Month: June 2024

Monday

Up at 7:30, listening to the Waterway Net on my HF radio. She’s catching the morning show for a few minutes before getting ready for the Gym. I am a little groggy haven taken Benadryl to get to sleep this morning. I may have to take a bit of a nap before I’m very useful today.

Bright sunny day this morning. (Old Camera)

Two Hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages with juice for breakfast.

I think I will concentrate on sorting and cleaning. My projects involve bringing multiple supplies into an area that will construct the needed device. At the end of the construction the remainder of the supplies need to be returned to their respective places. (I am often negligent on this.)

Called Child Fund International three times this morning trying to get our sponsorships straightened out. Their website has been troublesome to deal with for more than a year. The associates seem to have access to the underlying database so that may clear up my issues.

It’s a beautiful day outside today. (Old Camera)

The day just got more complicated. The Internet is down where we hold church so they want to use my cellular hotspot for the service on Sunday. I have to make a long Ethernet cable to run to the hotspot router.

Tuesday

We normally get a weeks’ worth of groceries, but that takes planning and accurate inventories. We’re getting very close to just letting her get groceries every other day like she used to do. The constant turmoil of inaccurate information and laissez faire attitudes makes working together very difficult.

I had boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast with a couple cups of coffee. I checked in on the 2M net with the guys this morning. I send D a copy of the video but he didn’t respond with anything.

We had a tense discussion about last night and getting groceries this morning. It was 9:30 by the time I took a shower and 10AM by the time I was dressed and ready. The decision ended up getting our lunch first and then come home put the braces in and take a nap. Longhorn opens at 11AM and we arrived about 10 minutes early. After the nap around 2PM we’ll head out to Wally World and get groceries.

Not as hot as yesterday, but it was pretty warm out there mowing the lawn.

Lunch at Longhorn was really good, Hannah has been taking great care of us on every visit. We headed back home and took a quick nap before going to Wally World for groceries. That trip also went well and in good spirits when we got back. I worked on odd projects and mowed 1/3 of the back yard before heading to bed.

I did get up and face one of the new cameras at the sky to see if I could catch a falling star…

Wednesday

We’re up and starting our day, breakfast was boiled eggs, breakfast sausage and coffee. We washed her masks this morning, she has about eight masks that have to be changed out every other day. (About 2 weeks worth of CPAP masks) We get a new mask and three nose pieces every three months.

We soak them in soapy water and rinse thoroughly

Cloudy Day this morning, not raining though.

The seal underneath the garage door needs to be replaced

We had one of those days where she didn’t read the directions on the rice cooker and it took waay too long to arrive at a mutual agreement on embracing her handicap.

Dinner was cut up chicken tenders with carrots with mushroom sauce over rice, pretty good actually.

Thursday

Had my coffee while I worked on the attic temperature sensors. There are three attic fans and now there are four sensors to monitor what the air flow is doing. The attic was over 120 degrees the other day.

Marie sold the golf cart and all the solar stuff for $1400.00, the solar stuff was worth almost that much, so the new owner got the golf cart for free. (I assume that Marie just didn’t want the golf cart on mom’s property. There is also the possibility that she didn’t want anything with my name on it either.) She is also constrained by the fact Mom is on Medicaid and cannot make money. (Any profits from selling the golf cart are pulled back off of her benefits.)

Went to Longhorn for lunch with friends and had a great time on the 4th.

We shared a cheesecake for dessert.

Got home and took a huge nap.

Checked out our attic temperatures and how the fans are moving the heat out of the attic.

I changed the camera to be IR at night since it shows the cars better from Hillcrest.

Friday

Up a little late at 8AM and got a cup of coffee while I look over the data collected yesterday. With all the hot days I was wondering if there was a modification I could make to the attic fans to reduce the attic temperature.

Attic air flowing in the big fan about equals the air flowing out the two little fans.
(The eve vent is neither the attic nor the outside temp.)

When both fans are pulling air from the attic, it draws air from the living space.
(The compressor runs hard to cool the replacement air flowing into the home. The compressor never recovered from running both fans for one hour yesterday.)

She put in a new set of braces today and is off to the Gym. I was really sore this morning from having worked in the attic yesterday. I may have to stretch before taking these trips to the attic. A good warm bath really helped my aching body.

I missed 20 calls from her because she lost her credit card in her purse. She finally found it after agonizing about it for an hour and cancelled her Gym day. She got some condiments for tonight’s dinner and came home exhausted. I decided to just go to Longhorn’s for lunch to reconcile the day. I changed the primary phone number in her phone to be the house phone that always rings.

We took a good long nap and I had to do some remedial work on the new cameras. I configured them to be accessible from the DVR, but then they would not respond to a call from the network. I checked it later tonight and the problem has been fixed.

I worked on the IR illuminators while we watched Hallmark movies. I have four 96 LED illuminators (2W & 2B). I cut one of the internal constant current power supplies and wired the two banks of 48 together to cut the output power in half. (The LEDs burn out if run at full power.)

Back side of modified 96 IR Led board.

I modified the power cable on the first two illuminators, the second two I’ll just use the 2.5 mm power cable that came with it.

Saturday

Intermittent sleep last night, we’ll get through the day with a couple of naps. Checked the radio, it’s all set for the WW net this morning. I got my cup of coffee with me, and I am trying to get my morning assembled. Just found out that the frozen turkey ended up in the refrigerator on Tuesday. Assuming that it took two days to thaw, it needs to be eaten by tomorrow. I also found a package of chicken that was not in a protective bag. *The store packaging tends to leak and spoiling the refrigerator surfaces.

Completely changed her medications process. We put each type of medication in separate zip lock bag with the medication name on it and wrote the expiration dates on the cap. Now she doesn’t have to go through 20 bottles and read the fine print during her inventory. And since they’re in separate bags she just has to add any new medications to the appropriate bag. (No accounting needed.)

Had a frozen turkey breast cooked in the Insta Pot for dinner today. Had peas and cream corn for veggies. It was pretty good.

Spent a good part of the day repairing an old IR Illuminator that had failed and I sort of repaired it with about 20 failed LEDs still in it. I parallelled the 10 working six LED strings to keep the unit functional. Now I really need a little more power to get it done.

This is the picture with the OLD illuminator.
Mostly Just a spot on the lawn halfway to the drain.

This is the picture with the new IR board put into the old fixture. It now points at the drain in the lawn and gives good coverage of the lawn in the tree. I did remove the filter to protect the sensor from the sunlight to make it a little more sensitive.

There are now three IR Illuminators running at only 2.5W lighting up my lawn. (I took it apart and cut their power in HALF.) You can easily see how much more sensitive the new cameras are in the trees. The illuminators are almost invisible at night with 96 very dim LEDs each, but they light up the entire lawn.

There are now 5 high-definition cameras looking at the street capturing no less than 15FPS at 4K resolution. If they shoot at our house again, I’ll have a lot to share with the police. I am hoping that they see all the IR and NOT do any more shooting. I had looked at getting a trophy movie camera to put in my front yard. LOL

Sunday

Woke up about 7 this morning and gathered the equipment I needed to use a cellular hotspot for the Internet. It turned out that I didn’t need it, so I came back home. She had a UTI yesterday evening and the doctor prescribed a medication but the pharmacy was closed by the time we got it. They called us around 11 and we abandoned going to church to get it. We also decided to go to Longhorn for lunch today with all the Chaos.

Back home and the sermon was properly loaded on the website and we both listened to the sermon. I submitted my review of our meal today to Longhorn corporate. No letters from our sponsored children in Christian Children’s Fund.

I think I need to move the illuminators just a little for better coverage. It’s actually harder than it seems to point them. I need to turn them on one at a time too!

Don’t know how much I’ll get done tonight I have a skin abrasion that I don’t have a good handle on how it got it. It was a total Suprise when I changed my clothes. Best guess so far is a washcloth that I used earlier was just a little rough. Baring that it feels possible that a cleaning agent was a residue on the washcloth. I’ve put Vaseline Intensive Care on the skin after rinsing it completely with alcohol diluted with water.

Could not get to sleep last night, I ended up taking a bath to calm my body down. I finally nodded off around 4 AM. I managed to sleep another hour at 7AM but I am waay tired.

Monday

Good morning. It took about 2 hours to run a wire to the car’s tire and get it up and running.

This is looking west from the Ford Focus’ rear tire.

To give you an idea of what I can see here is where Silver Creek and Hillcrest are.

I thought it looked pretty good until a car came by.

The headlights blur out the entire vehicle, Boo.

I had half a juice glass of whisky, and it went right to my head yesterday. This morning, I am tired from working on the camera for several hours. If the camera can’t be in the wheel well, I am back to putting one on the trash can. The trash can is black and all my cameras are white. One other piece of engineering is that I need to be able to turn OFF the Power. The 48VDC powering the camera will destroy the Ethernet cable if it gets wet.

Mom’s off to the Gym while I work on upgrading the driveway camera. The old camera came with the Digital Video Recorder and cannot operate independently. The new one is like the cameras I used in Vegas, it records to an internal memory card and does not flood the network with traffic 24/7. *Two up and running.

On ladder 20 Ft up, maybe I should not have had that glass of Whiskey last night.

Now I can see the entire driveway AND the lawn!

And with excellent resolution.

This is the view from the roof camera, I finally took the protective plastic off.

The old camera had a 10 stop neutral filter on it to protect it from the sun.

Breakfast was two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages with CranGrape juice.

11AM, Time for a NAP, I am bushed!

We had ham and pea tetrazzini—spaghetti for dinner today. (We were supposed to have Taco’s)

We wrote letters to our CF children tonight, all four of them can read/write English.

Watched Hallmark movies until she went to bed. I worked on the two new cameras tuning their nighttime settings while it was dark.

Tuesday

Up at 7AM because we have routine Doc appointments at 08:30 and 09:00. I managed to get a few sips of coffee before leaving. The tubs and insulated bags are in the car for groceries. Doc appointment went well, and she was hungry, so we pulled the braces and went to Longhorn’s for lunch.

The food was terrific, and so were the Margretta’s.

Wally World for groceries and we’re headed home.

We met the man who built the large house across the street today at Wally World. He said some time ago a bullet came through his Livingroom ceiling and fell to the floor near where his granddaughter was playing. Gee Wiz!

Nap Time!

We had to toss the leftover chicken that we made on Friday because we didn’t eat it by yesterday. When she looked, she couldn’t find in her Daytimer when she made it. We also didn’t annotate it as a meal when she inventoried the refrigerators on Sunday.

We’re eating leftover ham and pea tetrazzini—spaghetti that was made on Monday for our evening meal. We watched the original Ghost Busters for a bit of entertainment.

Wednesday

I am still trying to capture as much information as possible so that the Police can arrest someone before we get injured. I bought the black camera so that I could put it on the trash can and it wouldn’t be obvious.

The camera is just underneath the handle under a pair of gym shorts.

It’s hardly noticeable from the sidewalk. (Not sure about the shorts.)
You cannot see the trashcan from silver creek because of the car.

I put it on a hook so I can deploy it quickly, I have a grey pair of gym shorts that hide the side of the camera. The single wire on the back helps to point it properly.

Here’s a tow truck headed west, good picture of it.

A car passed me this morning that lit up the entire street with Infra Red light.

Here’s that same car using daylight lens using the camera on the trash can.

Trying to capture a car with a daytime lens gives mixed results, here you can see the car is stretched out for some reason in the driveway camera. It also depends on how fast they are traveling.

Breakfast for both of us was frosted bran flakes with raisins on top. We stopped buying “Raisin Bran” because the raisins are all dried up. I went back to bed after having stayed up all morning working with the new black camera. (I now have 4) The DVR still has access to three old cameras with audio. I have two of the new ones mounted.

It is HOT here today.

Opened the trunks to let some of the heat out.

Up from our nap, sent in our monthly contribution to the church. Tried to read the news, that was a bad idea. I don’t have the mental strength to delve into this diverse menagerie of strange news. We watched the end of the original Ghost Busters movie before getting ready for tonight’s midweek church service.

I’ve set out the wire that powers the camera after closing up the cars. I’ll set the camera on the garbage can around 9PM when it’s getting dark, and my actions won’t be noticed as much.

Thursday

2nd day that I left the trashcan camera deployed, I did put a waterproof connector on the ethernet cable to the camera. I totally dropped the camera this morning, I am a bit clumsy right after I wake up. The memory card for the fourth camera should arrive today, I may put that camera on the west side of the home. I checked in on the WW net this morning, the propagation is pretty good to them today.

I found out this morning that the Wife had not seen the “Aunt Jemima” spatula scene in the movie “Stripes“. It was on YouTube for us to laugh at this morning…

Two boiled eggs and breakfast sausages with Cran Grape juice is a great breakfast. Top that off with Frosted Bran flakes with raisins and coffee. It’s going to be a strange day with the debate here in Atlanta. I am certain groups are going to make a nescience of themselves while Atlanta is in the spotlight.

The salmon had too much spice on it, they were so strong that I couldn’t finish it. The vegetables were good even though the pan ran out of water at some point.

The garbage camera is working out pretty well. The camera is not as level as I would like, but it doesn’t really matter as long as the cars are visible. (The wide lens captures the cars in the driveway and the garbage can anyway.)

The thing I need most from this camera is the description (Actual Color) of the car. The nighttime cameras only capture shades of grey and we really need to know if the cars are yellow or blue. I tried using the daytime sensor in the chimney camera and there’s just not enough light at that distance to make it work. Putting the camera any closer reduces how long the car is visible and it’s only four to eight video frames as it is. (Depends on the car’s speed)

Bingo and then the debate if we can stay up that long.

The fourth memory card came in and I installed my third camera on the house. I was going to wait until the chicks had flown, but the support for the nest didn’t include the Ethernet cable for the camera.

It’s not perfect, but it is good enough. *I need to wait until the chicks fly off.

This is the view from the new camera, I can still see the front door.

We went to a senior center to play bingo with them and then came home and watched the debate for a few minutes.

Friday

Two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages to start my day along with a nice hot cup of Dominican coffee.

It’s an overcast morning here in Lilburn Georgia.

It’s been a little over two weeks since the shooting and I’ve installed three of the five new cameras. They have replaced two of the four Reolink DVR cameras. I am on the fence whether to retire the Reolink cameras or repurpose them. (I still need one or two cameras with microphones.) One thing I am NOT going to do is put illuminators anywhere near the cameras to keep the bugs/spiders out of the camera view.

The new “Front Lawn” camera can see the color of the cars just fine.

I may need to rethink IR because of the poor resolution of that mode.

We went to Longhorn to get a Margaretta and a snack to settle our nerves a little. I think I’ve come up with an unusual way to be humble when things like this happen and we’re on the defense.

On our way to Longhorn, I had an unusual occurrence of a pedestrian and another car blocking my turn for the second time in my lifetime. The lanes in the parking lot are not wide enough to make a turn into them with a car facing me. The car blocking my turn can see the pedestrian, but the pedestrian is outside my left window where I would have to turn my head to see her. When I decided the only move for all three of us was to abort the turn and drive straight forward, I finally saw her at the curb on the left side of me. (Scary, if she would have walked forward, I wouldn’t see her until she almost reached the car.)

Still making albeit slow progress on my toes.

It poured after we got home making it a good time disconnect my HAM antenna’s and to take a nap.

We watched Hallmark Teagarden murder mysteries until we went to bed.

Saturday

Well, I spent a lot of money on 4 more IR illuminators, and I won’t need them.

As it turns out the cameras work much better using visible light. I turned on the white porch and driveway lights, they didn’t seem to make much of a difference. There seems to be enough illumination from the streetlights to get a good idea of the color and make of the car.

You can clearly see the color of the car.

here are the three new cameras, at night, daylight mode.

I’m up, my heart rate was a little high and my CPAP was getting low on water. I changed out my CPAP tank and hose this morning. We needed to wash more hoses since we’re out of clean ones. Then I needed to take a shower to clear off the bleach that splattered on me. (Almost got into my eyes today.)

I use the dehumidifier to dry out the inside of the hoses so they can rest in the closet.

Had to boil more eggs this morning for breakfast I am out of milk to have cereal. That and breakfast sausages make a great meal.

Painless way to make hard boiled eggs.

I realized yesterday that I was not putting any medicine on the ends or the sides of my toenails. I can feel the medicine on my feet after about 30 minutes.

The center of the nail is doing much better… Fungus is tough!

Mom’s hands are still getting red during the day, it’s not the hand soap… (We stopped using the Wally World refill to see if that was the cause.)

We still don’t know why her hands get red and itchy during the day.

We did figure out how she’s getting bit at night, mosquitoes are following me in through the door when I was working on the cameras…
Oops, Nap Time!

She woke me to help with the rice and steaming the veggies. The rice cooker is hands off about like the egg cooker. Rinse the rice and push one button. The veggies are almost as simple in the Insta-Pot, fill and push the steam button.

Took a good long nap.

Sunday

We both got up around 7:30 and meandered around the house while we ate breakfast. I checked into the HAM radio net while I was checking the weather. She was making egg salad for our lunch we’re having at a friend’s house. Church went ok, the speaker we were using gave out during the service. It sounded horrible, but there wasn’t anything I could do in short order.

We took a good LONG nap after we got home. I gave some thought to having a camera in the driveway. The trashcan camera worked ok, but i didn’t want someone to walk up and take it. The old cameras I am removing from the home are disposable. They are also a little smaller and harder to see.

Here’s a picture from the sidewalk, you can see the wire but not the camera.

Here is a picture at the end of the driveway, again unless you were looking for it…

This is the daylight view from the camera. (Old Camera)

Nighttime is not very good even with IR lighting, the test is a bust… Boo

We didn’t get much accomplished this evening, didn’t even watch Hallmark. Headed to bed.

Monday

Up at 7:30 and we’re eating breakfast and drinking Dominican coffee.

While I was working on the new camera a ran across a recording that showed the car shooting in front of our house at our next door neighbors house (Steve and Christy Parham used to live there.) This is the first recording I’ve ever gotten of the flash of a gun being fired. Last Wednesday I thought the gun was fired at the big blue house on top of the hill. Our neighbors (Who were renting) just moved into AJ’s house just down Jackson’s Mill on the right. (So the house was empty.)

Called Gwinnett County Police non-emergency number to have them pick up the 10 or so shells on the street in front of our house. I called 911 last Wednesday when the shooting happened at 1AM in the morning. (I never saw them) I found the casings on the street today after watching the following video.

I need to get rid of this Digital Video Recorder, it is a royal pain to get these recordings off of it! It’s appalling that the DVR firmware is not updated and then all of the applications that used to work now fail miserably. (Of course they want us to purchase a newer DVR!) I did buy three new cameras like the ones I had in Vegas (But Outdoor type) that don’t depend on having a Digital Video Recorder.

I used a tablet to download the video from the DVR, a PC is now incompatible with it.

My sugar levels are better without snacking and drinking water. It’s very hard not to drink coke and nibble on snacks while watching TV with the wife. I bought my first bottle of Whiskey in almost two months. It’s probably been twice that since I’ve tasted Jack Daniels in anything. I’ve settled in on Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey when I am out and Evan Williams when I am home.

We had a really good day today. I was not much help having spent 5 emotional hours getting the video uploaded to Gwinnett County. (Which is kinda why I bought the Whiskey today.) Boy, one sip went right to my head tonight.

Well, we’re off to bed…

Tuesday

Slept reasonably well, we’re both up and grocery shopping is the first order of the day. Wife has a Zoom meeting at 11AM so that pushes groceries a little earlier than usual. I need to check the roof this morning for bullet holes, I could not see any from the front lawn though. This requires more effort to capture a fast moving car in the dead of night. I’ve ordered better cameras and I’ve purchased night illuminators to reduce the shutter time. (Moving cars.) Current thought is to install three additional cameras on the front of the home with overlapping coverage. With the attic getting to 120 degrees during the day I’ll have a plan and collect all the necessary items the day before. The attic is down to 70’s in the morning, but we’re too busy today to start anything. I did order my THIRD new camera yesterday, the only problem with the new cameras is that they have no audio.

We did our Grocery shopping and I went over to the neighbor’s house like ours. The Vietnamese family really let the place run down. There were roach trails everywhere, the owner had to remove the countertop to clean up the mess. (It looked like German roaches too!) We then went to Longhorn’s for lunch paid for by you! Thanks so much, we had a really good time.

Took a good nap and then we found out that the dairy was not taken out of the insulated bag before we went to Longhorn’s. The bag was placed alongside the couch when she brought it in from the car and I never saw it. The milk reached 50 degrees along with the breakfast sausages. The milk should be fine, but it won’t last as long now that it got that warm. We discussed the process of bringing in the groceries. In the end we decided that it was really important that the blue dairy bag be kept in the open and emptied right after the green meat bag.

The van rear gate pull down motor started working yesterday. It stopped working after I exercised it to make sure everything was working. It seems likely that the button to close the gate has failed and remains closed. I didn’t see an easy way to get to that switch so I’ll have to check on YT for a video.

I worked on the IR light most of the evening yesterday and I tested it after dark tonight.

This is the way it looks with the IR light from the back yard camera.

The new IR light is in front of the Air Conditioner.

You can see the far lawn and the picture is significantly sharper. I am on the fence whether to replace the IR circuit board in the light fixture to improve the illumination. There is a bird’s nest right where I want to put the light. (I need to check it for eggs.)

I look like a ghost, don’t I?

Wednesday Juneteeth

Slept reasonably well. we’re both up and drinking our coffee. She woke up on the other side of the bed and is a little depressed this morning. That happens when we have difficult discussions the day before.

Paul is even on his radio this morning. It’s been weeks since I’ve heard him on WW.

Received my 2nd camera, I loaded the current firmware on it. I don’t have the Micro SD cards to be able to deploy it yet. I need to take one outside in the dark and see how it preforms before mounting them. (Although I should have done that before buying three of them.)

We took a short nap and she’s making Pasta Fagioli for dinner while I get organized. As usual she put the Corelle cereal bowls on the table to eat with.

I have always requested that we use heavy Pyrex glass bowls instead so that they can reduce the super-hot dinner to edible temperatures. She’s almost always forgotten, so I put them out for myself again today. (And then she changed out her bowl as well.)

We have midweek service tonight 1 Cor 1-17 was our reading assignment. We’ll eat dinner at the Mueller’s and then attend the Zoom service tonight at 19:30.

Trying to improve the capture of the cars in the street at night. There are a lot of challenges. Stray light at night blurs the camera’s view as shown below.

The IR camera is much clearer without the yard lantern on.

Thursday

Slept horribly last night, I had an uncomfortable torso that just made it difficult to sleep. I put my car at the end of the driveway and turned on the dashcam hoping to be able to see the license plate on passing cars. Not readable at all.

The picture of the vehicle is a little better?

I don’t think I need to put the car at the end of the driveway again.

Another complicated day, we had to throw away some salmon this morning. We have to embrace that things like this are just MORE DIFFICULT because we’re older.

I’ve gotten really behind on things I have to do, the table is a mess. I have received two cameras of three and I am waiting on the 2nd 96 LED IR illuminator to light up the front yard. I do have a six LED and a Laser IR illuminator that I may also use.

I did renew my tag for the van, no ad valorem on it. Just 20 dollars.

Her Facebook account got one of those “You Have A Virus pages” a while back. It came to her as a “Sponsored” FB message like the one below and that opened “You have a VIRUS call Microsoft at this bogus phone #”

I fell for it too, clicking on these “Sponsored” messages are extremely risky. I also got one of those splash pages. Her FB was even worse because they added “Live …” onto her “feed” to follow. (IT WAS REALLY SICK STUFF!) I couldn’t find anything helpful online; it was sheer luck I looked at the following section on FB.

After I stopped following the two links, the content stopped showing up in her feed. Except for two of them that showed up today. (They were by far worse than yesterday!!!) However, after closing the feed and checking the FB account again today it seems all is well.

The two complicated meal days are Sunday (Church) and Tuesday (Grocery day). There’s not enough time to cook a casserole on Sunday. We could possibly do it on Tuesdays, but that’s usually when we’ve chosen to go out.

Today I realized that this has to be done on Thursdays. The tall pole in the tent is that all the meat in the refrigerator is now 3 days old. (We went out and had a canned dinner for two days that doesn’t spoil.) Chicken and Pork are hard to tell if they’ve spoiled and ground beef will spoil rapidly. (Just leaving them in the fridge for three days makes all this the more necessary.)

If we start with the limited preparation time on Sunday, it’s the most desirable day to eat out. (Even though we may have to compete with crowds.) The second most desirable day is when she has a 1 hour Zoom once a month on Tuesdays. Eating left-overs on Sunday is also desirable, but that meal would have to be prepared on Friday. (That would be a good plan for her meeting days to have leftovers on Sunday prior.)

Friday

The passenger that was shooting had it over his head on the roof of the car. It is very likely that the gun rose up from the recoil quite a bit (He wouldn’t have noticed.) I plotted where these 13 or so rounds traveled. Keep in mind, Dickens Rd is about 30 feet higher than Burns Rd.

It is very likely they ended up in the trees.

I put one of the new cameras on a table in the front lawn so see how well it performs. The only drawback is that they have no microphone, and the police like to hear the shots being fired.

This is a copy of the full resolution frame and a fast moving car. An improvement.

I have a third camera arriving Monday and a second illuminator arriving on Saturday. A third illuminator will arrive sometime in July to replace the illuminator on the side of the house. (About half of the LEDs died from being overdriven.)

I cut the power to the LEDs in half to prevent them from dying, I also realized that the “Starlight” cameras don’t need 10W of Infrared light. I removed the infrared illuminator for the driveway. (The streetlight is sufficient.)

Back to bed

Checked into WW net on my radio this morning, I don’t know if Uncle Paul was on. She’s at the gym, but she forgot her M+M’s… If she had read her procedure book she would not have forgotten them. It’s almost where I need to read her procedure book as a follow up to help her out. (Boo)

3 Hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast this morning.

We took Silver Ford Focus to get an oil change today after eating Chicken for lunch and don’t forget our nap.

Camera mounted on chimney can see the entire street in front of the house.

It only took me ALL day to get it up and running. I received my third camera today. This is WITH the IR Illuminators that will help to see the car that’s shooting at us.

This is the view from the chimney camera.

Headed to bed, it’s been a long day.

Saturday (HAM Field Day)

It took several hours before I understood what the settings were supposed to be in the software to participate in Field Day. Most of the documentation has to do with the field day sites. (I just wanted to answer a few of their calls.)

Finished the install of a 4K camera on my chimney. This camera lets me see the entire street in one camera.

There’s a LOT of detail in the image with this camera on the roof.

Coffee, boiled eggs, breakfast sausages and coffee to get me going today.

I installed the one IR Illuminator that I have, another one arrives next Saturday.
I am beginning to wonder if I should have gotten black ones.

Do you see the camera?

How about now?

A bird made a nest in the wires on one of my cameras, there are two chicks in it.

Pork chops for lunch today with canned veggies, supper was cereal with raisins. We watched a couple Hallmark movies then I started working on the IR lights while it was dark. I found out that the IR light on the west side of the building is a really cheap one. I bought a better one and knocked down the power to increase the life. I should get another Illuminator next Saturday, and one more Illuminator in July.

Sunday

The new camera seems to be working really well, I think it’s a little over 100′ from the roadway.

I’m up and sipp’n my coffee while trying to figure out the larger plan for these cameras. The Reolink DVR is not compatible with the Amcrest cameras, but that’s ok since I really dislike this DVR anyway.

Time for a shower and get dressed for church. We had Chinese food for lunch with some friends then home for a BIG nap.

I need to mow the back yard. Do I feel like getting out in this heat…. No!

Watched Hallmark while we ate our evening soup and crackers. Mounted another IR light and now we’re headed to bed.

I got a late night idea, TIRECAM!

I can set the camera on top of the tire and it’s in plain view. I doubt anyone would notice unless they are walking down the sidewalk and happened to see it. It doesn’t have to be there during the day either, all of the shootings were after midnight.

Monday

Slept horribly and a thunderstorm at 2AM didn’t help any. I took a bath at 4 and that seemed to help, I finally nodded off shortly after. Good signals on the radios this morning, I didn’t join in cuz I am just tuckered out. The garage DHT that measures temp+humidity went offline during the storm this morning. Not exactly sure why that happened, the router IS on a UPS. It’s 82 degrees and 63% humidity after I reset it, that’s a tad warm and moist.

I turn off the attic fans to keep the attic as dry as possible at dusk every night.

Had hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. Need to organize my day a little better, first thing is putting medicine on my toes.

Geez, it takes a LONG time to get this under control. It looks like I need to increase the amount of medicine I put on my right toe.

Lawn is mowed 🙂

Dinner was a pork tenderloin and mixed vegetables. We managed not to over cook it this time! We drove to Public Storage to empty the van not realizing that we only had one furniture dolly. We delivered what we could and headed home.

While I cooled off in front of a fan, I Read ACTS 24-28 to prepare for our midweek service on Wednesday. Wrote a letter to Josephine with larger stories, she’s 19. Ate a bowl of soup and watched Hallmark Mystery 101 movies until bedtime. Soaked my feet tonight before bed in the hopes of relieving my feet pain symptoms.

Tuesday

Put an electric throw under the blanket and I slept pretty good last night. Apparently when I lay down and my BP is low my feet are lacking in circulation. That’s like the #1 symptom of diabetes too, more aggressive control of my diet is needed.

I did check into WW this morning and I made a few contacts on my radio in the wee hours of the morning.

We got groceries this morning and went to Longhorn on Web Gin Road for lunch after we figured out there wasn’t enough time to make Lunch. We took a good long nap after we got home and watched Hallmark while we ate dinner. We spent a good while discussing our communication this evening. I really didn’t get much on my To Do list accomplished today.

Wednesday

There was another shooting on Burns Road just west of us at 1:04 this morning. I walked the street and didn’t see any shell casings on the street. That makes two shootings this year that happened outside of my camera’s sight. I have a central Digital Video Recorder which is just NOT a good way of running high resolution cameras. I’ve ordered a new 4K camera, that will record to its internal memory card to relieve the network congestion of all the UDP traffic. My network is fairly well segmented, but with four cameras it seems to struggle with all the traffic on that one segment. But there’s not much I can do with these shootings happening late at night. There is so little light that the camera captures a really fuzzy picture. Like last time, the car drove over the hill from the west and fired about 10 shots prior to reaching my cameras.

Pork Tenderloin for lunch with sweet potatoes and previously frozen mixed vegetables. Updated the two Raspi’s that are not Home assistant.

Changing my power supplies for my Raspi’s.

This setup supplies 4Amps and uses a 18AWG USB-C power cable to lower the losses. (Stole the USB-C connector off of a Raspi 4 power supply.) I can feed it with 24 volts which is all over the homestead. 12V is also in a lot of places, but 15W would be just under 2 amps and the Insulation Displacement Connectors get warm at 2Amps. I placed them on both of my Home Assistant installs, I also ordered a couple more DC converters. We washed several of the Wife’s masks taking pictures of the steps.

We took a 2nd nap and washed four of the Wife’s masks.

We had Chick Fillet Salads for dinner before Wednesday’s Zoom church service. We got home around 9PM and watched Hallmark for a little bit before heading to bed.

Thursday

I’m struggling with three villians that are keeping me from a good night’s sleep. My eyes are a key since they are providing the “Sticky” mucus to my throat. The position of my head while I am sleeping is also key to a good night’s sleep. My feet have become a distraction in the early hours of getting into bed as well.

According to “My Air” my events per hour are looking pretty good, but that’s not the whole story.

My O2 levels fall like a rock at night when I am reading the news?

Still on my morning routine, I downloaded the data from my O2 sensor after checking in with the guys on my HAM radio.

No boiled eggs in fridge, so cereal with some added raisins for flavor. The $5 (24 Oz family size) box from Wally World holds about 8 bowls of cereal. The same box is $6 at Kroger if you can find it. Kroger typically had the 16 Oz box on their shelf for about $2.50 today. I think that’s cheaper than the family box. There are three sized boxes, regular, Family and Giant!

“Brands are obfuscating price hikes by changing the amount you get for your dollar – improving profit margins and confusing consumers. Big food manufacturers are downsizing products without downsizing prices in a practice known as “shrinkflation” that irritates shoppers and makes pricing comparisons in a cost-of-living crisis all the more difficult. The cost of bran flakes has gone up 82% since 2019.

After the chief executive of Kellogg’s suggested that financially-strained families could cope by eating “cereal for dinner”, researchers at Deakin University investigated whether the US food giant had also been shrinking its products in Australia, reducing value for money. Researchers at the university’s Institute for Health Transformation found that seven Kellogg’s cereal boxes had shrunk since 2019.” Nick Evershed , Jonathan Barrett and Andy Ball, Mon 25 Mar 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/  how-shrinkflation-is-impacting-your-cereal

We started getting a notification from Coast Dental that says “A payment is due. You have an outstanding balance with Coast Dental Lilburn. Please send your $18.60 payment now. If you recently made a payment, please disregard, as payments take a few days to process.” We drove there and the person at the counter said we didn’t owe anything, the balance needed to be “Written Off”. There was another change on our billing and the payment was changed to $37.60 and I didn’t notice. They don’t send any kind of documentation on what the payment is for…

I drove to the Lilburn police station to ask them about all the shootings that are becoming more frequent. 6Months, 6 weeks between the last three where they emptied a semi-automatic pistol into the big blue house on the hill. (>10 rounds) In the end they told me I had to call dispatch and have an officer come to the house. (There was no one at the Lilburn Police station.)

We watched Hallmark until bedtime. I had a little bit of an issue with reflux, I totally burped a melted popsicle into my mouth tonight. I grabbed a real coke and ate some Ritz crackers to settle my stomach. Diet coke can throw off my digestive system sometimes. I do need to drink more water.

Thursday 13 June

I’m struggling with three villians that are keeping me from a good night’s sleep. My eyes are a key since they are providing the “Sticky” mucus to my throat. The position of my head while I am sleeping is also key to a good night’s sleep. My feet have also become a distraction in the early hours of getting into bed as well.

According to “My Air” my events per hour are looking pretty good, but that’s not the whole story.

We’ve still not cleared the clutter from our living room from our Vegas trips and we’ve been home two years.

Uncle Paul fell off of a ladder this week and severely hurt his arm.

My uncle has to have surgery on his arm to repair about 7 breaks, that’s planned for Saturday. Our finances are we’re about 2k under water with CC debt which can be paid off by July unless we have a major payment to the IRS for Nevada Estate. (Which is why we’re carrying any CC debt at all.) We were avoiding traveling until we’re above water.

We had beef stroganoff for dinner and as usual there’s drama about the vegetables not being planned in advance. We’ll need to make a trip to Coast Dental and to Braces now to clear up some billing issues. (Coast Dental has starting billing us for amounts we’re not responsible to pay.) The van is still full of equipment from the outside service, and I need to get all of it out of the heat. The van needs emissions done, I’ll try and get that accomplished after emptying it.

I drove to the Lilburn police station to ask them about all the shootings that are becoming more frequent. 6Months, 6 weeks between the last three where they emptied a semi-automatic pistol into the big blue house on the hill. (>10 rounds) In the end they told me I had to call dispatch and have an officer come to the house. (There was no one at the Lilburn Police station.)

We watched Hallmark until bedtime. I had a little bit of an issue with reflux, I totally burped a melted popsicle into my mouth tonight. I grabbed a real coke and ate some Ritz crackers to settle my stomach. Diet coke can throw off my digestive system sometimes. I do need to drink more water.

Friday 14 June

I woke up last night with a stark with and vomit in my throat. I cleared my throat and went into the shower for a little bit to help my lungs clear any debris that may have gotten in there. I ended up with dry heaves for about 10 minutes. For some reason an orange popsicle I ate while we were watching Hallmark didn’t sit well with my stomach. I sipped on a regular coke and slept in our lounge chairs until this morning. I woke up a little after 8AM feeling a lot better, my torso is still a little distended like I’m constipated.

Mom had accomplished most of her routine before I got up.

She packed up and left for the gym on time at 9AM this morning, I had to help with the dashcam. (We take it off the windshield on these hot sunny days.)

I grabbed a cup of coffee while I checked in with the guys on my HAM radio. The weather here is going to be in the 90’s today. My solar panels and attic vents are going to get a good workout today. Nancy in Florida is going to get a significant amount of rain this morning, the oceans are VERY warm. I keep an eye on her weather since I am closer than Marie is. Our power bill jumped up a little to $166, I am not sure if it is because the rates changed or we’re using more electricity. We have been pulling the house down to 72 degrees for most of last month. The overnight thermostat is now set to 73, we’ll have to wait a bit and see what change that makes.

I’ve not heard from Uncle Paul yet this morning, we are keeping next week open for him.

Mom and I are not really on Facebook, we keep getting those fake “You Have a Virus” pages from the FB suggested conversations.

Talked to my uncle, he’s got next week covered with his friends to help Angelica drive to Chicago and provide some assistance in his home. Surgery is still set for tomorrow.

We’re rewatching the Hallmark Teagarden mysteries, we’ve seen the first two tonight.

Saturday 15 June

I managed to get a pretty good night’s sleep even though I woke up several times.

I think I’ll work on clearing the kitchen table first and just work on my list today. I have a lot of things I should have done last week.

I did put medicine on my toes today.

Scratch my task list for today, we went to Longhorn since Dinner involved pork that was two days past its date. We came home and I slept for more than an hour, I was VERY tired. It’s also very hot outside to be running around in this heat if I don’t have to.

I received my new HIGH Resolution camera for all these shootings.

We cranked up Hallmark and are going to forgo eating our evening meal since lunch was huge. I put a timer on the dump load for the solar panels so that the power supplies are not running a 5W light bulb all night long. The light bulb is to simulate a battery being charged.

Paul sent a text, he’s home from the hospital. *(I don’t know his status)

Sunday, Father’s Day

A really old John Wayne movie the Hell Fighters is on Amazon Prime.

I am pretty sure that my body is losing control of my sugar levels. Now I need to find a way to actually monitor it and to reduce it when needed. Google Foo recommends exercise to reduce the levels if they are high.

I am going to take a walk in the evening tonight, drink only water, eat meals with no snacks and see how the above list changes tonight. We see our doctor in two weeks.

08:00, Talked to the guys on my HAM radio. (It was hard to hear them this morning.)

I got my new camera on my network and upgraded the firmware on it.

I ordered a 2nd camera from Ebay that was $10 cheaper than the camera I bought on Amazon. These cameras are reasonably priced and have plenty of features. The current though is to put the camera on my Chimney facing west.

Wife made eggs for me this morning, I also have breakfast sausages to go with it.

I cook the sausages in a coffee cup to keep the mess down.

Church service went well, I gave away a roll of my dad’s dollar coins to the fathers I met. The church gave away pens to them too. It’s HOT outside.

You can see the change when I stop pushing air into the attic from the hot roof.

We took a nap and then had small pork chops called ribs for some reason. Mom browned them yesterday because they were cook or freeze by Friday. I found out later that she used a surface thermometer (Temp Gun) instead of a meat thermometer that you stick into the meat.

It took some time before we arrived at what steaming actually was. I went on Amazon and ordered steamer trays that sit inside pans. Our steamer tray is missing its three feet that is shown below.

Apparently, the legs fell off long ago and no one noticed.

If you want to watch the service today it’s at COCG Live | Sunday Service | JUNE 16, 2024 – YouTube I handed out dollar coins to the fathers at church today.

Drinking water after dinner, the soles of my feet are still puffy. I should get out and walk up the block to burn off some of the calories I ate at lunch. The only other two symptoms are I am a little tired and thirsty.

The equipment from the Sunday service is still in the van and today is exceptionally hot. I measured the amplifiers and they are about 122 degrees. (Need to get them outta there.) Our dashcams are also getting awfully warm. I put them in the cup holders only to find out that the sun reached them through the window. Best idea I have at the moment is to put them under the seat. The batteries in the garage are 93 degrees and even the floor is 81.

Mom is running through her tasks in her procedure book and starting a grocery list for Tuesday.

Monday

I slept a little better last night, I did get a bit of exercise yesterday. Woke about 8AM and checked in onto Waterway Net. Had my morning coffee and read some news before helping her get ready for the Gym. I tried watching a couple movies while I wired up some power supplies, but I am waay too distracted.

The idea above is to have ONE 18V36W Wall Wart provide power to 6 USB devices.

The church website is a bit of a mess, I spent some time figuring out how to add sermons to the site. (And who’s maintaining it.)

The lift gate on the van is partially operational. It does not close with the button. You have to manually close it hard so that it’s latched. I thought it worked when I loaded up the equipment for yesterday’s service. It didn’t close properly when I left the storage and I had to pull over and hard close it. It also does not “Pull Down” the last inch to make sure it’s locked. There are no codes stored in the computer to reset. Google Foo says it has to relearn the lift gate. (Boo!)

My toenails are improving little by little, sure is hard to tell the difference.

Watched another Hallmark Crime movie before heading to bed. Watched another Hallmark movie Hailey Dean Mysteries “Dating is Murder”

Tuesday

I was in pain last night, so I took a hot bath around midnight. I slept pretty soundly on the lounge chairs until the Wife got up this morning at 06:00. I moved to the bedroom and slept until 09:00, another three hours! My tinnitus is pretty loud this morning and I just remembered I didn’t put my O2 sensor back on when I went to bed. (Low Oxygen makes it worse.)

Went to Wally World, it’s Grocery Day again. We use Sterlite Tubs and insulated bags we bought on Amazon. We put one tub in the cart and one tub under the cart when we arrive. We fill the tub in the cart and the insulated bags while we shop. At the checkout we put the 2nd tub on the carousel and let the cashier load it directly. We spend roughly $250/week even at Wally World, that’s 1K/Month for two people that eat out twice a week.

Sent the students some cash for their trip home.

We took a nap and had a Mexican casserole for dinner afterwords. We watched Hallmark most of the afternoon/evening before retiring to bed. Watched another Hallmark movie Hailey Dean Mysteries “A marriage made for murder”

Wednesday

Slept ok, took a long time before I really slept deeply. Woke about 8 this morning and checked in to the WW net on my HAM radio. Read some news and did a bit of reflection of our lives after seeing two students totally exhausted from having fun that day. I can’t say that I was aware of the value of my life when I was just out of HS.

Not much changed in the news since yesterday and the weather looks about the same. Uncomfortably warm and humid with occasional thunderstorms.

Cleaned the dust from the bedbug traps under the bedposts today.

The timer on the garage dehumidifier power got corrupted and had to be reset. I checked the dehumidifier pump. The bucket was empty, so that wasn’t the cause.

Had mexican for lunch and watched “Starliner” launch. Time for a Nap!

Checked on the garage, the dehumidifier is doing a good job.

Thursday

Up about 7:45 and cranked up the radio, the phone is silent. Nothing new since last night. There is a space X launch https://youtu.be/2G-L0u_L0qU?t=1997 Starship #4. They are doing rapid engineering using the data from each failed launch to plan for the next one.

We got a notice from USPS that there was a letter from the IRS, it was a delayed response message concerning their 2018 tax return.

I mistakenly programmed the dehumidifier to run at 12 noon, oops!

Had turkey chili for lunch and we both took a nap afterword. Watched another Hallmark movie Hailey Dean Mysteries “Will to Kill”

Friday

Didn’t sleep worth a hoot last night, have to imagine eating potato chips had something to do with it. I got my coffee with me given by my Wife of many years. I listened in on the GARS drive net in the morning, but I am too emotional to join them.

The garage dehumidifier came on as programmed at 10PM. I was a little surprised the humidity jumped up to 70% almost immediately after I cut it off at 6PM yesterday. The humidifier didn’t run for a couple weeks, and it seems that there’s a lot of left over moisture in the garage.

My power usage jumped up a little with the dehumidifier in the garage running almost continuously yesterday.

My solar powered vent fans are working pretty well to keep the attic cool.

Making a batch of eggs for breakfast.

We’ve lost the 2nd set of keys for the van, I have no idea when the last time is I saw them either.

770-709-5838 has called the wife’s phone 2x a day for the past week. I finally answered the phone today and they simply hung up on me!

Watched two Hallmark Mystery 101 movies before heading to bed.

Logged onto FB and posted an article about these fraudulent “Power Savers” that a power company put together. They are prolific on Amazon with all kinds of snake oil benefits. I also made two reports on Amazon about ones that claim lightning protection but have no ground pin!

Saturday

Logged into FB and posted a picture of the newspaper when we visited NZ. I also checked on all the posts about power savers that I commented on. No responses found. Updated my two Raspi’s that are used as headless terminals.

The garage humidity has been removed and the temperature is looking better. The batteries in the garage need to be kept below 80 degrees to maximize their life. There is a timer that “Should” only provide power during the night to limit the amount of daytime heating. As you can see, I ran it for about 12 hours to pull the humidity out and it heated the garage pretty good on the 6th. I messed up the programming on the 7th and it ran that afternoon. I finally got it right on the 8th.

Watched Hallmark Mystery101 and mowed the back yard after it cooled down a bit and before it got dark at 9PM.

We watched Music Videos from Youtube on the 55″ screen most of the evening. It felt like the evenings we watched “Night Tracks” on TV.

Sunday

Up in time for the guys at 8AM and I checked into the WW net.

I can’t say I understand why the dehumidifier in the garage ran every 10 minutes all night long. It didn’t make any headway towards lowering the humidity in 10 hours run time and the garage is a small 10×10 space. The only standing water is IN the bucket at the bottom of the dehumidifier, it would be wild if that is the source of the humidity.

I got an award for all the work I’ve done with the church.

Really nice, AND HEAVY trophy.

We went to Longhorn after church to celebrate with our friends and they messed up my steak. (The manager wasn’t happy because I told them I wasn’t coming back.)

Watched a movie on the Hallmark Channel before bed, mystery 101 something.