Deposit Jackson EMC check.- Marriage Retreat registration by Monday.
- Research new smoke/fire/CO detectors.
Draw fire detector wiring diagram. Repair/replace bedroom UPS.Ran for 2Hrs + as designed.Repair relay module.New one seems to be working great.- Replace dryer vent with one that closes off the outside air
- Power supply for audio recording on Sundays
Get battery packs from storage.
Buy mini USB DC converter and check for noise? - Configure Ham Radio Deluxe software.
Did get it configured to reach into my LOTW. - Recycle Batteries #3
- Look for another Subpoena.
(They may not ask us anymore because of a chain of custody issue.) - Add relay to refrigerator UPS to charge from Solar.
- Get exercise pads from storage.
- Check on Home Owners insurance for storage.
- Fix Jacoby account
- TurboTax 2024.
Signed in and started my 2023 taxes. - Make Dentist Appointment
- Mount HA#2 and Pi-Hole.
- Buy air filters 16x25x1
- Buy more solar panels in case of NATO WAR.
Sweden has been approved to join NATO. - Change owner of church Public Storage locker.
- rebuild Attic fan power switchbox.
- Wells Fargo Advisors
- Good Will
- Hand truck
- Fertilize the lawn
- Buy a water hose
- Repair radiator on Blue.
- Repair the eves on our home
- Replace back door of garage
- Repair window in garage
- Replace seal under garage door
- Locate part number for Door seal.
- Repair the brakes on Blue.
- Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
- Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
File estate taxes. - Put tape over door seals on Blue.
- Research Lawyer for Arizona
Monday
01:00 AM Made Coffee and checked on Home Assistant, everything looks good.
08:00, still only 28 degrees outside. Paul is busy making contracts on his HAM radio this morning. We both slept in today and I just finished another cup of coffee.
Refilled humidifier it had gone through a gallon of water. Normally it can maintain almost 50% at night, but we’re using gas heat. (That dries out the air pretty bad.)
Finished up 4 eggs and a bit of ham for breakfast. I forgot to put the juice in the fridge so I had some Classic Coke with breakfast. (Normally I have OJ)
Spent some time looking for a heated coffee Caraeff. There was a cheap 40 Cup coffee maker in storage, but that’s absolutely NOT what I am looking for. What I want is an insulated 20-30 cup dispenser that has an option of being kept piping hot, but not scalding hot like out of the coffee makers.
I am working on improving our heating efficiency during these very cold nights. We let the house fall to 68 at night and then push it to 72 for a couple hours in the morning while we are getting dressed. (It’s inefficient, but 68 is tough to get out of the shower in.) At 8ish I cut the heat back to 69 until about noon while the outside temp warms up. (I have to manually set the heat pump back on during those three hours.) By noon the outside is warm enough for the heat pump to produce the heat needed to warm the home to 74. That heat will be used to carry the building during the night. We take control of the bedroom at 19:30 and use small space heaters to maintain it at 73 degrees.
Lunch was Chili Mac with grated cheese and crackers.
Read chapter 1-3 of my General HAM license book.
Started my taxes, YUK!
Did some research on “Mono” and that it can trigger Alzheimer’s disease later in life. We’re creating a project section in our day timer to document all this data.
Raspi disabled VNC because I randomized the MAC address. I had to change it back to protect the VNC Server service on it.
I moved the solar panels to the Blue Focus, it’s been on the van all last week.
We did a little research on dementia and found out it also can be caused by having Mono as a child.
There was a bit of scrap under one of the keys and I ended up pulling up two keys off the laptop keyboard. Took a break and watched a Hallmark movie “Love in Glacier National” and “Love’s Portrait which was uncommonly good.
21:30 We both did our evening routines, and she went to bed while I tried to repair my laptop keyboard.
The left one was a quick snap to replace the top.
The right one needed some finesse with these two very finicky pieces of plastic.
They have these TINY ears that are actually are remarkably durable.
As it turns out, you HAVE to put the scissor pieces into the keyboard BEFORE you put the cap on. When I removed the cap from the bottom it tore the scissor pieces apart and made such a mess of things. (The key caps need to be pulled from the top to remove them.)
Had a bowl of Chicken Noodle soup and crackers. Nighttime pills and then bedtime about 1AM.
Kathy woke me about 2AM because the alarm went off telling her that her CPAP lost power. The breaker popped for an ARC/Ground fault to the two small space heaters. There’s a UPS on our bedroom CPAPS, but the stupid UPS is programmed to protect the batteries at 2 hours. (I assume that one of the 10A relays powering the personal heaters is getting a little dirty.) I unplugged the heater relay box and reset the breaker, it held until noon when I had time to replace the relays.
Tuesday
Had a hard time sleeping, maybe 3 hours before 5AM. It felt like I had too much caffeine and that kept me waking me up. Woke with severe abdominal pain and gas about 7AM. Gas from all the gummies I ate while working on the laptop? Slept solid until 11AM and the pain had subsided.
11:00 Woke to find Kathy had already gone to the dentist. Grabbed a cup of coffee while I DL my O2 levels from my device. It looks like I slept better in bed than I did in the chair last night. (Too many variables to take a course of action, but sleeping in bed is desirable.)
12:00 Kathy needs some work done and I have to fix the relay module in the bedroom. (Its tripping the arc fault breaker.) Also, the bedroom UPS didn’t hold up her CPAP when the breaker tripped. The alarm I put on the UPS went off warning her that her CPAP has no power. With her nasal mask she will stop breathing until she removes it.
Here’s the control box (Relay) for the bedroom space heaters. It controls two small space heaters and a fan on the floor to circulate the air to the living room if the bedroom air needs circulating.
The box is rather crowded, with the modules above.
About half done moving the wires onto the new relay module. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but the wires go in easier if they are not twisted. LOL
All done and ready for testing.
Took my first UBER ride to pick up my Wife at the dentist. Super easy, and much quicker than I had anticipated. I also went out for a haircut to get my ears lowered.
Lunch was a Burger King Whopper and then leftovers for dinner.
Installed updates to Home Assistant.
Get out your T-Shirts, it is a heat wave! These are times I wish we could limit the amount of heat provided. That way the house can be comfortable when the outside temperatures are also comfortable. Eventually the humidity will be high enough that the de-humidifier will warm the house because the outside is 100% humidity.
Curious point, the two heated throws that are about 13W each (36V/50Ohms = 26W). They drew as much power per day as the portable refrigerator set at 32 degrees!
Added a “Smart Plug” by VeSync to the Cave UPS to measure the power my desk consumes. (They’ve been really reliable.) The Cave desk network draws about 250W, this device will measure and graph the power drawn for me. The UPS will draw an additional 250W when charging the batteries.
Wednesday
Slept in until someone called about a survey they are doing for the veterans. They said it was in brown envelope and that the testing takes about 3 hours at the downtown VA. I am beginning to question the legitimacy of this invitation especially since they offered $250 for my time.
Drinking my cup of coffee while Kathy is showering. Back in my PJ’s having a morning meeting to organize the next few days.
We’re going to have rain this week and it’s going to storm early Thursday.
(I think this system is the one that flooded San Diego on Monday.)
Chili-Mac leftovers for lunch, 3 minutes in the microwave and DONE!
Spent almost an hour reading the news, same noise is still out there…
Church starts at 7:30, but we’ve got to stop by Publix first and get some salad fixens.
Back home, the storm front is just west of Atlanta. (We’re getting prepared for it and bed.)
Joined the “Stanley” club with two large thermoses that will be used to bring coffee to others.
Thursday
RAIN is the issuance of the day to SLEEP IN!
Read chapters 3 and 4 of my General License book. It went pretty fast, I do have a good understanding of electronic components.
4 Eggs and Rye bread for breakfast with Can Grape juice. Did not get much accomplished today. Kathy got a haircut at her favorite salon, and I slept most of the day. We worked on a grocery list today, but tomorrow is pretty full. Kathy goes to the gym in the morning and the day doesn’t open up for me until after Dinner at 2:30. Whether we have the energy to go grocery shopping on Friday after being up for nearly 10 hours I kind of doubt that will happen. My best bet is that we’ll go shopping on Saturday and forgo Landon’s practice.
We had BLT’s for lunch and after we took a nap we went to a nursing home to play a little bingo. We were confronted by the signs that they had two active COVID cases in the facility and that transmission risk was HIGH. Our friends rejected our request to abandon playing bingo with the residents, so we’ll have to wait until next week to see if we’re infected. *They are 20 years younger than we are too.
Friday
I woke up under the 12W throw this morning sweating… I had not anticipated it being so warm outside that the heat (Even such a small amount) would overheat my body. So now I guess there’s a decision before sleeping under them. No heat, 3W (18V), 8W (28V) or 13W (36V). It’s also possible to put an ESP as a control module and set it to a specific temperature under the throw. They make some incredibly small temp sensors. (I wouldn’t need humidity in this purpose.)
Read through Chapter 5 today and for fun I took a practice test.
Not bad for my first try!
I met the garbage truck at the curb and took the can in.
Kathy got her ears lowered so we ended up going to Longhorn for lunch.
When I filled my CPAP tonight, I also changed out the air filter. I found out that I had broken the hinge on the door. (Green arrow) We have a spare CPAP machine that supplied the replacement door for now. I ordered a replacement online, it will be here Monday.
It’s balmy outside, like 70 degrees tomorrow!
Saturday
Kathy needs to get a temporary crown glued back to a tooth this morning. Then it’s grocery shopping at Wally World.
$330 later we were on our way home with three tubs of groceries. We put the refrigerated foods away and headed to Longhorns for lunch.
Back home, NAP time! After my nap I took a shower then cleaned the tub/shower and replaced the shower curtain. (No, I wasn’t that dirty LOL) Kathy whipped up a pot of coffee and I’m writing this entry.
Looks like Taco’s tomorrow. Pork Chops on Monday, Chicken tenders on Tuesday, Salad on Wednesday and Meatloaf on Thursday.
Someone at my HAM club was touting learning CW today, but the reference he provided was to invest at least 1Hr/day to CW. That’s probably a larger commitment than I am willing to make for the time being. With the help of CwGet I can copy about 20% of a slow CW transmission. I can send roughly the same speed and a lot better accuracy using my automatic key. For “On Air” the fading prevents the software from being a reliable means of copying someone. The more interesting investment is JS8CALL which has considerably more reliable means to send/receive messages over HF with no investment in learning CW. For now, though my desire is to get my General License.
Sunday
Made two thermoses of coffee for service today at our friend’s house. We took a nap afterwards and then went to Stone Mountain to help a friend with a blocked drain.
Back home getting organized and eating a bit of dinner.
Took another practice test and got a 91%. Registered for my General License Exam in 11 February.
Cut up several socks for a purpose that the entire sock was not well suited for.