My experience is that LED light bulbs have not lasted the touted life on the box.
But this $8 DC corn bulb I bought in 2011 has burned for 15 years so far. In my experience the major failure has been the power supply in the base of the bulb. The second largest failure is that manufacturers are overdriving the LEDs and they die.
Scrambled eggs for breakfast with my Augmentin pill, so far so good on my new medicine schedule. The timer on my wrist combined with the pill dispensers should keep me on schedule.
The HF radio 40Meter band is LONG, I could not hear most of the stations this morning. I FT8 to Australia last night on only 15W.
Michael Shellenberger was interviewed by a newspaper at the end of May, I found it very thought provoking. So much so, I will have to listen to it several times to capture all the information provided.
We had to make a run to the orthodontist, so we went to Longhorn’s for lunch today. We stopped by on the way home and dropped off the referral from Coast Dental. Our appointment will be this week, and it should be an eval and treat appointment. Having these Amox to take has added to complexity of traveling with our medication.
I have nine medication times to keep track of.
I found out tonight that two of them, Norvasc and Alfuzosin are light sensitive.
I’ve put a ring of construction paper over the tray to keep the light off of them.
The lid on the left side of the door is to stage medications to be taken within the next two hours. (Like taking Alfuzosin after dinner for example.)
Tuesday
I woke up very early this morning with body aches and the shingles on my back was also flaring up. I took a whole 500mg Acetaminophen and 200mg Ibuprofen about an hour later to get some relief. For me taking Ibuprofen contains some risk, there is a low threshold where I will break out in hives. If I am awake I “can” take a Benadryl to escape any serious complications. I took a Gabapentin at 7AM to relieve some of those symptoms in my back and arms.
We went to Whole Foods today to get cereal and crackers among other things. Lunch was at Longhorn’s of course, it bothered me that all the business is in the bar area and the servers are left with empty tables. (Hard to make any money that way.)
I made a battery powered flickering candle for people we’re praying for. The idea is that we give remembrance when we see this candle throughout the day. It runs on two AA batteries that should power it for more than a month. *I took a tee light candle from the dollar store and connected it to MUCH Larger batteries.
Retired early, have to get up at 6AM to be at the Orthodontist by 8AM.
Wednesday
Woke at 6AM and we had scrambled eggs after I took a shower. We left about 7:15 and made it before 7:50. The assessment didn’t go as planned.
There is significant decay under the crowns of all two teeth in question. The Orthodontist recommended removing Tooth #30 and returning to retreat #29 which originally was #28. I have eight Amoxicillin pills left at 2PPD that’s four days. Sunday at 9PM will be the first missed dose. I’ll wait for our dentist to call me, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll schedule an appointment with her on Friday. They are closed on Thursdays, I wish I had remembered that sooner!
Headed home and took a nap before returning to Longhorn for lunch. It got massively crowded with large groups of people. (They apparently knew about some of them because there were 5 servers. Funny thing was they didn’t come in until after 12 Noon, the crowds were there at 11:15.
Headed home, we were going to stop by Wally World, but it looked like rain was ahead of the 4PM prediction.
I mowed the back yard and barely got wet before putting the lawnmower up.
This what happens when you leave a camera POE (Ethernet) wire out in the rain.
I got a new keyboard last night. (Todd gave me one that the keys “Click”, but they don’t sell them on Amazon anymore.) These keys don’t click, but they are plenty noisy enough. Now both my computers in my cave have new keyboards.
The UPS units in my cave both switched to battery, rain is headed our way.
I made yet another prayer light for our friend.
Thursday
I still have a bad pumpernickel taste in my mouth from yesterday. I don’t quite know for sure why. The pumpernickel bread was 2 months old, and I didn’t find out until AFTER I ate it. I also took my 875 Augmentin on an almost empty stomach for the first time last night. (I had a few crackers, that may not have been enough.)
We checked our cupboards and headed off to Wally World for some supplies. It was pretty empty. In fact, there was ONLY ONE check-out line for a full cart of stuff. We dropped off the dairy and headed off to Longhorn for lunch. We took our pills from our kit and headed back home. We put the supplies in their cabinets, and I worked on refilling my pill dispenser trays. I have SIX Augmentin pills left, that gets me until 8PM Sunday.
I have an intermittent annoying pinch on my left side just under my ribs and a little above my belt line also on my left side. The pinch feels to be just under the skin in both places.
I opened the refrigerator and the light went out, the countertop light was also out so the problem was the UPS in the garage. I checked the voltage on the batteries and one bank of batteries were completely dead. The other three banks were ok except the 10A fuses were blown. I put 15A fuses on them and restarted the UPS while I replaced bank #4. I may install bank #5 if I can find the wires. After the batteries have settled down with a full charge, I’ll drop the fuses back to 10A each.
The refrigerator is acting weird too, the temperature went to -10 in the freezer when I plugged it into the house power. (Which is well below the -6 setpoint.) The refrigerator temp is correct at 36 degrees, and the freezer is -5 and that’s good so far. I checked the power monitor, 156W and it drew very close to a reasonable amount of power today. I put a power fail alarm on the refrigerator outlet so I’ll know right away if it happens again.
Checked our Glucose and BP, they were good today. Time to get ready for bed and take my last Augmentin pill for the day. The metallic taste has come back, I don’t know if the Isopropyl alcohol I accidently sprayed on my tongue has anything to do with this. I looked it up, 10mg is the starting point for affecting your health. The taste is not severe, and my health otherwise is mostly ok. I am a little more tired than normal, but I am not sleeping regularly either.
Friday
Dental appointment at 9:15 this morning, trying to get a referral for an oral surgeon and get advice on the Amoxicillin regiment that will end on Sunday. Funny thing is the E-Mail they sent me says the appointment is at 9AM (Not 9:15) The dentist had the referral ready for me when I got there so there was really no wait. I did not get an additional Augmentin prescription, and it will run out on Sunday.
We went to Longhorn for lunch and then to Interstate Batteries to drop off a pile of old batteries and we bought two new ones for the refrigerator. I am going to try putting the new ones on the floor of the garage to keep them cool.
Deli meat on rye bread for supper with rice cakes and creme cheese for dessert. My body aches were pretty severe tonight, took an entire Acetaminophen and a 200mg Ibuprofen too.
Saturday
One 24V bank of batteries died yesterday, and the refrigerator took out the remaining three bank’s 10A fuses to take down the UPS yesterday evening. Startup current is 700W and that’s 35A so three 10A fuses was insufficient to carry the 3x12A needed by the refrigerator. Now that I know I NEED four batteries I bought a fifth bank and connected it to the UPS. The startup current is just 7A per battery with five and just under 9A for four batteries. If a single battery shorts out, the 10A fuse connecting the two batteries will isolate it. With five banks fused at 10A that will provide 50A to the UPS.
Checked in on the WW Net and sipped on a cup of coffee while I worked on installing the new batteries on the refrigerator UPS. The posts on the new batteries were considerably smaller than normal. I could have used the hardware for the 18AH batteries had I looked.
The original wires were about a foot long, but I needed longer wires to reach the batteries on the floor. Knowing I have multiple batteries and multiple wires I can extend the wires quite a bit and keep the same impedance. 30A across one foot of 12AWG has a voltage drop of 0.0477 Volts and five parallel wires @ 5Ft long are the same resistance. (1.4W) The advantage of NOT connecting the batteries together at the batteries is it allows some variance in performance between manufacturers and the batteries age. (I didn’t buy $1,000.00 worth of batteries at one time.) Battery to battery is 20Ft of 12AWG wire which is .0318 Ohms and at just 10A allows 0.32 V difference between the batteries. (Preventing the strong batteries from taking more than their share of the load.)
Grandma’s beef chili for lunch today with cheese and crackers.
We took a good long nap, then I checked the battery temperatures in the garage. The floor is around 80 degrees, the batteries on the carpet are 84 and the batteries on the table are 88 degrees. The floor temperature under the cardboard is 4 degrees cooler at 76. (It might be possible to insulate the batteries from taking heat from the air, but if I did that I’d have to insulate in between the batteries.)
My pills are a mess this evening, I got behind the pill dispensers earlier today and I never got caught up. My shingles and my shoulders are bothering me enough that I took a full 500mg of Acetaminophen to relive the pain.