Author: Mark Vogt

My experience is that LED light bulbs have not lasted the touted life on the box.
But this $8 DC corn bulb I bought in 2011 has burned for 15 years so far. In my experience the major failure has been the power supply in the base of the bulb. The second largest failure is that manufacturers are overdriving the LEDs and they die.

Scrambled eggs for breakfast with my Augmentin pill, so far so good on my new medicine schedule. The timer on my wrist combined with the pill dispensers should keep me on schedule.

The HF radio 40Meter band is LONG, I could not hear most of the stations this morning. I FT8 to Australia last night on only 15W.

Michael Shellenberger was interviewed by a newspaper at the end of May, I found it very thought provoking. So much so, I will have to listen to it several times to capture all the information provided.

We had to make a run to the orthodontist, so we went to Longhorn’s for lunch today. We stopped by on the way home and dropped off the referral from Coast Dental. Our appointment will be this week, and it should be an eval and treat appointment. Having these Amox to take has added to complexity of traveling with our medication.

I have nine medication times to keep track of.
I found out tonight that two of them, Norvasc and Alfuzosin are light sensitive.

I’ve put a ring of construction paper over the tray to keep the light off of them.
The lid on the left side of the door is to stage medications to be taken within the next two hours. (Like taking Alfuzosin after dinner for example.)

Tuesday

I woke up very early this morning with body aches and the shingles on my back was also flaring up. I took a whole 500mg Acetaminophen and 200mg Ibuprofen about an hour later to get some relief. For me taking Ibuprofen contains some risk, there is a low threshold where I will break out in hives. If I am awake I “can” take a Benadryl to escape any serious complications. I took a Gabapentin at 7AM to relieve some of those symptoms in my back and arms.

We went to Whole Foods today to get cereal and crackers among other things. Lunch was at Longhorn’s of course, it bothered me that all the business is in the bar area and the servers are left with empty tables. (Hard to make any money that way.)

I made a battery powered flickering candle for people we’re praying for. The idea is that we give remembrance when we see this candle throughout the day. It runs on two AA batteries that should power it for more than a month. *I took a tee light candle from the dollar store and connected it to MUCH Larger batteries.

Retired early, have to get up at 6AM to be at the Orthodontist by 8AM.

Wednesday

Woke at 6AM and we had scrambled eggs after I took a shower. We left about 7:15 and made it before 7:50. The assessment didn’t go as planned.

There is significant decay under the crowns of all two teeth in question. The Orthodontist recommended removing Tooth #30 and returning to retreat #29 which originally was #28. I have eight Amoxicillin pills left at 2PPD that’s four days. Sunday at 9PM will be the first missed dose. I’ll wait for our dentist to call me, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll schedule an appointment with her on Friday. They are closed on Thursdays, I wish I had remembered that sooner!

Headed home and took a nap before returning to Longhorn for lunch. It got massively crowded with large groups of people. (They apparently knew about some of them because there were 5 servers. Funny thing was they didn’t come in until after 12 Noon, the crowds were there at 11:15.

Headed home, we were going to stop by Wally World, but it looked like rain was ahead of the 4PM prediction.

I mowed the back yard and barely got wet before putting the lawnmower up.

This what happens when you leave a camera POE (Ethernet) wire out in the rain.

I got a new keyboard last night. (Todd gave me one that the keys “Click”, but they don’t sell them on Amazon anymore.) These keys don’t click, but they are plenty noisy enough. Now both my computers in my cave have new keyboards.

The UPS units in my cave both switched to battery, rain is headed our way.

I made yet another prayer light for our friend.

Thursday

I still have a bad pumpernickel taste in my mouth from yesterday. I don’t quite know for sure why. The pumpernickel bread was 2 months old, and I didn’t find out until AFTER I ate it. I also took my 875 Augmentin on an almost empty stomach for the first time last night. (I had a few crackers, that may not have been enough.)

We checked our cupboards and headed off to Wally World for some supplies. It was pretty empty. In fact, there was ONLY ONE check-out line for a full cart of stuff. We dropped off the dairy and headed off to Longhorn for lunch. We took our pills from our kit and headed back home. We put the supplies in their cabinets, and I worked on refilling my pill dispenser trays. I have SIX Augmentin pills left, that gets me until 8PM Sunday.

I have an intermittent annoying pinch on my left side just under my ribs and a little above my belt line also on my left side. The pinch feels to be just under the skin in both places.

I opened the refrigerator and the light went out, the countertop light was also out so the problem was the UPS in the garage. I checked the voltage on the batteries and one bank of batteries were completely dead. The other three banks were ok except the 10A fuses were blown. I put 15A fuses on them and restarted the UPS while I replaced bank #4. I may install bank #5 if I can find the wires. After the batteries have settled down with a full charge, I’ll drop the fuses back to 10A each.

The refrigerator is acting weird too, the temperature went to -10 in the freezer when I plugged it into the house power. (Which is well below the -6 setpoint.) The refrigerator temp is correct at 36 degrees, and the freezer is -5 and that’s good so far. I checked the power monitor, 156W and it drew very close to a reasonable amount of power today. I put a power fail alarm on the refrigerator outlet so I’ll know right away if it happens again.

Checked our Glucose and BP, they were good today. Time to get ready for bed and take my last Augmentin pill for the day. The metallic taste has come back, I don’t know if the Isopropyl alcohol I accidently sprayed on my tongue has anything to do with this. I looked it up, 10mg is the starting point for affecting your health. The taste is not severe, and my health otherwise is mostly ok. I am a little more tired than normal, but I am not sleeping regularly either.

Friday

Dental appointment at 9:15 this morning, trying to get a referral for an oral surgeon and get advice on the Amoxicillin regiment that will end on Sunday. Funny thing is the E-Mail they sent me says the appointment is at 9AM (Not 9:15) The dentist had the referral ready for me when I got there so there was really no wait. I did not get an additional Augmentin prescription, and it will run out on Sunday.

We went to Longhorn for lunch and then to Interstate Batteries to drop off a pile of old batteries and we bought two new ones for the refrigerator. I am going to try putting the new ones on the floor of the garage to keep them cool.

Deli meat on rye bread for supper with rice cakes and creme cheese for dessert. My body aches were pretty severe tonight, took an entire Acetaminophen and a 200mg Ibuprofen too.

Saturday

One 24V bank of batteries died yesterday, and the refrigerator took out the remaining three bank’s 10A fuses to take down the UPS yesterday evening. Startup current is 700W and that’s 35A so three 10A fuses was insufficient to carry the 3x12A needed by the refrigerator. Now that I know I NEED four batteries I bought a fifth bank and connected it to the UPS. The startup current is just 7A per battery with five and just under 9A for four batteries. If a single battery shorts out, the 10A fuse connecting the two batteries will isolate it. With five banks fused at 10A that will provide 50A to the UPS.

Checked in on the WW Net and sipped on a cup of coffee while I worked on installing the new batteries on the refrigerator UPS. The posts on the new batteries were considerably smaller than normal. I could have used the hardware for the 18AH batteries had I looked.

The original wires were about a foot long, but I needed longer wires to reach the batteries on the floor. Knowing I have multiple batteries and multiple wires I can extend the wires quite a bit and keep the same impedance. 30A across one foot of 12AWG has a voltage drop of 0.0477 Volts and five parallel wires @ 5Ft long are the same resistance. (1.4W) The advantage of NOT connecting the batteries together at the batteries is it allows some variance in performance between manufacturers and the batteries age. (I didn’t buy $1,000.00 worth of batteries at one time.) Battery to battery is 20Ft of 12AWG wire which is .0318 Ohms and at just 10A allows 0.32 V difference between the batteries. (Preventing the strong batteries from taking more than their share of the load.)

Grandma’s beef chili for lunch today with cheese and crackers.

We took a good long nap, then I checked the battery temperatures in the garage. The floor is around 80 degrees, the batteries on the carpet are 84 and the batteries on the table are 88 degrees. The floor temperature under the cardboard is 4 degrees cooler at 76. (It might be possible to insulate the batteries from taking heat from the air, but if I did that I’d have to insulate in between the batteries.)

My pills are a mess this evening, I got behind the pill dispensers earlier today and I never got caught up. My shingles and my shoulders are bothering me enough that I took a full 500mg of Acetaminophen to relive the pain.

Sunday

I’m up with the wife and her 5:30 medications. My tooth #29 is much better, just like last night before I ate the salmon. I need to let the root of my tooth heal before I can eat anything. Then I need to lower the pressure of the water pick to prevent pushing food down into the roots of my teeth. Getting old is so much fun.

It’s raining outside, no lightning so I connected my antennas to meet up with the HAM radio guys. (But then I went to sleep and missed them.)

My tooth is behaving itself and there is a small clot in my cheek from the cavity in the bone. (Normal for me, I take aspirin to break up the clots.)

Today was our first day away from home with all our medicine in hand.

We left our home with our timers on our wrists and the emergency medicine kit in her purse. While we were at the dollar store her timer went off for Prilosec, which we took in the parking lot. My timer for 11:30 went off at Longhorn’s and I took them while I was in the restaurant. We both took our “after lunch” medication before we left the restaurant. The 12:30 timer went off while we were at Wally World’s, but we’d both had taken that medication. After we got home, we replenished the emergency box from the three pill trays that had medicine waiting on us. All in all, it all just worked out just fine!

I had chicken tenders for lunch since I wanted to keep my eating down to a minimum. (This should be the only meal of the day, no breakfast, not even coffee.) I brushed and water picked at very low pressure to remove the chicken from my gums.

More rain is on the way, lightning is with it. I had a plate of hard cooked eggs (Not Scrambled) because I am just a bit hungry. My weight has dropped from 215 to 210 during this ordeal. It’s 1:25 and I am turning on the A/C and headed back to bed.

Tuesday

Forgot to turn the Dehumidifier & A/C back on, humidity got to 63% with all the rain.

With the two of them working together the house environment will return to normal very quickly. Our home is so small that the humidity can creep up on us in the summer. I do need to add hoses to the bathroom vents to evacuate the humidity out of the attic.

We put our emergency medicine box in her purse and headed downtown to Emory for our appointment today. The appointment went well, but the Psychiatrist we’ve had access to at Emory is leaving Atlanta and we’ll have to ask our PCP to pick up the medications she prescribed. There’s no option to stay with Emory with Psychiatry doctor. We headed to Longhorn for lunch and took our medications before and after dinner according to our wrist timers.

It started raining after we got back home so we took a good long nap. I went to Lowes and dropped off the two bad bulbs over the laundry area. Batteries and Bulbs wanted 8 dollars for recycling the two bulbs. I thought to myself that if I am buying new bulbs at Lowes, they should accept the old ones? I purchased LED replacements and installed them over the laundry area, it’s MUCH brighter now.

I filled my pill trays a little early, but I was unable to sleep and needed something to do. I read the news for a while, but it was getting boring. I tried to watch TV for a little while but then got very sleepy.

Wednesday

It is raining again, no lightning but there is a good amount of rain out there. Checked in with the guys on the WW net.

Cleared some of the living room floor.

Washed hoses and tanks today. Washing hoses amounts to siphoning water between two storage tubs and drying them with air. The tanks are soaked in a large bowl of warm soapy water with a bit of white vinegar.

Well, I’ve solved one piece of my sore mouth. Tooth #31 on the outside is rather sensitive and has been for a couple days. The rest of the teeth have settled down now that I’ve turned the pressure in water pik way down after talking to the doc at Emory. Tonight, I flushed #31 with diluted H2O2 and it immediately felt better. I’ve known for about a day that what I eat has a direct relationship with my discomfort. Sauces are high on the list. I guess it is time to see the dentist, too late for an appointment today. I have changed to a non-alcoholic mouthwash, that should help it heal.

I also have the same problem that she has, I am a nibbler…. I am eating something all throughout the day and that may be preventing my gums from healing. Coffee with sugar and cereal with raisins and milk for breakfast. (Or eggs) When I emptied my trash can there was no less than 30 bite size baby ruth bars wrappers, that’s pure sugar with nuts to pack it in. I guess the thing to do is stop drinking diet coke as a refreshment, maybe at dinner only. Soft drinks encourage the body to overeat.

Warm salt water, that’s the current plan!

Thursday

Slept in until 7AM when my wrist alarm went off. I took my before breakfast meds and checked in with the guys on WW Net. I spent a good deal of time on my gums this morning. Best I can tell I have two issues. Tooth #28 has an abscess underneath it and tooth number #31 the gum line is in the crack between the crown and the tooth. The brush is not getting down in between the tooth and the gum because the crown is overlapping the top of the gum. We called the dentist and no one answered the phone. The answering service did make an appointment for 9AM tomorrow. We drove there and sure enough the office was closed even though the door says it’s open Monday through Saturday. We drove to a Doc in the box and picked up some Amoxicillin for me to take for the next 24 hours. I assume that the dentist will have prescribed Amoxicillin for the infection anyway. (It doesn’t start working for 36 hours.)

Friday

Took my Amoxicillin very early this morning and slept in until 8AM. Checked in with the WW Net and got ready for my appointment at 9AM. Dentist gave me a referral for the Endodontist, and I headed home. We headed out for Longhorn and stopped by the bank on the way out. We were there pretty early so we walked around the building several times waiting on them to open. Tiffany waited on us and after the manager let us in. No extras today, just two salads with Diet Coke.

One of the servers came to us thanking us for our generosity, she said that it has really helped her.

Bad day for the lawn service, their trimmer may have a hard time starting up again.
(Another shower is headed our way. This may not drain before it gets here.)

Lots of muddy water from the neighbor’s yard.

I have quite a family of pill dispensers, and it grew yesterday. We have our normal three dispensers for our medications. One dispenser is dedicated to OTC Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen tablets every three hours to prevent us from taking too many.

The newbie is for Amoxicillin; I need it because it is terribly important to take these pills on schedule. I took the first pill at 4 in the afternoon. I’d like to rotate the times to early morning and late evening. Moving them takes planning and reminders. The first 24 I took as prescribed. The next three days I am moving them slowly. The afternoon pill was moved from 4PM to 5PM today, effectively changing 875mg to 805mg. As an elderly person there is a risk to my liver to take this medicine at such a large dose.

We had cold cuts on Rye for dinner with creme cheese on rice cakes.

Saturday

Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net, I could not hear more than half most of the conversations.

Major progress on the living room today.

Okay then, we got this in the mail today.

I set my above wrist alarm watch for 19:00. We got new bands today and she opted for the pink band instead of the red one. I think I’ll keep the black one.

Our favorite wagon family went by again today with the new one.

Our neighbor took the garbage can in for her today.

And I took their recycling can in for them.

The family waved back when they went home.

Now that I’ve stopped taking Gabapentin the nerve pain on my back is getting worse. What I didn’t know (And no one told me) is that it is recommended I get vaccinated against shingles. With two doses, Shingrix is more than 90% effective in preventing shingles and postherpetic neuralgia. Other shingles vaccines are offered outside of the United States. Talk to your provider for more information on how well they prevent postherpetic neuralgia. With the Gabapentin the rash was not really bothersome, but the side effects of stopping Gabapentin is worth getting the vaccine at this point.

Her glucose numbers are rising. We need to figure out why!

Sunday

We are getting close to the end of both of our lives, and the political climate is to selfishly pit one family member against the other. Since the eldest of our children has decided to stand against me, we’ll probably pull all the beneficiary names off all our accounts. If there is anything left after taking care of us and paying for the probate lawyer, we’ll probably give that to charity.

My body pain was pretty high a little after midnight, so I drew a nice hot bath. I also took a whole 500mg Acetaminophen and 200mg Ibuprofen

It’ been hard moving these doses one hour later at every dose. We’ll be on a firm schedule with the Amox after today which will be a LOT easier to manage.

I am using one of the battery powered pill dispensers for the Amoxicillin doses.
Even though you cannot load overlapping times, it has been a life saver. I set the green flash 30Min before and it flashes red when I am supposed to take them.

I need to go onto the endodontist’s website today and register for an appointment to take care of my abscessed tooth #29. They gave her 800mg Amox and I am currently taking 875mg.

Registered with Kersh Endodontics, I missed an opportunity to schedule an appointment with them on their website after I registered. I’ll have to wait until they call me back on Monday to schedule an appointment.

Church started at 10:50.