Month: March 2025

Woke up and had my cup of coffee while I listened to the HF radio. Talked to Paul for a bit, he’s doing a yard sale to get some cash in hand this morning. I did some poking around and there’s only one small change to my taxes and I can file them.

The Toshiba has been rebuilt and seems to be solid. *I had forgotten how fast it was.

The storms were well south of us so that wasn’t much of a problem today.

Ham, sweet potatoes and veggies were lunch today.

I checked in with the GARS 2M Net, I tried to check in with ARES but I missed the call15

Applied for the Homestead exemption, but it was just an update to the application I sent in October 24.

Tuesday

Woke up this morning around 7 and got onto the 2M repeater with the GARS HAMS. I switched over onto the HF side and checked in with the WW Net too. Had eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. We have an orthodontist appointment at 10 and then Longhorn for lunch.

We went to Wally World for some groceries and a few other things this afternoon. We did buy some chicken legs and a package of ground turkey for chili.

We’re disposing of the aluminum (Left) and keeping the Stainless Steel (Right) humidifier chambers for our CPAP machines. We had about six of each kind.

I never got an acknowledgement from Gwinnett county so I reapplied for the homestead exemption about 9PM tonight and it went through. The strange thing is the time/date is GMT and the application has to be submitted by 1 APR 2025. (I don’t think it will let me reapply two times within a year.)

The E-Mail was delivered at 8:48 on 1 April 2025.

Bedtime.

Wednesday

We had scrambled eggs and ham for breakfast this morning. I got onto the HAM radio and checked in on the WW Net while sipping on my coffee. Lunch was salmon, sweet potatoes and veggies. I had a cough most of the day today. Just in case it was caused by my 10 Day old hose, washed four of them and dried them on the dehumidifier. When I logged into Amazon I got this VERY LONG list of items that had changed price. I assume that all the venders added the Trump Tariffs to their existing stock to make a little extra cash. The cost of the Jackery was a little shocking, it almost doubled in price to $800.00.

Church was virtual on Zoom tonight, so we watched the Empire Strikes Back.

Thursday

Up at 6:30 and went back to bed until 7:30. Checked in on the HAM WW Net while eating hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages. Made a pot of coffee and read some news while sipping on my cup of coffee.

Time to fill the pill trays.

Dinner was in disarray so we went to Longhorn for lunch.

We came home and I mowed the back yard before it rains this weekend.

We went to Kroger for a few things. We have dinner plans for tomorrow, so we’ll cook them on Saturday. (We’re also going out on Sunday.)

Yup, that’s me holding my back yard HF antenna mast.

Friday – Saturday

Sunday

I had veggies and ranch dressing last night while we were watching The Intern. Trouble is that I still taste the ranch dressing this morning, ewe! I did not sleep well last night. My back pain is disturbing to say the least. I rolled up in two heated throws and watched a bit of TV while trying to calm my back. I’ve taken baths, that always helped a lot. I rolled up in these throws one time and it was almost as soothing. Not this time thought.

I checked my Glucose to make sure my kidneys are not complaining and that was fine. Tuned up my HF radio and checked in with the HAM radio guys on the WW net. I’ll have to disconnect the antennas with the storms arriving this afternoon.

I cleared out the trunk of Blue Focus and took it around the block and I was shocked that the computer came back as “Ready” for emissions! That’s a huge deal since I’ve procrastinated this until two days before her birthday.

The neighbors brought over a slice of cake.
I wonder if they knew it was her birthday?

Again, this morning I had trouble with my feet even though I ate very little after dinner and my Glucose was less than 100. I have not figured out why my toes tingle at night and not during my nap at lunchtime.

Checked in with the HAM guys on the GARS 2M repeater this morning. Then I checked in on the WW Net with my HF radio this morning while sipping my coffee.

Loaded my medicine into the next tray and rotated them.

The CF website is still broken. We cannot reliably get feedback from the children on what they’ve spent their gifts on. The recommended gift is between $20 and $50 and has been for years. With inflation that We exceeded that gift since the pandemic to help the families cope with all the chaos. Now that we’re 2yrs out and we’re having real issues with the letters we’ve decided to reduce the gifts back to pre-COVID amounts.

Took a good long nap and we had chicken legs, sweet potatoes and veggies for lunch. I worked on my E-Mail for several hours to reduce the load on my Toshiba laptop’s Solid-State Drive (SSD) to extend its life as much as possible. I learned my lesson about letting my computer’s SSD get full when her computer failed. I also made a backup of all the Microsoft Outlook PST files on an encrypted thumb drive.

I looked up the SSD for the Toshiba laptop and ordered one, it was similar to the experience with the NUC. Like $20 bucks? My only catch 22 is there is no product key on the surface of the laptop. It’s located in the firmware, I don’t actually know if I can use it to activate WIN 10 Pro. Step one, put the SSD in the laptop and find out.

Turkey sandwich on RYE and creme cheese on a rice cake for dessert while we watched Castle. My left molar is sensitive, I need to pay more attention to it.

Tuesday

Need to stay focused today. Had eggs for breakfast and I’m out of breakfast sausages so I just had Rye toast. Need to get the car emissions done this week and I am down to six days to turn in my Taxes.

CF Sent me a letter back, “they wanted to clarify the gifts and apologize.” The two pill dispensers get to Patty’s tomorrow. I packed everything up for the dog show tomorrow, have to be there by 5:40. (Which means wake-up is at 4:40.)

Made a trip to Wally World for some catch-up groceries. I guy pulls into the neighbor’s driveway and walks the sidewalk East and West of our neighbor’s house. Then gets into his car and drives away. We don’t have Xfinitywifi, but there is one close to use somewhere. (I changed out the Xfinity router that I had to pay a monthly fee for.

WAAY too early tomorrow morning. 4:30 Alarm and leave by 5:15, I am really getting too old for this.

Wednesday – Saturday

It has been a LONG week working the dog show for the GARS HAM club. I had to get up at 4:30 for the last four days. It’s about a 25 minute drive Gwinnett fair grounds. Dog Show – Lake Lanier Cluster Dog Shows It was a bit cool when I get there. Wednesday I wore three layers, shirt, sweatshirt and a jacket under my vest.

I basically parked at one of the entry gates and sifted traffic.

The weather was perfect, sunny with a comfortable breeze.

I was exhausted when I got home so I didn’t do much but get a shower and take a nap.

I did get revive an old laptop with a $20 SSD. I successfully loaded W10 on it, I need to download the Toshiba utilities to protect the battery. (I had forgotten they only charge the battery to 80%, the power supply was very hot!)

My son bought a new home in Colorado, three floors.

Sunday

We have church this morning and it is supposed to storm in the afternoon.

We’re going to get wet traveling to church this morning.

Service went well, we only got a little wet. We did go to Longhorn for lunch and I worked on the Toshiba for several hours updating the drivers. I can buy a used one for $40 if there’s any issues with it. The power supply costs as much as the Toshiba laptop.

Took Blue out for a drive and I checked the computer when I got home. The car says it is ready for emissions testing. I plan on doing that on Monday along with transporting the wife to her appointment in the wee hours of the morning.

Up at 07:30 and made a small pot of coffee. She had cold brew coffee in her french press this morning. Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net and ate two boiled eggs with breakfast sausages.

Took our BP and our Glucose, mine was on the high side at 129. But then I had just eaten breakfast too. We both took a shower, and I laid down for a quick nap. We both changed our CPAP hoses and tanks this morning.

I found out the hoses have dates encoded on them a while back.

We’re tossing all of the hoses manufactured in 2020 since we have no way of knowing when we put them in service. (I had previously tossed hoses made before then.) When I was the only one on therapy and I had to use them down range, I kept them pretty long. (Years) Now that we’re both on therapy I’m being a little more particular.

New hoses sent to us can be late 22, 23 and 24 so we’re writing the date we open the package on the hoses from now on. The recommended replacement schedule is every 3 months, and our contracted supplier provides them at that time frame. If we keep working spares, then more than half of them is up to a year old.

If this store wants to charge $10/Lb that’s fine.
BUT DON’T HIDE THE 2 DAY OLD BROWN MEAT INSIDE !!!

Back from Wally World with some odds and ends.
The beach cart is perfect for bringing in the haul from the store.

Tues-Thursday

It’s been a busy three days. Her computer SSD ran out of write cycles and I didn’t pick up on what was happening until it was too late to recover the operating system. I paid Microcenter to copy the SSD, but all they did was recover the files on a USB disk. (Which is better than not having the data.) What I did loose is the website data in the browser, usernames and passwords. Websites drop cookies that make it easy to get onto them, but it is not something I know how to get from a hard drive.

The second thing that Microcenter did was leave a screw so loose that it fell onto the circuit boards. Worse they mounted the SSD upside down and crushed the memory into the motherboard! It took me an hour to figure out that they mounted the SSD upside down and that’s why the case didn’t go back together.

I spent the better part of Wednesday trying to get one of the three laptops configured with her login credentials and attached to her websites. It was a strange behavior, logging onto the websites would fail even with proper credentials. We spent three hours today trying to get onto Express Scripts and I ended up changing out the laptop with a newer one. (The one I installed was my anchor, it always worked for me.)

The second laptop worked like it should and I put the old laptop on my DMZ network to scan the hard drive with a “Deep Scan”. I don’t expect to find anything, I think there is a corrupted module intercepting the traffic from the browser that’s corrupting the conversation to the host. I know that it’s not located in the user files/directories since I created a new login for her. It is also affecting both Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. Two pieces of software have modules that are suspect. One is Net Limiter and the other is Wireshark. They sit in between the operating system and the network interface.

I also loaded her pill trays since they ran out on Wednesday.

We got into a disagreement about turkey chili that was on the menu for lunch today. There’s something wrong with the recipe and she’s putting it together from memory. I went on all recipes and found a similar recipe. There were two huge issues, one was she should NOT drain the black beans and two we should use crushed tomatoes. We didn’t have any crushed tomatoes, so we went to Kroger to pick up a few odds and ends.

Friday

We got up and I checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net while sipping on Dominican coffee I got at Wally World. We took our Glucose and blood pressure and then prepared lunch correctly this time cept for two ingredients. Shredded cheese and scallions, which really makes the meal.

We went to get some cash and then to the dollar store for a card. We dropped by Waffle House for a chocolate waffle, and I had a couple eggs since I didn’t have breakfast this morning. Her Glucose was over 163 when we got home so we both walked up the block and back. When we checked it again it was 170! That’s the first time I’ve ever seen the glucose rise after a walk. We checked it an hour later and it had dropped down to 116.

Watched Hudson and Rex and Castle before bed.

Saturday

Checked in on the WW Net and took my shower. Took our Glucose and her BP, mine was a bit high at 125. Mom’s back in the hospital. Where’s my coffee? Dropped her off at a birthday party for a friend.

Not sure what I am going to do with these two fully functional PC’s. I can load Windows 10Pro or Linux Mint and that would work well with either of these. Intel sold these Intel NUC min PC line to Asus who makes really good motherboards.

Like many other things I’ve liked, I have more than one of them. I bought one, then bought two more, then bought three more. Then I bought three more after we found out about the issue with taking our medications twice a day.

I bought an SSD for a very reasonable price of $20 that will get me back onto these NUC computers. I downloaded the media creator tool and loaded Win10 onto a flash drive to install into the NUC computer. (Took 3 minutes, 900M Bytes per Second!)

An hour later I had rebuilt both of these Intel NUC mini PCs. Intel makes a tool that downloads and installs the correct drivers.

I spent a good while looking for information on how Microsoft is responding to the 65% of us that do not have Win 11 compatible computers. There was also good information on Microsoft Office, they are retiring all versions except 2024 in October.

Sunday

Had a terrible time sleeping last night, AGAIN! The first issue is usually I have a little pain in my back from the Shingles. Then it will be some discomfort in my feet that will get worse over the next hour so after getting to bed. I had 2 hours of sleep by 05:00 this morning an 6 hours before leaving for church today.

We had ham sandwiches for lunch and a nap. I had another ham sandwich for supper with creme cheese on a rice cake. BPs and Glucose were unremarkable.

Up at 7AM helping her with her meds and making coffee. Turned on the HF radio, but I’m not hearing net control at all. I can hear the Bahamas weather report. We took her BP and Glucose. They were both good to go, my glucose numbers are falling into the 100’s. Soaking rain all day, leftover chicken thighs for lunch today.

Spent the morning refilling my spare pill tray, I have one in the dispenser and two in holders waiting. I cut the 500mg acetaminophen in half to make a 2-1/2 hour dose.

We went to Kroger and picked up a few things for beef stew today. The potatoes we had were less than edible because we had gone out to eat so much recently. Mom should be home today. We watched a great Castle episode yesterday where his daughter was kidnapped to trap his father.

Tuesday

Another sleepless night, I don’t know what is going on. I am not very tired and too uncomfortable to get a good night’s sleep. Checked in on the WW net and took our BP and glucose levels this morning.

Mine is around 100 if I’ve not eaten, it does go up to 130 if taken after a meal. It is also

I need to defend my eyes from getting dry today. Also, it might be a good day to mow the back yard, it’s getting pretty tall.

We are refining our day using these pocket Daytimer and punches.

Picked the sticks out of the back yard today and mowed 1/3 on the west side of the lawn. The mower had less grass under it than I had anticipated.

One problem with our economy is that the stock market is driving profit over affordability. In the old days companies would compete with each other over the market share. Today with so few companies in the food market, they now know that we’ll by food at whatever price they set. It makes more money to sell less product at a higher price and that profit is highly desirable for those who own the company’s stock. We are heading into a time where the concentration of money is so great that it will eliminate the middle class. (Like Iran and other countries where you have workers who support those who pay them, and no one is left in the middle anymore.)

Wednesday

Gave a dozen eggs to our neighbor at zero dark thirty. Checked in on the WW net with the HAM radio then took a good nap before heading out to Longhorn’s for lunch.

We sat in our lawn chairs waiting for the mail today on a perfect afternoon.

We had a good day, BP and Glucose numbers were very good with the change in our diets to accommodate her distressed tooth. We have to keep the gums clean and that requires us to STOP eating in between meals.

Church services went well, we scrambled just a little with the rigid schedule of our pill dispensers. If we don’t eat between meals, then the 17:30 meal is a bit early to wait until 06:00 the next morning for the following meal. We run into a bit of trouble with church if the dispenser opens after we’ve left, and we wait to eat at 19:15 alarm. Church is at 19:30, so we have to eat BEFORE 18:50. It also means the testing for Glucose and BP has to occur before we leave for our friend’s house.

Neighbors took our garbage can for us tonight!

Thursday/Friday

I sent a message to Child Fund about missing letters from Jim Jim, we last heard from her in December and we’re supposed to get a letter every month. Nothing showed up in my E-Mail yet so it will be at least Sunday before I get anything from them. *Late Sunday is their Monday morning.

We made Texas Pecan coffee both days as the Dominican Santo Domingo Coffee doesn’t taste normal. Grinding the Texas Pecan whole bean coffee makes an awful noise.

I have two medications that are not performing very well. I separated them early in the week hoping to improve their performance and it has not changed enough. Specifically, my shingles (Gabapentin) postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) has been bothering me enough to prevent me from sleeping in the bed. If I take a bath the pain subsides dramatically for some reason. I’ve also been fighting a yeast infection and a difficult time urinating (Alfuzosin) occasionally.

The original three slots that I created from two to help with my symptoms are.

1. Multi vitamin, Potassium, Omeprazole
2. Aspirin, Alfuzosin
3. Gabapentin, Norvasc, Lisinopril

I created one more time slot (Now 4) to these medications. I cannot separate these pills to less than three hours without buying/using three more dispensers.

1. Multi vitamin, Potassium, Gabapentin (To be taken separately)
2. Aspirin, Alfuzosin, Omeprazole (To be taken separately)
3. Lisinopril, Norvasc
4. Gabapentin, Tylenol

We totally messed up lunch on Friday. She wanted sweet and regular potatoes plus mixed veggies. We had three steamers running at the same time. I was watching Bernie Sanders make a speech that was a total fabrication while the water ran out on the mixed veggies. When I smelled the burnt pan I pulled it off the stove and then the potatoes started burning. While I was dealing with both of those the mixed vegetables started burning. We gave up and put soapy water in all the pans and went to Longhorn’s for lunch. Dinner was a Ham on Rye sandwich our regular meal. The problem with eating at 7 is that my glucose is too high at bedtime. Boo!

Saturday

Checked in with the HAM guys and looked up the storm progress, it is not even in Alabama yet LOL.

My shingles is bothering me this morning, I took a hot bath and then a nap. I felt good enough to help with lunch which turned out terrific. Ham, Sweet potatoes and mixed vegetables. We went to Publix and spent way too much money on just a few things before the storm arrives.

I moved the cars up the driveway in case our yard floods.

Well, it looks like the storms have arrived. The interesting thing is that they petered out when they got to Atlanta. We did not get much in the way of wind, rain or lightning last night. The storm was a bust.

Sunday

This young man came to the door this morning just after 7:30 saying he was being chased, and his phone was dead. Indeed, the other camera had his running down the street until he got to our house.

He was also looking down the street where he came from in earnest.

I was fast asleep from having stayed up all last night with the storm. Further when she woke me up, I had to get some clothes on before I could address the situation. By the time I got my pants on and got the wireless house phone he had walked back the way he came.

We’ve had a lot of people come to our door. None of them said that they were being chased. He was respectful of our door and never entered the home even after asking us not to close the door. (I was trying to get dressed on the other side.) We discussed protocol and from now on we’re going to lock the screen door with the window down. That way when we open the front door, we’re not exposed to whomever is on our porch. (They cannot open the screen door.) We can safely discuss the situation through the screen. Also, if the person at the door needs a phone, we can hand them the house wireless phone. (NOT our cell phones.)

Went to Longhorn after church since we spent so much time on the chaos this morning. Service went well and feedback was not an issue today.

Slept for THREE hours after getting home from Longhorn’s, I guess I was tired!

My glucose numbers were less than 100 for the last couple of days.

Spent a couple of hours putting my pills in my three dispensers tonight.

Cleaned four more hoses individually tonight.
(I could not find these connections to do it all at once.)

We got up around 7:30 and I cranked up my HF radio to meet the HAM guys on the WW Net while I drank some coffee. Adjusted the alarm times on the pill dispensers so they are a better fit for our routines.

Her box of clothes from Amazon arrived and the pants were just a little on the large side. She loved the socks. Cod fish for lunch with mixed vegetables and sweet potatoes. We took a nap, and I went out for a much-needed haircut. Back home we walked up the block and back to get in some exercise now that her foot is better. We both made a sandwich and settled down for an episode of Castle.

Tuesday

I was in pain this morning, so I wrapped myself in two electric blankets that helped enough to go to bed. Worked on documenting our new pill schedule, I woke up late and she got lost on what she was supposed to be doing. Checked in on the WW net and sipped on a cup of coffee. No breakfast cept the bowl of cereal I had at 3AM this morning.

We had an endodontist appointment today at 10:40 and that ended the retreatment for the root canal that failed saving tooth #30. We went to Longhorn for lunch afterwards then home for a much-needed nap. I worked on the screen door for several hours tonight. The front door is sagging and taking the screen door with it. I’ve replaced that door several times and had it replaced once. They didn’t do a very good job and now it looks like the casing is failing.

Turkey on Rye with a couple rice cakes with creme cheese for dessert while we watched Castle. Her BP has settled down and it looks like the high BP is behind us!

Wednesday (Stormy)

It’s midnight and I am waiting on the storm front to arrive. The major appliances are off and the UPS units have clicked a couple of times since I got up about an hour ago.

We managed to get 2 boxes (with four bags each) of bad coffee from Amazon. They don’t smell very good, and they don’t even smell the same from bag to bag. Wally World has Santo Domingo coffee, we’ll get some tomorrow to try. According to Google Foo, Dominican Coffee has suffered from poor crops *Rust and imported coffee to meet production. EWE! Apparently, the whole bean coffee might still be Dominican, which may account for the significant price increase. Our son has latched on to a Texas Pecan flavored whole bean coffee which she likes too.

Thursday

Had eggs for breakfast with sausage links while I checked in on the HAM WW Net. Spent a large portion of the day filling the spare trays of the three dispensers we are using with our medicine. I sent a list to Emory and didn’t get a response. Her BP has been normal for several days! My GERD has been pretty bad tonight, not sure why. I ended up taking my Prilosec early to tame my stomach down a little. My mom fell and ended up in the hospital. I don’t know what that’s all about either.

Friday

Woke up late this morning and she had already eaten breakfast. To my utter surprise, she did not take her morning meds. We had to take them after she ate breakfast today. I had put her meds in my dispenser yesterday, so that didn’t help either. Seasoned chicken thighs for lunch today with sweet potatoes and frozen Normandy veggies. Dentist visit went ok, she was extremely nervous, so I held her hand this afternoon while the dentist cleaned her teeth. Her gums have receded further than mine so we’re trying to get a plan together before the bacteria gets a foothold again. Plan is to arrive first thing on Saturday.

Bought a bag of Great Value potato chips expecting them to be comparable to Lays.

Like EWE, not sure what the green ones were but I toss the bag in the garbage.

Saturday

Mom fell yesterday and was taken to the hospital. She is still there, and they are monitoring her heart, although I don’t know exactly what her situation is.

Called the dentist right after I checked in on the WW Net on my HAM radio. The recommendation was non-Alcohol mouthwash, electric toothbrush with very soft bristles, using a water pic and flossing around the sides of the tooth.

Longhorn chicken salad for lunch, we met a lady that had a sign that read “Need diapers, have two kids”. We gave her $100, she stood out there for another 30 minutes then disappeared. The police don’t tolerate pan handlers around the AMC theater, they’ll arrest them and take their money. (It’s illegal in Gwinnett Co.)

My schedule sheets in my Daytimer needs to be redone, I need to add all the dispenser times and adjust our eating schedule too. It has come to pass that our medicine needs to be taken on a schedule. We both took our meds by the handful in the morning and then again at night. Now I have three dispenser times, and she has five with her eight medications.

All of this would have been a nightmare without these dispensers. She has two of the newer ones so that her medication doesn’t move out of reach, and I have a slightly older one. It would cost over $130 to get a third newer one that has the red overdue LEDs for myself. They helped us solve a problem of high blood pressure events in the evenings!

I worked on my Daytimer schedule for about an hour. I fold it in half, punch holes in it and put it into my binder.

Sunday

Got up around 8AM and I was still a little groggy. I think I did a late check-in on the WW net though. No breakfast this morning as we headed for church services. This is the first time we were in person for many weeks now. We decided to eat at Longhorn even though we had chicken in the refrigerator that we both had forgotten about. Although it’s a pretty expensive meal, Longhorn salad was very good and my Glucose showed less than 100.

Posted the sermon to the website and took a good long nap before eating our traditional ham sandwich on rye bread while watching TV.

Off to bed, have not heard from Florida about mom.