December 2018 – Mark's Blog

31 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: New Years Eve, rain all day.

Plans: Work on mom’s budget and make plans for a permanent installation of the Pi-Aware.

Narrative: Played a game of Scrabble with the sweetheart. Watched a romantic comedy that was a take of the 6 Days/ 7 Nights, it was in the wintertime woods on snowmobiles in this movie.

Plotted my son’s radio performance after permanently mounting the antenna in his attic and moving the Pi to his closet.

Engineering: The Pi-Aware on my house needs a better antenna and a place to put the receiver that is cool and dry. I’ve ordered replacements for the larger antenna and coax that I gave my son this weekend. I have a box that will work as an outside container for the Raspberry Pi. It needs a hole for the watertight conduit. I also need to construct a power supply to power it over the Ethernet cable from my cave. I also intend on giving the Pi its own network, because we don’t have control over the software being used.

Tomorrow: Company for New Years Day.

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:

30 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Early Monday morning, should rain again today. It’s been several days without bright sun so solar batteries are showing the drain.

Plans: Stay loose, have to work a budget modification for my mom in the next couple days. Need to strengthen my emotional state and continue to recover from the chaos moving my mom this year.

Narrative: I read somewhere that it’s better to sleep with it cool, like 68 degrees. In the summer that would require a bit of power, but now in the winter it’s just a click on the thermostat. The first thing I’ve noticed is that it’s terribly comfy under these comforters, but is now very chilly to make a trip to the bathroom. The heat pump has to work pretty hard in the morning since we’re recovering the inside temperature to 70 during the coldest part of the day. (May have to change that.)

Tomorrow:
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 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Raining and cold this morning. 07:00 was a difficult wake up call today.

Plans: Run Sunday service, take a nap and get my laptop.

Narrative: Alarm went off and I was too groggy to get up yet. Set the alarm for 15 minutes and took a nap. Second alarm I was feeling a bit better and my sweetie offered me breakfast to get me up.

Arrived at the school before about anybody else and put out the Handicapped / no parking signs in the rain. Service setup was long since there was only two of us working the hardware. Service went well with no real hiccups, equipment pack up went pretty good with a couple of helpers speeding things up.

Arrived at the house about 1:00, had a ham sandwich and headed to the bedroom for a nap. Woke up two hours later and found my sweetheart warming up leftovers for dinner. Dinner was pretty good, some of these casseroles are better the second day. We headed out to retrieve my laptop from my son’s house about 4 and got back home around 7PM. We had a pretty good time playing with our grandkids for a couple hours.

Tomorrow: New Years Eve, no big plans. We are beginning to enjoy being home together without worrying about traveling next week.

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:

28 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Been raining all day, Internet died while we were sipping our coffee this morning. It just started working at Noon.

Plans: Build a Flight Aware receiver for my son and start building some elder care documents.

Narrative: Not much motivation to do much of anything today. It rained most of the morning and with the Internet being on the fritz, I couldn’t do the research for the documents sis wants. I did do some performance checks on the cellular Internet which is currently on the roof. I also managed to write the Micro SD card for the Raspberry Pi for the Pi-Aware we’re going to install next week.

We had a very good casserole dinner and both of us laid down in our living room and listened to music for about an hour to relax. We’ve not done that in years…

Tomorrow: Saturday, maybe a haircut?

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

Douglas Jacoby https://www.douglasjacoby.com/ Am I going forward in my faith, it’s easier than you think to slip backwards…

27 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Our financial situation is improving as we pay off the debt incurred this year and we are starting to build a daily routine again.

Plans: Spend some time drawing up a plan for next year and align our 11 month old budget to that plan.

Narrative: Well I was going to work on our finances, didn’t happen. Phones were pretty busy this morning working out finding a dentist in Florida and whether Florida Blue covered it.

The afternoon was spent playing with Pi-Aware receiver and the new antenna my son sent me. I mounted the antenna on a pipe from a speaker stand and taped the pipe to the bathroom vent for the evening. The antenna increased the range by about a third and the receiver is displaying aircraft greater than 150NM.

I am on the fence whether to return to the 1/4 wave antenna since there is no real need for a long distance unit with all the Pi-Aware receivers near Atlanta.

The current thought is to move the larger collinear antenna to a relative’s house further East where there are no receivers and return to the 1/4 wave antenna to support short range reception of non ADS-B aircraft for triangulation at the homestead. (MLAT)

My son and I did rebuild our network between us tonight, it did take a couple of hours. (I’m a bit rusty.)

Pi News: Cables for the large Pi-Aware antenna should arrive today, I don’t want to buy something to mount it with until I’ve tried the antenna. It will also give me the opportunity to build a Pi-Aware for an offspring that doesn’t seem to have anyone around him with one.

Tomorrow: It is supposed to rain all day, but Tim’s Flight Aware receiver and antenna arrives tomorrow.

26 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Christmas is over, still cleaning.

Plans: Look over our finances and start planning for January 2019 when we have most of the large bills of the year.

Narrative: We forgot to turn the heat back on yesterday. (We opened the windows while we were cooking.) It’s 64 in here and 32 outside. Our coffee is brewing and I’m in for a couple eggs for breakfast.

Enjoyed a relaxing day today, we walked around the block listening to the XM radio 60’s (that the wife loves) on my new radio I got for Christmas. Played with ground planes for the Pi-Aware ADS-B antenna on the roof. I didn’t get the same results as the You-Tube video guy did.

Had left-overs from the Christmas dinner and watched a documentary about Walt Disney before turning in for the evening.

Tomorrow: Both the PiAware antenna cables arrive tomorrow. Need to get an assessment whether the large 1090MHZ antenna I got for Christmas is worth the trouble. The small 1/4 wave antenna is getting substantial amount of traffic beyond 100NM already.

25 December 2018, Christmas

Status: Livingroom is clear, but there is a few items I put back in the cars for storage. The family is coming over just after noon.

Plans: Help my sweetheart prepare for today’s feast.

Narrative: Got up around 8 and it was a pretty day this morning. Had my morning brew which was terrific as always. We’re planning a fire today, so I got on the roof this morning to move the PiAware from the chimney where it has lived for a couple days. I finally decided to mount the antenna on the top of a rotating vent (Which I stopped from rotating.) I ran a wire from the chimney 12V power to the Pi to supply the 8W of power it needs to keep running.

Mash sweet potatoes and put them in a bowl, that was my offering for dinner today.

The families arrived a little after 1PM and left well after 7PM so everybody was having a great time.

I received a portable radio and a wind up emergency radio from Santa this year. Both turned out to be excellent products. (Hard sometimes to get something substantial from Amazon without it being junk.)

Repairs: My Internet connection has started failing occasionally, I don’t know whether it’s a DNS problem with the Pi-Holes or it is a connectivity issue. I started a “Smoke” ping to the first Comcast gateway. That will prove the connectivity is not the issue. (But I think it is.) I checked the modem, the logs say it has been up for weeks. The RF links are also well above the minimum readings so I doubt that’s an issue. The cameras are complaining the most and they are after the Sophos firewall, so I can eliminate that as an issue. I’ve looked at the Fortigate logs, nothing there suggests that it’s going offline.

24 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Just a few piles left in the living room.

Plans: Finish the living room today. Watch “The Santa clause” with family.

Narrative: Got up really early and headed down to the Honey Baked Ham store for tomorrow’s dinner. It took a little longer than I would have hoped, but we have the main course for tomorrow.

Worked on the living room most of the morning, there are a couple of things I need to put away. But that project is Done!

Pi News: I changed the password on the cellular router this morning so that I can see the map of the aircraft as they fly over the house using the Pi Aware that I built on Saturday. Having a major airport within 40 miles creates an awful lot of traffic near us. The Raspberry Pi is in a plastic Tub on the chimney for a couple days until we (My Son and I) figure out the best way of making something permanent.

https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build

Tomorrow: Have the fam over for Christmas dinner and presents.

23 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: Livingroom is on track to be finished tomorrow. Didn’t sleep very well, but I’ll make it.

Plans: It’s a long day, get up early. Take a nap after church and start working on the piles in the living room again.

Narrative: Got up a little early at 06:30 and took a shower since I was up. (I knew it was going to be very cold and this would give me a chance to dry off before heading out in the cold.) Reset the alarm for 07:30 and caught a quick nap before the wife called me out to breakfast. She made eggs and sausage for me this morning.

Got to church before 8 and set out the Handicapped cones as usual. One of the Do Not Parking signs is missing along with about 5 small cones. I’ll get eight new cones ($14 each) and four new signs ($10 each) this week for next weekend.

Church service went well, it was relatively easy without the band and all the monitors. Great sermon today.

Had a ham sandwich and headed down for a nap, especially since it’s raining again today.

Spent some time on the Flight Aware receiver, we need to know how well it performs on the roof. Specifically the top of the chimney which is an appropriate round steel surface. I don’t have an easy way to run a network cable up there and the PI doesn’t have WiFi built-in so I connected my cellular modem to the Pi and ran the whole thing on one USB cable. The tiny 5″ antenna was picking up aircraft more than 100 miles away so I’ll be very curious what we’ll see with the 24″ antenna my son bought me. I put the pile of stuff in a plastic tub on the chimney and weighted down with a couple of boards. I should get a good idea if it’s worth the trouble of running all the wires to make it permanent.

Played a game of Scrabble and watched the end of White Christmas before retiring to bed.

Tomorrow: Get the Christmas Ham at 07:30.

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

22 December 2018, a day from Mark’s past

Status: We have money again! The checks from the Florida sale have cleared the bank!

Plans: Clear out the living room today so we can prepare for Christmas dinner with the family on Tuesday.

Narrative: Checked the bank this morning and there were thousands of dollars available to pay off our debts we incurred over the last year. I transferred half what I owed to our credit card this morning and put some money in the savings account for the first time in a long while. I realized yesterday the pressure of having almost 30 Thousand dollars worth of debt was weighing heavily on the two of us. Especially at Christmas. (My bottle of “Jack Daniels” is about half empty.)

Spent the last 3 hours clearing the living room and I’m a little more than half way through it. It takes a lot of time to put things where they belong versus in a piece of luggage headed for Florida.

Took some time out to play with the networks this evening. My son configured a Raspberry Pi as a Flight Aware participant. It looked interesting enough to spend the 30 dollars for the receiver and the antenna last week. I got the set earlier today and the antenna that he bought for me as well. I couldn’t find the adapters or cables to use the big antenna so I setup the receiver in my cave tonight. I can see aircraft about 40 NM from inside my house. (Which is quite respectable.)

Tomorrow: Church at 8AM.