Had a rough night, weather and all this heavy equipment is taking a toll on me. I did manage to check-in with the Ham radio guys this morning.
I set them out to test them, all four are working.
The van has the fender speakers in it and the weather is going to be in the 80’s.
Covered the speakers with a comforter to keep them cool. I checked them at 4:30 in the afternoon and they were just as cool as they were when I covered them.
Salmon for dinner with sweet potatoes and veggies.
Power will be shut off at 1PM, we’ll have to see how fast that goes.
The lightning arrestor failed shortly after they turned the power back on with the higher voltage. It yanked the tale the wire from the distribution wires which allowed them to turn the power back on. Then they promptly turned it back off to replace both arrestors LOL. Power is back on, everything held up on battery for the duration of 3 hours. The computer room UPS didn’t even go to the caution battery is low.
4PM and the air conditioning is back on, now that they are done playing around with the power. (It’s probably been a long day for them.) The deep cycle batteries are all charging so I opened the garage for some fresh air. I have a couple batteries in my cave too that are charging back up so that small window is open. When the garage door is ajar the top part of the door is open to let the heat & gas escape.
Tuesday
Up a little late it’s almost 8AM, I did manage to check in on the WW Net this morning.
I worked on my network firewalls today. When I replaced the obsolete FortiGate 60D with a 60F the configuration did not pull IPV6 addresses from our Comcast ISP. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it last year since the FortiGate 60E on AT&T did have IPV6 working. Today I found out that Comcast stopped giving residential customers 16 subnets, which is why the configuration failed. They chose to do what AT&T did, offer just one subnet to residential customers. Now, granted that’s still over 65,000 IP addresses to a home that probably never have more than 100. The problem is that IF the entire home network on one subnet, the broadcast domain gets very congested. IPV6 doesn’t lend itself to subdividing networks like IPV4 did either. I don’t know if Comcast also 1:1 NAT the IPV6 like AT&T did at our gateway.
Longhorn for lunch and sandwiches for dinner today. My glucose was 130 after drinking some of her Margaretta this afternoon. It was 99 tonight after we took a walk up the street after dinner.
After about 4 hours work all my subnets have now have IPV6 addresses. I had to use Network Address Translation to subdivide my home networks. (But they all work and do pass the IPV6 test from the Internet.) YEA!
Wednesday
Up at 7:30 in time to tune into the WW Net.
I noticed a new noise on my HF radio after they raised the distribution voltage to 14KV, I might try taking my portable radio and walking the power lines around me.
I am moving my devices between the 10 networks and I had plans on color coding the network wires.
Right now, they are a bit of a mess behind my desk.
For the wireless in my network I use these GL.iNet travel routers.
One of the first things I do is attach a USB power supply to them.
Then I can power any number of them with a single power supply. The GL.iNet Beryl AX (above picture) locked in an IPV6 address without any hassles! The trouble with these new USB-C devices is that they can be 10W or more. Even with a 30W power supply it can only support three devices. At 18V 30W is maybe 2.0 Amps, the wires and connectors should be limited to 3 Amps. At 24V at 3 Amps is 70W which is double the 18V power supplies.
Thursday
Up at 7AM and I took my medication on time today. I checked-in with the HAM radio guys too. We took our morning shower, and I made a plate of scrambled eggs with breakfast sausages.
Lunch was at Longhorn’s, we gave the entire team $20 each today. (They call me “Santa”.) We planned on getting some meat at Publix, but that didn’t happen.
Back home we took our afternoon nap and dinner was soup, we’re out of Lunch Meat. Her BP was a little high, but we were watching a news show on North Korea’s new destroyer. Went to Public Storage and picked up a couple of tubs to sort through.
Took the garbage out and locked both cars that have church equipment in them.
Friday
Got up around 7 and had scrambled eggs with the wife this morning. The power lines are making so much noise that I cannot hear the guys on 40M this morning.
Moved the equipment out of the car into the van so that we can get groceries. We went to Longhorn again for lunch, the bill was $22 after the discount. We’re back home and it’s sprinkling. We took a nap and headed to Guiter Center for some items we need for the outside service.
Storms headed our way, I’ve disconnected my antennas.
Ordered some new power supplies for these 5V@3A devices like the GL.iNet routers. I can run TWO of these wireless routers on 18V @ 1.6A, but I can run four at 24V @ 2.3A. It’s convenient to have these power supplies with twin lead wire since the connectors attach directly to them. They are migrating all these “wall warts” to a round shielded wire which is more durable, but requires a different approach. I won’t know what I am getting until it arrives.
Our neighbors brought over a Mexican dinner to try out.
the meat was tough as nails, but the sauce and cheese had good flavor. (Spicy Though!) My bowels were noisy this morning LOL.
Saturday
Took a shower with the wife and checked in with the HAM radio guys. It took every watt of my HF radio to reach them this morning. Spent a good part of the morning drawing up plans for the service tomorrow.
Dinner was a frozen turkey breast cooked in the Insta Pot along with Sweat potatoes and frozen veggies. Turned out pretty good, served it in the Serving Crock Pot.
Spent the afternoon loading the van with the equipment for tomorrows service.
(It took a lot longer than I expected!)
Spent a couple hours this evening making sure that the wireless router we’re using for Internet at the service tomorrow is all set. It will be used as an Ethernet bridge to my personal T-Mobile hot Spot. I have a spare router, USB cable and power supplies.
Sunday
I spent a couple hours in the middle of the night finishing packing the wires and hardware for today. We got up a little before the 6AM alarm, took a quick shower and got dressed. I loaded the van, and we left around 7AM for the park. We were the first ones there and Larry showed up right after. He had brought some egg McMuffins that really hit the spot. I found out about this gig 10 days ago and I have spent many hours transporting and sorting the equipment.
We moved the equipment out of our vehicles and proceeded to set the tables in their proper places. (We need an isle for the Live Stream Camera.)
I had to cascade two sound boards to handle the 13 channels of audio today, the second board had all the instruments. (Keys, Cajon, Conga’s and electric guitar.) My only complication was that I bought a condenser microphone for the Cajon. The phantom power ended up reaching the electric guitar amp and killing the Line Out. I ended up putting a microphone in front of the amp which worked well.
9 microphones and 4 music instruments is the largest service I’ve done in the park.
By the time we arrived home it was an 8-hour day and we were exhausted! We went to Longhorn’s and that experience was not up to par either. Our salads were less than acceptable with the dressing cups IN the salad and the chicken was overcooked.
Back home I linked the service to the church website and sat down in front of the TV to relax. This by far was a very difficult endeavor that was made so much worse because of poor planning.
Watched a little TV then we went to bed.