amp breaker. Dinner was loaded potato soup which was a freebie a while back. it wasn't too bad. I got the new breaker installed. Now I need to nail down the cable before drilling the greenhouse wall. The heater came in so I went to Northern Tool to pick it up. I also bought an LED shop light to work on projects. This was badly needed.

I left at 8:15 and took the Cary Pkwy to drop Libbie off for her 10:10 flight to PVD. Once back home I got the equipment out and took down a Sourwood tree in the front yard. The Poplar is next, it's a much bigger tree. I'm clearing a spot for the tomato garden in a cage. Inside the house I cleared the path in my workshop for the cable to run inside the closet for the greenhouse heater. This involved moving a lot of stuff. I'll start the wiring tomorrow. Dinner tonight was BBQ chicken from Kroger along with a Lemon Meringue pie. I wwent to bed early watching youtube videos. A new Sonos speaker arrived. To my delight it was a Sonos One which has Alexa built in. It's still pretty buggy.

Today Libbie checked into Southwest for her flight. i went out for groceries then came back and installed the piece of metal under the stair wooden footer to stop moisture from wicking from the ground into the wood. I also installed the bottom two steps but not the top one. I need to find what to do about the riser before installing the last one. i came inside and studied some pages of BP and wrote a fake review for TER to get access. I also did some more genealogy research using the newspaper.com I created. Dinner tonight was a side of spaghetti wth Cooking Light style chicken Parmesan. We had the leftover Cabernet from yesterday which was half a glass each.

I went to the DMV in Cary around 10 and they would not title the car because the Bill of Sale showed I financed the car which i did for 3 days but paid it off. I drove to Carmax on Glenwood to see what i could do and they said to have the bill reprinted by Naples with a zero balance. I called Naples an got a person who said they couldn't do that and instead sent me a pretty stupidly worded piece of paper that said i was going to pay the loan off someday. I already did! I called back and got a person named Haley who helped me by doing what the first one should have done which was print me a new bill of sale showing no balance. They finally sent it and after lunch Libbie and i went to the holly Springs DMV and got the car titled and registered. Hooray! We had a very nice looking young lady who took care of us including not charging sales tax for $500 a second time after we already paid Florida $589. Next we went hunting for Lemon fruit for the fruit cake. We tried both Lowes foods and Kroger as well as Foodlion on Old Raleigh Rd on the way back home. No luck. I got out my electric drill and remmoved the cardboard temp Florida license and installed my own plate. Dinner was sweet potato, steak and Fetzer Cabernet. A successful day.

We had breakfast at 8. I had a Western Omelet which had peppers, onions and cheese in an engg mixture. I had bacon and hash browns with it and then a donut later. We waited around until everyone had gathered around 10. We saw Sasha and Michael and a lot of the rest of the wedding party. We said goodbye and left around 11. Sue and Bruce were staying another day. The drive back was pretty easy. I used the new Costco card in VA to get gas. We had a McDonalds stop at Exit 4 just before NC for lunch then got home around 2 PM which was good. I was a little tired and did not play the Clarinet when we got home. Libbie made her outstanding pizza once again from a crust she had in the freezer. it was quite good. Tomorrow I will deal with titling the car.

Watched the sunrise on the ocean today from our 8th floor balcony. This is a beautiful hotel. It's brand new and has the Hyatt quality. I ordered a Southwest omelet for breakfast which was yummy except it had too much salsa for breakfast. Mary and John joined us. We made plans for going over to the Back Bay Wildlife refuge which was 18 miles south of here. Mary and John came with us in our new Prius. The center was great with boardwalks in the marsh and sea grasses that were over 8 feet tall. It was cold but the brush sheltered us from the wind a little. We saw the first of the migrating Swans. there were about 70 of them. The ranger lady said that the peak is 1000 swans that migrate from Canada and spend the winter on the VA and NC coast. We saw a nice variety of other birds including Herons and some small warblers in the grasses. The swans were Tundra Swans which i found on iBird. We had a nice lunch at Panera bread on the way back. i had a half sandwich which was a turkey cranberry that was yummy. The others got soup and half a sandwich, I skipped the soup. We got back in time to get ready for the wedding. First shuttle was at 3:20 to the art museum. The wedding ceremony of Michael and Sasha was lovely. We had some Family photos afterward then on to the reception. A little Pinot Noir with the hand passed hors d'oeuvres hit the spot. She crab soup in little glass vials was outstanding. The band was a rock band with 3 guitars and drums but they were very good. We did quite a bit of dancing with much swing, some rumba and a foxtrot and Texas two step. Dinner was filet mignon with rice and asparagus. The wedding cake was dessert with blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. A perfect cake. We did quite a bit of dancing including hold and sway then left on the shuttle at 9:30. What a nice wedding.

The garbage man came today but not the recycling guy so we'll leave it out while we're gone this weekend. FedEx overnight delivered the check from Carmax as well as my old license plate from the Corolla. I took this to the Credit Union and put it in checking to pay the real estate taxes. A quick trip to Lowes while at the CU yielded some glue on cable clips for the Sirius wiring in the Prius where it's exposed. Next was a trip to Kroger to top off my gas tank for the trip. I used the new Citi card. We got going a little before noon with a planned lunch stop on 58 in Emporia once we got off I-95. The trip was easy as we arrived at the Hyatt lobby simultaneously with the Benzigers. We hung out in Mary and Johns room a little bit and had some wine Mary had with her. At 7:30 we went down to the bar for some hand munchies and wine. While there we also ordered a "Sammy" which was grilled chicken on a bun with bacon and Fries. The bar was incredibly loud with young people making lots of noise having drinks and just hanging out. We left around 10:30 and went to bed.

I practiced Clarinet a little before Nancy came then while she was here I did financial stuff. Payed the bill for Stoneybrook the Visa card and figured out how to pay everything we owe this month. When Nancy left at noon we had lunch then drove to Scottrade in Durham where Libbie deposited the proceeds from the condo sale almost 46k$. It was an easy drive up 751. We found that when the merger with Ameritrade is complete there will be a Cary office out by the old Sams club on Harrison. When we got back I started working on the Sirius XM. The receiver fits nicely in the corner of the windshield mounted to a side triangular piece of glass. I spent the afternoon hiding the various wires then backed the car out and tested the Sirius Radio. It worked fine. I had some trouble figuring out how I was supposed to select the Aux audio source but soon found the correct menu. This is pretty nice.
Dinner tonight was the leftover Chicken Parmesan breasts with a side of spaghetti. We had another bottle of Cabernet with the Chicken Parmesan. I need to stop eating like this.

This was a busy run around day with little accomplished. I started with a trip to the Credit Union to get a Bank Draft for 15, 757,91 for the Carmax payoff. After this I went to Lowes an dbought 50 feet of 8/2 wire but they did not have 50 feet of metal sheatthing only 25 feet. I then went to Investment Blvd looking for the NAPA store that is supposed to be there but had no luck. I brought the wire home then left for the Carmax store on 70 in Raleigh. Hannah in the finance department was proficient and handled the transfer of the title to Carmax including the notary and payoff of the temporary loan I had to take out in Naples to bring the car home. She is mailing the title, the check and the Corolla keys to Naples via Fedex overnight. There was a Lowes next to Carmax on 70 so I went inside and found the cable in a 50 foot roll. They also had 8 packs of LED light bulbs 60 watt equivalent for $10. That's 1.25 each which is great for 2017. I came home had soup for lunch then went out again to the NAPA store on the traffic circle where Chatham St meets Old Apex Rd. They actually had the Prius 12V battery in stock. The guy said there is a person who rebuilds hybrid batteries in Apex and buys a lot of the 12 volt batteries so they stock them. I brought it home, installed it in Libbie's hatchback without any problems. Watching the YouTube installation video a few days ago was helpful. I then took the old battery back to NAPA for an $18 core rebate. The whole thing was a good deal, less than $200 for the battery bottom line. The previous cheap one i found was for $202 on Amazon. For dinner we made Chicken Parmesan from cooking light. Libbie made a side of spaghetti which we accompanied by a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. I did some diagnosis on the Sirius XM power cable and verified with my meter that 12 volts is not coming out the cable.

We did last minute packing this morning and got on the road at 8:20 PM. Traffic was not bad. Our first stop was for Libbie at a truck stop just before Gainesville. A crummy place to stop. While she went to the bathroom I topped off the gas. Next stop was for lunch at exit 36, Brunswick GA. It was a very nice McDonalds, either new or remodeled. I had a Big MAc and shared a small fries. We got gas across the street at Raceway and were on our way again. We topped off at the exit 170 Pilot for 2.12 per gallon. The Prius V is very comfortable but has a noticeable tire vibration at 70 MPH. The tires may need rebalancing. We arrived home at 7:45 PM. It was a dry and event free drive. Dinner was tomato soup and cheese and tomato sauce on a toasted bread round.