November 2018 – Mark's Blog

30 November 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Two very full fruit crates from Florida are left to be sorted and put away.

Narrative: I’ve had a problem for a while that the calluses of my feet crack and get infected. The first thing I do is to saw open the crack so that it can breathe and I can get medicine in the wound. Softening the callus is next on the list using a lotion of some kind. The hard part about that is I generally don’t wear shoes in the house. I wear socks to keep my feet clean, the socks in turn absorb the lotion reducing the healing affect I wanted. So, I came up with putting plastic bags on my feet under my socks?

Our 32 bags of Coffee arrived today.

I worked on the living room tubs and reintegrating the larger 18AH batteries back into the house electrical system. The first recipient was the DC supply for some of the smaller lights in the house it has a primary and secondary power supply with battery backup. I pulled the batteries off the secondary supply in March to supplement the farm’s network. I also put ferrite beads on the wires at the lights to reduce the Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) generated by the lights.

It turns out that the 12V DC lights from Amazon are very noisy electrically and we occasionally loose our TV reception because of the low voltage lights in the house. (I need to start looking for UL on the bulbs.) I saw an automotive bayonet to E-26 Edison adapter for $15 on Amazon, but that’s outrageous.

I am going all out tonight to get a good nights sleep. I’ve put a “Breathe Rite” strip on my nose and cleared my sinus with saline. I’ve put eye drops in my eyes and kept them closed for more than 5 minutes to give the solution time to work. I’ve taken 2+2 “Advil” tablets to reduce the pain in my shoulder and arm muscle.

Engineering: I need to sit down and work up a flowchart for power produced by the two solar panels on the roof. I have three desirable recipients for the 700WH/Day of electricity. It’s NOT enough power to keep the refrigerator running much longer than 36 hours. (Depends on what time of day the power fails.) Our CPAP power supply needs to be replenished with 560WH during the day of Day-2 of the outage. (That will take president over the refrigerator.) Another issue is weather, if it’s cloudy I may be lucky to get 50WH from the panels. That means I need to have enough battery to power them for four nights. (Roughly 2000WH.) That works out to be a 100AH 24V battery bank which in my case it is 10 portable Deep cycle 12V 20AH batteries that are in padded cases with handles. (Only had a picture of four of the 16Lb batteries we bring with us when we travel for one night’s sleep.) I have a octopus cable to connect eight batteries to the UPS. We also have to bring a battery charger since the UPS will only replace ~16AH/Day using it’s internal charger if there’s power.
That’s a lot of hardware to be located in our bedroom along with our CPAPs.

Tomorrow: Saturday, it’s going to rain with some strong winds. (Good planning weather.)

TO DO:
Pay the Post Office Box bill.
Repair the VPN between Ricky’s Fortigate and home.
Dental coverage for us is in “Open Season”, we need to enroll soon. (Eye coverage?)
Card for the drama department.
Lighting and Audio support for the Christmas play.
Get two teeth pulled and one post put in.
Call the doctor about the anti inflammatory that I seem to be allergic to.
Call Fl Blue, Lisa Rhodes 352-854-2100 about part D.
Read the book “Men and Women in conversation”

Finances M730, R813, V7135

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT set clear goals for the day? No
Did I DMBT make progress to those goals? No
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT fix something today? Yes
Did I DMBT improve something today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
Did I DMBT be fully engaged? Yes
*Did My Best To
Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accomplishments: Purchases: Engineering: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

29 November 2018, Another Cold day from Mark’s past

Status: Making good progress on sorting the pile on the living room floor from all the trips to Florida.
Theme: We are switching gears and putting things away in hopes that Florida won’t need significant effort in the future.

Narrative: We’re finally taking a minute and looking back over what we’ve done/not done over the last 10 months. We’ve been running so hard that much of our lives got terribly disheveled or put on hold. We’ve also gained a commitment that our home is not a warehouse of stuff. We’re seriously looking at what we have and do we really want it living with us 10 years from now. We usually put up a tree after Thanksgiving, but bringing 7 tubs of supplies out of the car dampened that effort just a little. (I’m working on it.) I normally work up a “To Do” list, mostly because I easily forget things I have to do. I had to go back almost a month to find the last list about stuff in Atlanta that was posted on this blog. It will probably take me a week to scrub the list and bring it up to date.

I’ve tested the seven small 7AH batteries, only ONE is worth keeping and it’s pretty OLD. The newer Power Sonic ones have all failed at about 3-4 years. There are a couple brands that seem to last longer like BB, however is not a brand that I am familiar with. I have switched up from buying “Power Sonic” to Interstate batteries (They have several brand names of their own.) last year because they’re local. (No shipping charges which can be significant with a 18Lb battery.) Today I am testing the bigger 18AH Power Sonic batteries (1/2 Group U1 if you’re a geek.) I’ve connected the batteries to a UPS and then to three 60W incandescent bulbs. The tests finished with both banks of Power Sonic 18AH batteries being about 15AH, quite reasonable. I had thought of combining the two banks of batteries into a four battery box, but they are terribly heavy at 60Lbs. (2 batteries 30Lbs is quite manageable.) I borrowed these batteries from my house systems earlier this year to make sure mom made it through hurricane season. The decision is to put them back onto the house electrical system where they came from. (They are worth $100 ish) The first two went back onto the 2nd of two redundant power supplies that power the critical DC loads of the house. (They’ve been solo for most of the year, now that it’s winter I need to reduce the risk by repairing the 2nd supply.)

Two UPS units (One with Internal batteries, one with external batteries) are installed in grandpa’s house. One provides backup power for the “Hopper”, the other (Larger one) provides backup power for their house phone and Internet. I may deploy more of them, but I want their buy in. (They want them.) They cost about $200.00 to put together and money has gotten rather short.

We watched the “Christmas Cottage”, well most of it until we got too tired to stay up. Read a little of the Wife’s book, it’s interesting she wrote the book because so many people were asking about a single chapter in her previous book.

No roaches, just ants today. Batteries are charging, headed to bed.

One of my difficulties of sleeping through the night is breathing through my nose and I just thought of those silly “breath rite” strips advertised on TV. I’ve tried them when I was much younger, but now I may actually need them. That and a saline spray for the sinus I may yet be able to sleep better!

TO DO:
Repair the VPN between Ricky’s Fortigate and home.
Dental coverage for us is in “Open Season”, we need to enroll soon. (Eye coverage?)
Card for the drama department.
Lighting and Audio support for the Christmas play.
Get two teeth pulled and one post put in.
Call the doctor about the anti inflammatory that I seem to be allergic to.
Call Fl Blue, Lisa Rhodes 352-854-2100 about part D.
Read the book “Men and Women in conversation”

Tomorrow: Friday, take out the garbage/recycling. Rain is forecast, but it is also much warmer.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

28 November 2018, A Cold day from Mark’s past

Status: Liquid ant bait works very well, we’ll have to wait and see about the roach hotels.

Theme: Keep sorting and putting away items that were brought back from Florida.

Narrative: The tubs, baskets and boxes that were used to haul things back n forth to Florida carry an unsorted array of stuff. It will take a couple days to resort them deciding what is worth keeping and what can be tossed. The next trip to Florida the car needs to be pretty empty to carry the materials left in Florida on this trip.

A friend of ours had an “Ole Brooklyn Lantern” that they bought off a TV commercial. I found several on mom’s farm in various forms of decay. I can get one new from EBAY and other sources for about $20. The good thing is that two D cell batteries carry a significant amount of power. Depending on how bright the variable attenuator is set to the batteries can last a really long time. The bad is that the switch on the brightness control seems to be the fail point of the lantern. (Other than leaving batteries to corrode the terminals.) I also am believing a reviewer that said the big brand “D” corrodes more often than the big brand “E” batteries.

Did it mention it was like 25 degrees outside this morning. For Atlanta, that’s COLD!

We did wake up to a pile of dead ants on the kitchen counter this morning, apparently the liquid ant bait works pretty well. It comes in four rather tall clear plastic containers with a wick material on the top for the ants to retrieve the poison from.

I put a camera on three 60W light bulbs that were being run from three batteries that were being checked for capacity. They should be able to run the 60W incandescent bulb for about an hour each. Looks

I checked the cameras at the farm, no water spraying that I could see, I did want to put a light on the big well so that I could tell if it was running. Never got to it.

Had to drive East on 78 past Tim’s house to get my water tank for my CPAP today. Boo! But, that was something on my list to get done today.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours working on the tubs/baskets on the living room floor. There’s about 50% more floor showing than there was yesterday.

Engineering: Traveling CPAP’s? We are getting our first resupply of CPAP consumables, of real importance is a spare mask. The Wife’s mask is unique and she has had no spare to fall back onto. When we get our supplies next week I plan to retire her current mask into a pair of “Traveling CPAPs” that will stay in the car. (I have two spare machines.) That way if we get stranded at our son’s house (As an example), we can safely sleep there without worrying about getting our CPAPs which are likely still at our bedside. We’ll also have a spare for every component of our two machines in case of accidental damage/failure while traveling. If we travel with our current machines I’ll carry just ONE of the traveling units as a spare. (Since we’ll have three machines with us.) The only other addition if we’re traveling by car may be some kind of backup power. (Batteries with an Inverter.) It didn’t make sense to me to buy two $80.00 DC power cables when an Inverter is roughly $40.00 that can drive both machines. (I did buy two spare AC power supplies since a power spike could take out both machine power supplies at the same time.)

TDL,
Repair the VPN between Ricky’s Fortigate and home.
Dental coverage for us. (Eye coverage?)
Card for the drama department.
Lighting and Audio support for the Christmas play.
Get two teeth pulled and one post put in.
Call the doctor about the anti inflammatory that I seem to be allergic to.
Call Fl Blue, Lisa Rhodes 352-854-2100 about part D.
Find out about Dental coverage for Mom, Medicare “G”?
Find out about Eye coverage for mom.
Tomorrow: Dig up my “To Do” list and get organized. I need to gather numbers for a church budget for next year, by Wednesday if I can.

Tomorrow:

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

27 November 2018, A Cold day from Mark’s past

Status: It’s official, we’ve brought dem bugs to Georgia.

Narrative: I was tearing apart the battery backup units we brought from the farm and one of them had a live infant German roach in it. Kathy saw two more and we found a 1″ adult American roach on the ceiling this morning. I will have to buy some roach hotels in hopes of catching any strays. We brought so much stuff back n forth over the last year, I am a little surprised we’ve not run across more of them. All the stuff is in the middle of the living room floor in hopes of seeing them before they get to harborage. I didn’t bring the power backup equipment to Grandpa’s for just this reason. I’ll have to go through all the baskets, tubs and boxes and try and find all I can today. Then make a run to the dollar store for some preventative measures.

Haven’t had breakfast, but we’ve both had our coffee this morning. I bought a bottle of Irish Crème and it was a pretty good cup of coffee today. We were down to two bags of Dominican coffee and the supplier had a 20% discount yesterday, be bought a case (16 bags) to replenish our stores. (Too bad coffee doesn’t kill the bugs, that would make things easy.)

Now that the Wife’s project is done we’re cleaning and putting things away. It’s a pretty big haul of stuff we’ve taken back n forth to Florida. I don’t have time to run around so I’ve brought the kitchen sink when I go down there. I am hesitant to bring anything back unless it’s been cleaned and we’re past the 6 months infestation period. I also have to assess the life left in all the batteries. (most were used when I brought them down there.)

I reordered CPAP supplies before I left and they didn’t send a tank for the humidifier. The tank is too little cost to send by itself so they told me to go to the local center (Winder Ga.) to get one. Boo!

Wife is also having issues with a prescription for Restasis, I don’t think Express Scripts will refill that anymore. (Like they did with my Nexium) It’s $100/month to get it at a local pharmacy.

Engineering: I did do some research on two OLD 700VA UPS units that were in the small bedroom. They would work well to replace the unit in the Bumpkin next time I’m down there. I designed the Bumpkin power supply so that it could be run over with rodents without affecting the performance. The power supply in the Morton barn just has a plastic tub over it and that has survived so far. I’ve removed the annoying beeper! (It’s tolerable when it beeps every 10 seconds for 2-5 minutes, not so much at 2-1/2 hours!)

The first of the two LS700 UPS units did well in several hours of testing and was within the parameters expected from the chart below. The second unit failed within 15 seconds, trying to resurrect the unit caused permanent damage (Crashed and burned) and it will have to be scrapped.

Had leftovers for dinner with black eyed peas and salad with “Western” dressing on it.

This afternoon while testing the UPS I’ve been clearing the kitchen table. For us it’s the “Catch All” for anything loose in our hands. It’s also the sorting place for our mail from the mailbox and the Post Office box. The table is now clear cept the few pieces of fruit in the fruit basket.

I put out roach hotels and liquid ant bait tonight, that should take care of the sugar ants we gained while in Florida. The roach hotels also worked pretty good at mom’s house.

We’re roughly $30,000 in credit card debt and there’s maybe $2,000 left in our checking. We’ll have to tighten our finances a bit more to keep enough cash on hand to send $200-$400 to mom’s account every month. I was going to try and get these teeth pulled, i’ll have to think about that since there’s only about $2K worth of credit left.

It’s going to get down to 26 in the city tonight, should be about 4 degrees colder here at the house. 22 degrees is awfully cold for the outside faucets, I wraped a sock around the faucet until I can get those foam things and cover them. (I should have done this earlier, but the weather predictions were not that cold yesterday. Boo! There is a power supply that heats the only water line in the attic (Icemaker line for fridge) and it has a pretty large battery backup. It’s under some insulation, but it can freeze if not warmed just a little. (About 5W is enough to keep it from freezing.) The garage will be above freezing and I’ve checked the radiators last year, they’re good for serious cold.

I’ve recharged the batteries I used for testing earlier today, they can run the heater if I loose power tonight. Well, I guess it’s time to call it a night. See ya tomorrow.

Tomorrow:

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

Farm Sale

Service providers

Clay Electric is the power company and there are three meters on the property. (House, Trailer and Bumpkin.)
The power for the trailer has been turned off.

The Internet service is Windstream, which also provides their own telephone service. (Service lands in the house)

AT&T traditional phone service is also available on the property.

None of the inside cameras record video/audio, they are still photo’s only.

26 November 2018, A day from Mark’s past

Status: House is a shambles and we’re not done with Kathy’s project for school.

Theme: Stay loose and provide help to the Wife as needed.

Narrative: Didn’t sleep well again last night, overall ache’s and pain were also a distraction. Had my morning coffee and had eggs for breakfast. Got a haircut to trim my curls today. Took a pretty good nap and woke up with a dry mouth as usual. (Haven’t figured all the aspects of that one out yet.) We finally finished the school project and had a wonderful dinner to wrap up the day. I looked for a “To Do” list and couldn’t find anything relevant to Atlanta going back two weeks. I am sure I was working something?

TDL,
Repair the VPN between Ricky’s Fortigate and home.
Dental coverage for us. (Eye coverage?)
Card for the drama department.
Lighting support for the Christmas play.
Repair the two small UPS units. (60W x 4 is 240WH)
Get two teeth pulled and one post put in.
Call the doctor about the anti inflammatory that I seem to be allergic to.
Call Fl Blue, Lisa Rhodes 352-854-2100 about part D.
Find out about Dental coverage for Mom, Medicare “G”?
Find out about Eye coverage for mom.
Tomorrow: Dig up my “To Do” list and get organized. I need to gather numbers for a church budget for next year, by Wednesday if I can.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

25 November 2018, A day from Mark’s past

Status: House is a shambles and we’re not done with Kathy’s project for school.

Narrative: Had to help setup church services this morning at 08:00, it was difficult getting out of bed. I am somewhat stiff and uncoordinated, but I got there on time and setup went well. I made several serious mistakes during the service that were easily heard by the congregation. (I was not on my game today.) Home at 12:30 and had a ham sandwich while the wife does a audio recording of her presentation. (The final product will be her standing in front of the screen giving the presentation.) I am headed to bed for a nap, then we’ll do a video run-thru of her project using cameras. We recorded her project using our phones, it turned out that our phones were a better camera than any camera we had in the house. She had to comment on posts by today so that took president over continued work on the presentation. I am in moderate pain and my joints are sensitive again, I reached behind the couch and came out yelping in pain. I’m almost certain all of this some relationship with my sugar intake. Need to buy one of those meters and take my sucrose levels for a week. Well I’ve taken some pain medicine and when that kicks in I am headed to bed.

Tomorrow: Last day to turn in school project.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

Farm Sale

Status:Status: Farm equipment identified, but need to post a serious paired down list to the realtor.

Narrative: We (Family) need to decide what we’re going to do with the red van? It does run, but it badly needs an oil change to prevent damaging the engine. It can’t be driven to a shop and it’s getting harder to dispose of used motor oil if I changed it myself. The inside of the van had gotten moldy by leaving loaves of bread in it and the van was occupied by mice/squirrels for some time. (They chewed through the molding and feces are everywhere.) To me, it’s scrap metal and is too scary to be used without risk to someone’s health. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any pictures from the inside of the van to show the depth of what I am describing.

https://notenoughwire.info/2018/11/21/items-left-on-the-farm/

24 November 2018, A day from Mark’s past

Status: House is a shambles and we’re not done with Kathy’s project for school.

Narrative: We spent a good deal of effort yesterday building the audio portion of her project. We’ll likely record a run through today.

The wife made coffee today, I am sipping on a cup while updating this blog.

I am not sleeping more than a couple hours at a time. I wake up with air flowing out of my mask rapidly because the seal against my face is disturbed. It will take a bit of time to break down the three pieces of the puzzle, mask tightness against my face, range of pressure given to the machine to use and my eyes draining into the back of my throat cutting off my airway by making it sticky. The way to work this taking a long period of time forgoing any productive activities. By far the most common is my eyes get dry during the day and when they heal at night the white blood cells make the pallet of my throat sticky enough that the septum blocks my airway to my nose. The result is that I end up exhaling forcibly out my mouth knocking the mask off my face. (Since I’ve lost the ability to exhale through my nose.) I get into this circle by staying up too many hours and letting my eyes get damaged by being excessively dry. It takes about three days for them to heal completely and break the cycle. (But who likes laying in bed for the better part of three days.)

Tomorrow: Church services in the morning, haven’t been to one in three weeks.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/feelings-words-from-a-to-z-2086647

Farm Sale

Status: Farm equipment identified, but need to post a serious paired down list to the realtor.

Narrative:

https://notenoughwire.info/2018/11/21/items-left-on-the-farm/

Tomorrow:
Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accomplishments: Purchases: Engineering: Project: Status: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News: