Category: Blog

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies. Gwinnett County case count is more than anytime this year. We’re not going anywhere soon…

Plans: Need to knock out some things on my bucket list.

• 00:00 Trying to find a replacement NAS.
• 02:00 Ordered a NAS, it will take until Saturday to get here. (Strange for Amazon.)
• 07:00 Up and sipp’n coffee.
• 08:00 Weed-n-feed the front lawn and took a walk
• 09:00 Changing battery Focus
• 11:00 Checking on a new battery.
• 12:00 Drove and got a new car battery
• 13:00 Connected solar panel to car to charge battery.
• 14:00 Nap time
• 15:00 Swap Cars.
• 16:00 Clean out blue Focus
• 17:00 Emissions test for Saturn
• 18:00 Clean out blue Saturn
• 19:00 Sign title and position three cars.
• 20:00 Shower and planning.

Narrative: I’ve lost a movie library, but I don’t have time to work it right now. I have backups, but everything isn’t in them. 1st priority is to move my shared drive onto a new library. Bought a 4 Bay NAS, i’ll populate it once I find four hard drives for it. The two Hitachi drives in the DNS-321 I was using for my video library died together. (They both died!) I’m leaving the three NAS off until I can build a NAS to push the data onto. I probably have twenty hard drives around here that need to be organized.

I also lost a SSD in a laptop and all the data on it. 🙁 I need to get back to using a network attached storage from using the hard drives in a workstation. I can use Microsoft cloud storage for now.

DLink no longer makes / supports NAS drives so I had to look around. The Buffalow NAS looked pretty good but they are a little old and Windows 10 wasn’t listed. I’ve spent a good couple of hours on this. 🙁

I bought a new NAS, it will get here next weekend. I’ll put an empty hard drive in it to make sure it does what it says and then spend the $400 more to get the four hard drives for RAID5.

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Bought mom a couple solar panels and charge controller, she’ll get them tomorrow.

I am pretty happy with the performance of the 600W on the roof, but surprisingly it is not enough to support the refrigerator and our CPAPS. I’ve given this some thought and my starting point has to be the CPAPs. I have four 24V UPS units that are very efficient (And very quiet) I think what I am going to do is put one of them in the bedroom. The hard part will be charging the battery at current, Need about 7Amps for 10 hours, what I really have is 12 Amps for 5 hours.

Just found out that my lawn is being taken over by “Creeping Charlie” which is an IVY plant with fairly large leaves. Apparently cutting the lawn without bagging the clippings exacerbates the growth of the plant.

I got my exercise in today. The Saturn ran out of gas in the emissions line. I had to push the car across the parking lot and get fuel before returning. The emissions passed and I signed the title over to our neighbors.

Feelings: I am still angry about the destruction in our cities.

Tomorrow: Tuesday, get organized and get something done.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies

Plans: Church services this morning amid city destruction all across America.

• 07:00 Up and Sipp’n coffee
• 08:00 All IOT2 clients are offline in the homestead?
  • Slate 11 died and I had to reboot it.
  • Ordered moving pads for Nancy.
• 09:00 Getting ready for services.
• 12:00 Service went well, went to bed
• 14:00 Solar panels working well.
  • The East facing panels may not be worth keeping.
  • The West facing panels produce a lot of power.

Narrative: Looks like the solar charge controllers are about 80% efficient converting 24V into 48V. I don’t know if I could better that.

We’re making about 2KWH / Day which is about 300WH short of running refrigerator. I need at least 100 more watts and since I’m 24 volts that takes two panels. I still need 600WH/Day for my CPAPS which means two more 100W panels for a total of 800W on the roof.

I lost my movie library today. Back to playing DVD’s…

Feelings: I am really distraught by all the violence the last couple of days.

Tomorrow: Monday, hopefully not a day with the investors.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies. Georgia is NOT social distancing!

• 07:00 Up Sipp’n a cup of coffee.
• 08:00 Walking around the block
• 09:00 Testing solar power generation.
• 12:00 Nap
• 14:00 Voting selections
• 16:00 Dinner and space X launch
• 17:00

Plans: Maybe take a walk. Submit our absentee ballets.

Narrative: I’ve measured the distances of three possible locations of solar panels on Grandpa’s farm

• 800Ft of 12AWG wire is 2.54 Ohms, we’d loose 44W (11Volts) with 800Ft of wire.
• 800Ft of 10AWG wire is 1.60 Ohms, we’d loose 27W (6.66Volts) with 800Ft of wire.
• 800Ft of 16AWG wire is 6.40 Ohms, We’d loose 110W (27Volts) with 800Ft of wire.

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Sunday Services

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies. Georgia has lost considerable ground and almost at peak infection levels again.

Plans: Grocery shopping this morning, church tonight.

• 07:00 Sipp’n a cup of coffee while reading the news.
• 08:00 Watching our shopper get our groceries.
• 09:00 Dealing with our finances
• 12:00 Nap
• 14:00 Making plans for the evening
• 15:00 Ordered handle for toilet.
• 16:00 Dinner
• 17:00 Building a prayer list for 9PM.
• 18:00 Ran generator #3 for an hour.
• 19:00 reading the news
• 20:00 Nap
• 21:00 Prayer for an hour.
• 22:00 chatt’n with the wife, getting ready for bed

Narrative: Had a long talk with mom, the men she hired are cleaning up the farm today. (Working hard for their $100/hour)

We bought a frame for a picnic table, we have to buy the wood to build it.

Got some good ideas for the golf cart building from mom today. We have to decide whether we want the four sides open, two ends open or flaps on the doors.

https://notenoughwire.info/2018/09/28/da-list/

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Saturday. Should be a pretty day.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: We’re sheltering in place and have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Work our grocery list and get organized for tomorrow. It doesn’t appear that we’re ready to go back out into the crowd just yet.

Narrative: Tying to get my accounts setup with Ameriprise Financial, spent almost all day on it. I am having a go round with the representative to correct the large number of errors.

Ran generator #2 for about 30 minutes, need to check the oil for replacement.

Connected all six solar panels on the roof together and used them to run my priority UPS during the day. They produced over 300Watts of power with 600W of panels.

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Groceries in the morning and prayer hour at 9PM.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Continue working on mom’s solar shed and church services tonight.

• 07:00 Up sipp’n coffee.
• 08:00 Looking up shed plans
• 09:00 Nap
• 10:00 Reading the news
• 11:00 Lunch, working on Wells Fargo Investments.

Narrative: Long day working on our retirement funds. We are having a tough time with the new company.

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Another day working with our finances.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Get out of the house and take a walk at a local park.

• 06:00 Up and sipp’n coffee while writing in my Blog.
• 07:00 Found out car battery is dead, now how do I get a replacement.
• 08:00 Mounted 2x more solar panels on the roof and adjusted the counter weights.

Narrative: I am still floundering a little, time is opening up and I need to get focused on what’s important.

I temporarily laid two more solar panels on the roof to simulate the six panels mom will have on the sandbox.

My plan for years was to deploy solar panels stored in the garage to protect them.  I cannot deploy them in the yard or someone will remove them, possibly with force.

The plan was to use the 20 blocks that are stored in the driveway to hold the solar panels in place and run temporary wires to charge the batteries.  I have repurposed three circuits and now have those 12AWG wires to bring the solar from the roof to the batteries.

When I tried holding down the solar panels with the cement blocks.   I hadn’t thought of how I was going to attach the straps to the blocks. That the blocks needed a felt underlayment.  I also hadn’t realized that the blocks won’t hold the panels unless half of them are on the other side of the crest of the roof. The straps across the crest need to be wide enough not to damage the shingles.  (I used 6” wide flashing for my test, but it’s pretty thin to hold an array of 10 panels.)

I was amazed at how much power I could get on a cloudy day.

I also decided to series / parallel the panels into five banks of two solar panels.  That keeps the voltage below a real arcing concern and the current is not too outrageous.

I have four panels that face East/West that are paralleled together 2S2P so they produce roughly the same power throughout the day.  (Verses having a peak power at noon.)

I was impressed pretty quickly that they were producing 80W on a pretty cloudy day!

Bought mom a fan, emergency radio and some batteries, they will all be there tomorrow.

Golf cart shop called mom today, they’re picking up the golf cart today…. Yea!

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Church service in the evening.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Groceries and making plans.

• 05:00 Up, Sipp’n coffee and wasting time with FB.
• 07:00 Nap before Groceries, nope didn’t happen…
• 08:00 Instacart Shopping
• 09:00 Putting groceries away
• 10:00 wasting time in FB and writing in my blog.
• 11:00 Nap
• 12:00 Lunch and another Nap
• 14:00 watched dark waters
• 16:00 mow lawn
• 17:00 dinner was great, but I ate too much.
• 18:00 Reading about grieving.
• 19:00 Wasting time on FB, I need to focus “Too Many Minds”
  • False ads on FB
  • Backup Power for mom (Lights, fans, cell phones etc.)
  • Sandbox backup battery (If we use a picnic table)
  • Golf Cart Battery

Narrative: Many things in our homestead have backup power on them and are not slaves to the Power Grid. To keep these things running we have multiple layers of Un-interruptible Power Supplies powering them. Occasionally we need to do maintenance on these UPS units and which requires moving the plug from one UPS to the other. On my two most critical circuits I’ve installed a relay that chooses which of two plugs powers supplies power to the equipment.

There is one minor problem if the relay is powered by one of the two plugs using an AC coil. The relay can chatter between the power sources if the power available on the N.O. contacts cannot support the load. I have two of them and have had no issues thus far for maybe a year or more.

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Narrative2:

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Tuesday, we’re planning to walk a park tomorrow.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Church

• 06:00 Up and sipp’n a cup of coffee wasting time on FB.
• 07:00 No stupid Energy Ads on FB this morning!
• 09:00 Get ready for church
• 10:00 Church
• 12:00 Nap time.

Narrative: Still working on the sandbox, I found a truss calculator and adjusted the numbers accordingly.

Narrative2: I am abandoning trying to build up some kind

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Monday, Memorial Day. Groceries and rain.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies. It appears that we may be a week or so away from traveling to the stores again…

Plans: Work on the communion for tomorrow.

• 05:00 Woke up Early, wasting time on FB
• 06:00 Sipp’n coffee, wasting time on FB Ads.
• 07:00 Nap, relieve some stress and get organized.
• 09:00 Up working on sandbox roof
• 12:00 Vacuuming
• 13:00 Nap
• 15:00 Working on Communion
• 17:00 Taking dinner to a friend
• 18:00 Having dinner
• 19:00 Watching a movie.

Narrative: Working on sandbox roof, the horizontal stress looks to be less than 1.6x

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Sunday Services and I’m doing communion.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To