Month: July 2024

Monday

We’re up intermittently slept which has been usual since all the shootings during the early morning hours. It’s been 10 days since the last shooting so we’re about due for another one. The propagation sounds about normal on my HF radio. We got a couple of very sweet letters from our sponsored children in the Philippines. The three families are doing pretty well with our support. Life has been tough for a lot of them since COVID devastated their livelihoods. Inflation has also taken a toll on their ability to buy food for their families. It costs about $1.33/day/person for food at the poverty level which is MUCH cheaper than we’re paying at Wally World. They routinely have tropical weather providing heavy rain that floods their streets and destroys their crops.

We spent the latter part of the morning discussing her appointment with Emory next Tuesday. We could not agree on the phone number she dialed even though her phone had a record of the phone call.

The battery in the Blue Focus was down to 12V. I hooked it back up to the four small solar panels on the fence to give it a bit of a recharge. We’re all ready to get groceries tomorrow morning.

Tuesday (Grocery Day)

It’s overcast and about 71 degrees, heavy storms tonight. Radio is warmed up listening for Uncle Paul to chime in. We went to Wally World at 9:30 to get groceries, that went pretty fast as our grocery list has gotten smaller. The number of items has been greatly reduced by simplifying our meals down to Meat and Potatoes. We were home and ready to dart out to the bank at 10:20. We were well on our way to Longhorn by 10:30. We arrived 14 minutes early and sat in our car until they opened. Lunch was terrific, Hanna was very entertaining. They completely ran out of CO2 yesterday, so no soft drinks. I had to tell the manager to put a sign on the door! (It’s unfair that we are seated and then find out the most ordered drinks are unavailable.) We were VERY tired on our way home and we didn’t get back up from our nap until after 3:30. We filled out the online forms for her appointment next week and then watched some Hallmark films. She normally doesn’t like to watch movies again, but now she can’t remember watching them, so we enjoy watching them for the 2nd or third time. A HUGE storm blew over us about 8:30, the wind was truly remarkable. It didn’t amount to much rain or lightning, but boy you’d thought there was a tornado with all the wind.

Checked on the Focus battery, it was 12.4V which is more than 80% charged using the solar panels on the fence. I moved the modified IR circuit board from the black to the white casing to be used on my front lawn.

I’ll modify this circuit board sometime this week to cut the output power which significantly lengthens the life of the IR LEDs.

Slept reasonably well.

Wednesday

Got out of bed about 8AM and checked in with Waterway while sipping coffee. I had two hard boiled eggs for breakfast and part of a ham steak. The big project this morning is to make a dry run to Emory Brain Center. I asked her to bring the page I printed out that had the appointment and the address of the doctor we’re going to see next week. After we were both in the car, I realized that she had the green referral sheet from the doctor. (No address on it.) We went back into the house looking for the sheet. I searched all the rooms and when I resorted to looking in her purse I found it I found it in a folder UNDER her purse. (She had actually set her purse back onto the manilla folder with the page in it without realizing that’s what we were frantically looking for.) The trip to Emory was a bit long only because GMaps was routing us through the back roads back to I-85. We ended up on Briar-Cliff road and it was only two turns to get to the building we needed. We verified the check-in desk and decided to go to Longhorn for lunch because it had gotten so late.

Lunch went well, they got their shipment of CO2 and had soft drinks this morning. We were rather stuffed when we headed home for a nap. We tossed the tenderloin we were going to eat in the freezer to eat later. We got off a little early to our midweek church service to pick up three Cobb Salads at Zaxby’s. Church went well and we tuned in Hallmark when we got back home until we got sleepy.

Thursday

Up sipping coffee and listening to my HF radio this morning. She made a second pot of coffee since I drank most of the coffee in the thermos. Eggs and breakfast sausage again today with a glass of Orange Juice. I did manage to modify the InfraRed Illuminator to cut its power in half like I’ve done to all the others. (Half is Plenty with Starlight Cameras)

My head is getting cloudy, I need a nap to clear my head and get organized. We tossed the frozen turkey because the package was damaged and leaking. (We have no idea if bacteria got into the package.) I wanted to set an alarm for the cars coming out of Silvercreek. But the area is too small from the house cameras.

Had a good long nap but my body was hurting all over. My skin just didn’t feel very good and that makes me irritable. I ended up taking a bath and another nap before I felt better.

One thing we learned doing the Pahrump estate was to put all paperwork to be discarded into a box, not the garbage can. That way if we’re needing something we may have accidently discarded, we can still get to it. Eventually, (usually months later) we take our time and pick through the box to make sure everything is actually trash. (Most times there is something in that box that is either PII to be shredded or it’s something we simply should not have discarded.)

We watched Hallmark while I sorted through our discard box and then headed to bed about 10PM.

I need to replace the seal under the garage door, the dehumidifier can’t keep up.

Friday

Woke up a little early so I got onto 20M FT8 for a little while. I heard uncle Paul on the radio this morning! It was a blast, he said “Hello Mark” during his check-in, and I said “Hello Paul” LOL.

My Electric usage $160 doesn’t seem to change much with the outside temperature.

She’s off to the gym and I choked down three eggs and breakfast sausages. No letters from the sponsored children this morning. I need to buy a seal for my garage door today. Mom called, she knows about the Tropical Ridge headed her way. It shouldn’t get to be a bad hurricane unless it turns 180 in the Gulf back to Florida.

I steamed frozen vegetables and potatoes even though the potatoes had green skins. We store the potatoes on the floor in a cardboard box, she’s been opening the shades for much longer periods of time and they are going bad. We need to keep track of them and move them into a much darker area of the home. *Which is my cave.

When she got back from the gym she said she had some M+M’s on the way there. I mentioned that the M+M’s were for when she has the sour taste in her mouth. (Usually on her way back) She responded with she did have a sour taste on the way back. I waved off the conversation and she called me on it saying she wanted to hear what I had to say. I repeated that the M+M’s were for her sour taste which is low sugar. She repeated she didn’t eat them on the way back. Arg… We couldn’t agree on what we were talking about and now we’re at odds about these stupid M+M’s.

We went to THD and picked up the seal for the bottom of the garage door, but it was too hot to replace it tonight. We picked up two bottles of Margretta with alcohol and that made both of us happy. It was supposed to storm at 7PM, but that was a bust for the 2nd day in a row. Watched the original JAWS movie, it was very entertaining.

The tropical wave will become a tropical storm by tomorrow and run the west coast of Florida before turning East toward Savannah. It doesn’t sound like it will have much impact above Macon this weekend.

I had two 4oz glasses of Whiskey, so I am drinking plenty of water to flush my system tonight. No changes in Camera or lighting for the last couple days. The $800 Trane thermostat failed to wake up twice now, normally you touch the screen and it lights up. The thermostat is actually working and if you use a flashlight, you can barely see the screen. I turned off the screen saver so it will always be illuminated from now on.

Stock Market made a “Correction” on Friday

Saturday

I am up, a bit sleepy with sleep in my eyes this morning.

40M Band is horrible this morning

Mom is getting her first “Named” storm this weekend.

I just can’t get a good head of steam this morning, I laid down for a little while and felt much better. The seal under the garage door has been falling off the door for years, now it’s a problem because the dehumidifier can’t catch up. I also found out that the pully bearing is wore out and is about to fall off the bracket.

It still ran all night long keeping it at 60% and the humidity climbs up when it stops. That may change when the moisture gets pulled out of the garage contents. Funny story I saw a water bug (Big Roach) trying to get under the door for water, not any more buddy!

The wide piece is the new one, the rest is what was left of the old seal.

We had ham for dinner with veggies and leftover mashed potatoes. We took a good nap and then I took a bath to calm my skin. I worked on one of the sensors in the attic that is having issues for a little while until we sat down and watched Hallmark.

Sunday 307KWH/1228KWH

Tuned into the Waterway net while I checked on Tropical Storm that’s headed for mom. The storm is tracking further west than expected and gaining strength, she could get 50MPH winds by Monday. I checked into the net and stomped on someone else I couldn’t hear. I think I’ll cut my power back while announcing my call sign and then go back to full power when NCC calls on me. The propagation was much better today, and they will crank up the Hurricane Net by tomorrow.

Debby has GROWN considerably in the last two days.

We both took showers to get ready for church this morning. We’ve got about an hour before we have to leave. No letters from our sponsored children and the garage humidity seems to be better with the new door seal. (I should have replaced it long ago.) I staggered the interrogation of the four sensors from my cave in hopes of helping the struggling sensor. It seems likely that the issue is the long wire to that sensor. (It’s at the end of the cable.) Occasionally all three sensors will align and knock out each other’s readings, but that can’t be avoided.

We took the chicken legs out of the freezer Thursday or Friday, but we didn’t document when we did it. Nor did we put a post-it notes on the cupboard to enable us to plan meals. Yesterday she made Ham, but we really should have eaten the chicken yesterday and had ham today. (Sunday’s meals have to be simple and ham is a simple meal.) We’re also supposed to do an inventory EVERY day because we keep tossing food that has been around too long. She’s supposed to document things, but we’ve been totally unsuccessful on keeping up with it. For my part I’ll have to forgo the radio for a while and spend more time with her in the mornings.

We ended up going to Longhorn for lunch since there’s no time to figure out dinner. The clothes in the dryer were still damp after being “Air” dried, so we’ve set them to heated dry.

The Tropical Storm is gaining strength and mom is under it. My sister has sold the backup power system I had built for them. Now they have one solar generator that has 1/4th of the capacity of the golf cart batteries. We’ll have to see how this plays out. They have 600 watts of solar, but that’s only useful if the sun is shining. I have not heard what they did with the 5KW generator I gave mom.

Monday 81 Degrees

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night, I finally laid down about 3:30. My feet are being obnoxious and so is my bacterial infection. Sometime yesterday I had too many calories and not enough exercise. (Even though I went to storage and to church yesterday.) I did have fun on the radio last night, I talked to Hawaii and the West coast on my radio using only 2 Watts of electricity. (A flashlight’s worth.)

No eggs were ready, so I had to make them.

I tossed the eggs that our neighbor brought and left outside overnight. They were 75 degrees when I brought them in and outside on the porch for more than 12 hours.

I put them in a bowl of cold water to cool them.

I also cut up a couple of potatoes and I’ll start boiling them when she leaves the gym for home.

The potatoes got ready to be smashed a bit quicker than I had planned.

I put them in an insulated bowl for later.

Insta Pot is ready to steam the frozen vegetables, I don’t really know where we got that steamer insert. I turned it off after the water started boiling.

I finally put the groceries away that were in the middle of the living room. They’ve been there for two weeks.

We should not have purchased some things that we already had plenty of and now the pantry if overflowing.

She worked on her meals/grocery shopping list for a couple of hours.

I brought up why are was spending all this time on making a complicated meal. All we really need is a piece of meat, vegetable and some kind of starch. (Rice / Potato) We made a pork tenderloin on Friday that we ate on Saturday and today. We just added steamed veggies with a potato, and it was a great meal today. She bought this “Dump” meal recipe book and was all excited to use it today. The problem with us being seniors is that we don’t want to go back 30 years and use Campbell soups for a base and 5 other ingredients we don’t need. We ended up with she can test meals on Thursdays. All of the other days are complicated enough as it is with Gym and Church activities.

Tonight, she has two phone calls so we’re eating the last of the pork tenderloin as shredded pork on bread with a little BBQ sauce.

Tuesday

Coffee without sugar this morning, I have got to get serious about my sugar intake. My body is telling me that it is having trouble regulating my blood sugar levels. We had made plans yesterday to accommodate a Zoom meeting for the women at 11:30 by getting groceries earlier. We got up and were out the door by 8:30 on our way to Wally World. We had gotten so much extra over the last two trips that this one was pretty lightweight. We also greatly simplified our meals/shopping, so we didn’t need a lot of condiments. We were home with the groceries put away by 9:30 today!

I found out today there is an advertising Identifier on all Cell phones and it is used to invade our privacy. Originally the trackers used the permanent cellphone IMEI. Several years ago, they were forced to use a new “Ad identifier” that could be changed by the user. The ID on our Cell phones CAN be changed or deleted. How to Disable Ad ID Tracking on iOS and Android, and Why You Should Do It Now | Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)

Had a great meal at Longhorn, I brought a bottle of coke and a couple glasses. I compared it to the fountain coke they brought me without ice. (Tried not to dilute it.)

I still think theirs (Left) is lighter than the coke from the bottle. When I tried diluting it until they were the same color, I over did it. (It had an obvious taste difference even though I thought they were the same color.)

I asked her what the plan was for dinner tomorrow and she said some kind of steak that we did not buy this morning. We have a turkey breast and two packages of chicken in the freezer. We do have two ham steaks, chicken thighs and a package of ground beef in the fridge to make dinner with tomorrow. The decision is to make turkey black bean chili tomorrow, that’s a large meal that will last two days.

Wednesday

Woke up and coffee was waiting for me. Got onto the radio and checked the weather first thing this morning. We got into a long discussion about closing my cave door that took hours. It evolved into a wider discussion about respectful communication that evolved into another discussion about the Daytimer documentation. In the end it was decided that she document her actions on a plain legal pad, and I’ll move it into the Daytimer.

Two inspectors came from Gwinnett County came by. They parked in our neighbor’s driveway and walked the long way around to our front door. Our new doorbell went off any we just looked at each other like, “who’s at our door?” I gave them a run down on all the shootings that have happened on our street since September. They asked for the report numbers which I provided the ones that I have.

We had Turkey Chili for Lunch and we’re going to a friend’s house for dinner before we attend our midweek service. I didn’t get a link from the two inspectors, so I won’t have to upload any video to them. We watched the president’s address to the nation about him pulling out of the race for 2024. I didn’t find anything more about Kamala Harris. It’s a little unsettling about Kamala Harris, she could ride the wave of having a president that is a woman of color for the first time.

I erased the recordings on the DVR and set the DVR to record from Midnight to 6AM so that I am not unnecessarily recording people’s voices during the day. The camera with a microphone for the front yard is on the front porch. The microphone for the camera on the VAN camera has died, I am not sure where the opening for the microphone actually is.

Thursday

The coffee was made already, she poured a cup while I checked the weather and got onto my HAM radio net. I moved her work record items into the Daytimer and filled out a few things in her Action List. She’s headed to Kroger to get today’s lunch which she forgot to add to the grocery list on Tuesday. She also got some items we’ll need for the potato bar on Sunday for House Church. She took out the garbage can when she got home. Need to get some vittles down my neck, but there’s no eggs made in the fridge. Well, that’s an easy fix.

Effortless Egg cooker

Cleaned off the kitchen table, it is the first thing to get messy.

We took about a half hour nap then started dinner.

I started the rice in the Panda Rice maker and she’s working on the stove making our lunch. The sirloin steak was overcooked and tough as leather and there was no sauce, just the oil that it was cooked in. She loaded my plate with the oil from the frying pan over my bed of rice, ewe! I give her first try at a dump dinner as awful.

Time for another nap, eventually I’ll be able to sleep at night again…

Salad time, we have to be on our way to the Sr Home by 5:30 for Bingo.

Friday

Up and sipping my coffee while getting organized. She has a dental appt which is in the air since Dr. Glass called her a while ago and said they didn’t have a hygienist. I personally don’t think she actually has an appointment today. But 2PM is also problematic on a Gym day that she arrives home at 11:30 and takes a shower right after. That makes it 12 Noon before she can take a nap or start dinner. She wants to make chicken thighs, but the Stir Fry dinner she made yesterday would have been a much better fit. It’ll take 20 minutes to warm the oven and another 20-30 to cook the chicken thighs. It’s also about 30 minutes for either the potatoes or frozen veggies.

Finally got ahold of the phone service, she does NOT have a dental appointment today. That opens the door to have dinner a little late, but we really should NOT be cooking in the OVEN on Gym days.

Ended up going to Longhorn for Lunch and we saw JJ who was my server with the coke debacle. She seemed pretty upset at my review when we first got there. I told her that it had nothing to do with her performance and that seemed to soften her just a little. She offered that the regular Coke was the same and asked if I wanted a different product this time around. I opted to diet coke this time and that was fine. Dinner was perfect as always, I left her a pretty large tip on $60 meal.

We came home and took a pretty hearty nap afterwards. I worked on cleaning up the den alongside my chair for about four hours. (With all the projects trying to get the new cameras up and running it was a bit of a mess.) I have five piles of tubs with the piece parts of my home automation in my cave. It will be a couple days putting the loose pieces back into the proper tub.

Saturday

I took a quick nap until Uncle called me and brought me up to speed on his arm.

Well, it’s 10AM and no one of the five people I’ve sent messages to about the Women’s retreat has responded. Found out that I miss read the text message and we’re not going across town today. We had one of those campaigns this morning with her where it takes an hour to figure out how we got here with our meals. We ate the ground Turkey on Wednesday because we forgot to buy BBQ sauce on Tuesday at Wally World. The planned meal for Thursday was strip steak that we also forgot to purchase. She went to the store to buy the steak and the BBQ sauce on Thursday. She overcooked the steak and it was tough as leather and there was no gravy just the oil it was cooked in.

Friday was another disaster with the chicken thighs that were expiring on Friday but there’s no time to cook a dinner and make an oven meal on Gym days. WE REALLY SHOULD HAVE COOKED THEM ON FRIDAY. We had grandma’s chili today leaving the chicken thighs to sit one more day past it’s eat/freeze date. Even Grandma’s chili was missing a can of tomato soup, it wasn’t much of a chili without chili powder or tomato sauce.

What we’ve come up with is to put color-coded Post-it notes on the cupboard door with the meat due dates on it.

Spent most of the evening preparing for the church service tomorrow, it’s going to be a crowd. We blew out the speaker last month and the new speaker is optical or USB which can’t be run 40′ to the television. There’s a CW contest that’s taking up all of the 40M FT4 frequencies.

Time to get caught up on the news and head to bed.

Sunday 320KWH/1280KWH

Busy day today, we have to be on our way by 9:30 AM to arrive before 10AM. We had coffee and both of us took a shower before getting dressed. I packed the car with all the stuff we’ll need, and we left on time. The equipment worked great, but I was dripping in sweat after the service was over. We got back home, and I took a quick shower then a nap.

We had leftover turkey chili for supper and then debated for two hours about her possible appointment with Emory. In the end, the doctor gave her a sheet of paper with Emory contact information. (Nothing about an appointment is on the sheet.) I am assuming a follow-up appointment for the 6th of August was made with the doctor, which she remembers as THE appointment with Emory. (But we don’t have a time or a place, just a date.) I was shocked that we’ve gone this long without chasing this down. (And I cannot do it.)

I got another IR Illuminator today; I need to modify its power before mounting it.

Speaking about long drawn out productions, my parents tax return for 2018 is still not resolved. The issue is that it was during COVID19 and she didn’t get the return since she was in the hospital.

Monday

I am up sipping coffee and trying to get organized.

Melania has always been there for her husband, and do it with class I might add.

There are now six temp sensors in the attic to figure out the flow of the air.

What I really need to build is an anemometer that I can measure the air flowing past it, even better would be to know which direction the air is flowing. A typical fan motor has too much drag to measure a gentle flow of air.

Added the third Illuminator, I am trying to not have one source IR.
(There are five of them if you count the one on the bumper.)

I moved the West illuminator into the trees to provide more coverage.

Worked on the weeds/vines on my fence again today. I left the bush in the middle until the weed killer has a chance to prevent it from growing back.

Replaced the hard drive in the Reolink DVR, but it’s not compatible with the firmware as far as the S.M.A.R.T. feature. I kept the old hard drive and will seek to find a compatible replacement in the coming days. With four cameras that need the DVR I have to keep it around for a little while.

This is what happens when the attic fans fail to run. (136 Degrees)

The three fans made a significant change to the attic temperature.

This is what the normal temperatures look like.

Checked all the illuminators before heading to bed.

Tuesday

I am up and on my HF radio, the band propagation is better today than yesterday. Coffee is really tasty this morning. The temperature is only going to get up to 93 today. We went over the grocery list and headed to Wally World around 9AM.

I tried using three tubs again today, need to work on it.

Longhorn for lunch today, it was perfect. I had parmesan chicken and she had shrimp with a lunch strawberry salad. Someone paid for our drinks today!

We took an hour nap after we got home, and I started working on improving my attic monitoring. The heart of sensing the temperatures are these inexpensive digital temp sensors.

These are DHT22 temp sensors (Actually an AM2302 sensor with a pullup resistor.), they have a real problem with mass slowing down their response time. Inside the white AM2302 enclosure is a small circuit board with the sensor on the underside. I decided to try and attach foil (large surface area & Low Mass) to the enclosure to improve the response time. (So far, So good) I can fold the foil to improve the conductivity. I also don’t have a clue about the size of the foil.

Time to move the car into place for the evening.

Here’s the light that allows me to see into the intersection at night.

It does a good job with only 2W of light.

Wednesday

I decided to abandon the NODEMCU in the attic, it’s too remote to administer.

I am up with my cup of coffee, and I did manage to check-in with my HF guys this morning. Talked to my Uncle, he’s still recovering from seriously injuring his arm.

Bright sunny day today, probably need to mow the back yard.

It stormed before we went to church so there was no opportunity to mow the lawn. We went to house church at 5:30PM and didn’t get home until after 9PM. Van dropped off food for us, but we didn’t see the message she sent last night at 8PM. We often miss messages to her phone. She might be screening them and then forget them. (It happens a lot that we’re back tracking something and she had the answer on her phone.)

Thursday

I got up around 8:15AM and made my way to the radio about 8:30. I did manage to check-in on the waterway net this morning. She didn’t know the way to the hair stylist, so I showed her on Google Maps. (It’s right next to the emissions station we’ve used for 40 years.) She needed me to straighten the car in the driveway, so I did that before she left. She returned very quickly and said that the hair stylist wasn’t there? I grabbed a pair of pants, and we drive to the stylist together. As soon as I made the left onto Hillcrest, she acknowledged she went the wrong way. When I dropped her off, she said that she forgot her phone at home. I had to make two more trips, one to drop off her phone and the last one to pick her up. Sheesh, that was an hour and three round trips to the stylist.

Her hair does look nice though.

Meat inventory is also an issue this morning. We ate canned Salmon yesterday because she didn’t have enough BBQ sauce to make the chicken legs that expired yesterday. We didn’t discuss the chicken and she just made the salmon melts. Today I find out that the chicken expired yesterday; and she has to run to the store to buy the BBQ sauce. The key to all this is writing a schedule for tomorrow in the Daytimer. The schedule triggers performing an inventory of condiments for the meal with enough time to navigate alternatives if needed.

We went to Longhorn for lunch to settle our emotions. It was expensive, but I really needed to lower the temperature of our conversations. I couldn’t sleep flat having a full belly, so I slept in the Chase. I didn’t get much done for the next three hours. I had soup for supper and put the light on the Focus for tonight. I looked at the recordings and did find when they delivered the food last night. (The eggs were room temperature after being out all night.) I put them in the fridge until we decide what to do with them.

Friday

Back in the attic today. I am abandoning putting a NODEMCU in the attic, any maintenance requires access to the attic. The current plan is to put the temp sensors on long wires and run the wires into the home where there is easy access to the NODEMCU. I currently have two long wires with three temp sensors on each wire. One wire originates in the air handler closet and the other wire originates in my cave.

Last night I had another shooter, but it was really hard to tell where the arm was.

Yard does look pretty lit up huh?

Well, it’s 11:30 AM and I am bushed! I didn’t sleep well and then the shooting happened at 1AM. It took me another two hours to reformat the video to be uploaded to their website. I took a nap around 4AM until about 7AM and then had some coffee while we got ready for her to go to the gym. I took a shower and then read the news looking for what Biden was going to do. It appears that he’s dug in and believes that he’s the only one that can defeat Trump. I set the driveway camera to take a picture of every car that drives by the house today. (Some 900 of them ended up on the camera, there are a couple that just seem to drive by all day long?)

Looks very similar to the car that shot at the house this morning, and it looks like it has a sunroof? I saw this car up close later in the day, it’s a Toyota Camry. (The trim was still hanging out the back of the trunk and the windows were DARK!)

When she got home I realized that the time was getting crowded. It was almost 12 Noon and we’ve not started lunch. Worse than that, she has an orthodontic appointment at 1:15? When I asked her what the plan was, she said the pork tenderloin. That’s usually a baked dinner with potatoes and vegetables and she has less than an hour before she leaves! The only thing I can come up with was to go to Longhorn after he dental appointment. Also, I probably need to abandon my radio nets in the morning and get involved in her Daytimer documentation. We’ve talked extensively about filling out her schedule the night before so things like this doesn’t happen.

She headed for the Orthodontist appointment while I took another nap. We went to Longhorn for lunch after she got back.

In the evening when it was cooler I got the ladder out and walked the roof checking for holes. (I heard the bullet hit something this morning!) Back down for another nap around 4PM, I just didn’t sleep at all last night. Had I understood how much the audio was needed, I would have bought different cameras! (I wanted the best nighttime camera I could find.)

I moved the East VAN camera onto the shelves in the porch. I didn’t realize how important it was to have Audio & Video to reinforce when the shooting happened.

The Reolink DVR cannot be read from a Microsoft computer, it has to be an Android tablet running their software. That’s problematic because none of the wireless was really meant for high-speed data. There is a router in the middle of the house and one in my Cave that can be configured for a little better performance.

Saturday

It’s been a crazy day today. I was hoping to get organized and that didn’t happen. She came to me while I was eating my two eggs and breakfast sausages to move the car so she could go to the store. She returned pretty quickly and said that she didn’t need anything at the store after she looked at the recipe after she got there. I took a nap while she put the tenderloin in the crock pot since I am still not sleeping very well. When I woke up, I realized that it was 12:30 already. She mentioned in passing that she didn’t have anything for lunch. That kind of irritated me we hadn’t discussed that the tenderloin would not be done until 4PM. I looked in the Daytimer and Saturday’s page was blank. (Which means to me that she hadn’t thought through cooking this crock pot dinner and how long it takes.)

We ended up going out to Longhorn for the third time this week. I complained to the bar tender that the taste of the coke was off. She came back with it tasted ok to her. Drinking a coke that’s too diluted doesn’t taste very well with a good burbon.

She offered us drinks to take home, this is NOT very scientific because I am sure the ice diluted the coke a little bit with the half hour ride home. (BUT) We did compare them on our next visit to Longhorn.

When I compared them, the bottled coke on the right was darker.

Sunday

Had my coffee while I listened to the HAM radio and filled out a Longhorn survey for yesterday. I just am not happy with the taste of their fountain coke at the Web Gin store.

I listened to last week’s service to get ready for the service today. Service went well, we’re back home for a nap. Cory is not here yet, so we’re up making dinner. Checked both copies of today’s service and they were correctly uploaded.

I did an update to Home Assistant (Home Automation) and it broke the routine that turns off the attic fans.

The two smaller ones ran well past midnight because of it.

Had to make a run to Public Storage to get a set of headphones for Cory. It took me a minute to find them, but we were at church by 10:30. Service went well, it was a continuation from last week which I thought was kick butt.

We got home around 12 and steamed some veggies with the pork tenderloin we cooked on Saturday. Cory didn’t arrive until well after 3PM which wasted most of the day. We worked on our Sunday routine until about 9 when we just got too exhausted to continue.

Monday

Up at 7 and nodded off for another hour until 8:15. Hooked my antennas back onto my HF radio and I am listening to them while I write in this blog. I didn’t adjust the IR illuminators last night because I was just too tired. I am still not at my game today. I need to rest and watch over my skin abrasion that happened yesterday.

Had leftover turkey with vegetables over noodles and turkey gravy for lunch, it was quite good actually.

We spent the next three hours trying to agree on what to document where in the family Daytimer. We ended up calling it a draw, she’ll document to a blank page, and “We” will document things into the three Daytimer sections. (Action List=Todo, Scheduled=Planned/timely, Work record=Document accomplished.)

There’s a bit of a hubbub about our President in the paper. https://www.westernjournal.com/dems-advance-dark-theory-biden-conservatives-shouting-since-2020

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-defiant-letter-house-democrats-slammed-breathtakingly-cynical-dishonest-side

I had chicken soup and crackers for my evening meal. We watched “Murder She Baked” movie until I had to take another nap. Didn’t get much accomplished today, I was dogged tired from not sleeping.

I did manage to get the IR Illuminators adjusted tonight; they look pretty good.

Ate a hotdog for midrats tonight and then took my daily pills 4 hours late. Oh well, at least I took them tonight and not tomorrow morning.

Tuesday

This is the third shooting in front of our home in three weeks.
The guy just walks up with a pistol in hand and empties the clip in the air.

I am really tired, I probably got 2 hours of sleep last night before the 3AM shooting. The police and I spent the next hour trying to find the shooting in the camera recordings. I spent the next two hours downloading the video so it could be uploaded to Gwinnett County. She got up around 6AM and fixed me a cup of coffee and I just didn’t have anything left. We decided to get groceries AFTER lunch since I was done for the day.

Lunch was terrific as always since we moved to Web Gin Road Longhorn. Shopping went pretty quickly, apparently, we didn’t need very much from the store.

Added a new camera (#7), the headlights may not blind this camera?

There is just so much to do, these shootings and her poor memory are such a distraction I am not getting anything done. I think I am going to put up my HAM radio hat for a bit and use that hour more wisely.

Wednesday

I slept better last night but I totally busted my butt this morning. I got up out of the chair and looked down at my slippers in the middle of the floor and just fell over against the end table. My side is a little sore, my wrist and ankle are tender but not hurting.

Bruised ribs.

The camera I set out in the driveway died before dark, I’ll have to figure out what the issue actually is after I get these computers and routers updated. Windows updated and Android posted updates too, I think they all are trying to fix the Wireless vulnerabilities that the DOJ has been abusing for years.

GL-iNet has retired their “Slate” travel router, but they did have a current firmware update for it today. (I need to pull them off the network at some point.) It took several hours to log into all the routers and upgrade their firmware. One of the GL-iNet “Creta” routers was forwarding traffic to somewhere that was a 100ms away. Although I just upgraded it, there’s just something strange about the behavior of that router. I ended up replacing it with a GL-iNet router “Opal” which required a USB-C power connector.

Somebody sent me some delicious cookies FedEx.

We watched a couple of Murder she baked and most of a Johnny Carson show. I had chicken Noodle soup for dinner and a few M+Ms for dessert. My bruses from this morning’s fall are appearing, I’ll post them tomorrow.

Finished off upgrading the routers and I’m headed to bed.

Thursday

I was up late double checking the network and cameras, everything looked good enough to head to bed.

Got up late, like 9AM. It was only 67 degrees here this morning.

She got me my morning cup of coffee and I pulled the wire running to the brick camera to shorten it. (It was three times the length it needed to be.) I also pulled the IR Illuminator from under the car, I think I am going to mount it in the grill of the silver Focus next time. (Under the car it couldn’t really illuminate Silvercrest street.)

Lunch was ham steak, sweet potato and veggies. Took a LONG nap and

I replaced the connector on the brick camera, its working again.

We watched some TV and then took another nap.

I installed the IR Illuminator in the grill of the Ford Focus underneath her license plate. (It’s low on the vehicle and barely visible at night unless you have a dashcam.)

My Digital Video Recorder’s hard drive has failed, I need to replace it tomorrow.

Ok well off to bed.

Friday

Got up around 8AM, Waterway Net was just a conversation not a strict net for some reason. She’s getting ready for the Gym this morning, so I pulled the illuminator off the car. We centered it in the driveway around 9AM and put the dashcam in the window.

I worked on the backyard fence this morning. It has been overgrown with weeds.

Air conditioner worked pretty hard yesterday for 92 Degree temp?

One of the old sensors in the attic needs to be replaced.

We used less electricity than we did last year at much higher temperatures.

Our lawn service is mowing the front and side lawns today.

Where can I hide from this motorcycle was roaring at me at 60MPH on one wheel.

Saturday

My HAM buddies were not happy with the propagation this morning, they could not hear each other. Breakfast was a couple eggs and ham with a glass of orange juice. My entire body was aching, so I took a hot bath and a nap.

She messed up and we didn’t have any meals and grocery shopping is next TUESDAY. She went to the store and got stew meat for today and I put the sunshade up in the windshield when I got up. Mom does not have any hurricane supplies and I don’t know where to begin. It would be tough for them to buy them after a hurricane is announced for Florida.

I finally got a new RSA device from Wells Fargo. They have a specific department just for those devices 888-245-8454.

Melvin’s website FINALLY let me donate https://www.jordanmusic1.org/donate using PayPal this morning.

Reversing the large attic fan so that it pushes air into the attic has really helped our electric bill this month.

When all three fans were pulling air out, it was actually drawing some air from the home. I added eight new vents and the home as three large vents in the eves assuming that was sufficient. I was shocked to find out it was sucking air around the air handler. (We found out about the negative air pressure because of the water that was collecting under the water heater.)

NYT offered 6 Months for $1/week, it might actually be worth that.

Trump was shot in the ear today, YIKES that was a close call.

unday

Up sipp’n on a cup of coffee while listening to my HAM radio. I have an issue with my Home Assistant that I have not been able to resolve. The node in my cave dropped offline and I just can’t seem to get it back for some reason.

Updated my Home Assistant nodes, but the Home Assistant database has failed. It took me another 5 hours to figure out what was wrong and undo all the changes I had made.

Church was ok, they sang happy birthday to me and Danny. We spent the next hour and half playing around with the trays for cultural Sunday. Longhorn was the lunch today and we bought a family’s meal for them. We took a good long nap after we got home, and I checked the recordings of today’s service to make sure they were good.

I received a IR Illuminator that had a broken glass in it. I originally was going to send it back, but I needed the circuit board for another white fixture.

I ordered two black illuminators, but I really needed one more white one. I took the glass out of a black one and repaired the white one that had the broken glass.

I’ll put it in service tomorrow. We got caught up with the Trump shooting till about midnight and then we headed to bed.