Category Archives: Computers

Posts that have something to do with our computers and networking technology.

2014/08/14 (R) All Computer All Day

From the time I got up (before 8 AM) until I went to bed (after midnight) I pretty much worked at my desk, specifically at my computer. Much of my time was spent on revising the pages of the new SLAARC WordPress website and making most of them publicly viewable. I also revised the User’s Guide and sent it off to be reviewed. Mixed in with that work I uploaded three more blog posts.

Another chunk of my time was spent dealing with the financial and membership records of our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter and a little time was spent with e-mail and social media, although I really limit the amount of time that goes towards the later. Later in the evening I finally logged in to the Intro to Linux course on edX and went through a short Intro to edX demo course. When I went to shut down my laptop it had 28 updates to install and when it restarted, the Outlook 2013 icon had disappeared from my taskbar. The program was still there on the Apps screen and it still worked, but that was momentarily un-nerving. I also had a Linux update to install.

It was a beautiful day today with cool, dry northwest breezes, more like early fall than the dog days of summer. It was the perfect day for working outside and I wish I could have. We had oatmeal for breakfast, tofu hotdogs for lunch, and lentil loaf with baked potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts for dinner. It was all simple but very tasty fare. Coffee and juice went with breakfast, green tea with lunch and during the day, and sparkling water with dinner. After lunch I checked the air pressure in the black iron pipe and it was down to 9 PSI. Darryll set it at 12 PSI yesterday afternoon and I doubt that the pressure would move that much just from the change in ambient temperature. I just hope the leak is someplace easy for him to find and fix.

2014/08/12 (T) Popcorn And A Movie

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It rained long and hard all day yesterday and into the evening past bedtime. Today brought more rain, though not as hard and not quite as persistent. Although we have low spots around our yard that turn into small temporary ponds when we get this kind of rain we are not in an area that is prone to flooding. That’s because we live just south of the boundary between two watersheds–the Huron River to the south and the Shiawassee River to the north–so water tends to flow away from here, eventually.

Phil (Best Precision Grading) stopped by around 10:30 AM to look at the pull-through driveway he built for us last year. He said it looked solid enough to drive the bus on it, but was obviously no longer level and had a low spot in front of the new front stairs. He will need a half day and a small load of 21AA road gravel to repair the damage done by Village Landscape Development while building our front stairs and sidewalk. The cost won’t be too bad (although it shouldn’t have cost us anything) but getting him to find the time to come do it could be a challenge. He’s had a busy summer and suffered the same delays as other contractors who do outdoor work due to the wet spring and summer we’ve had.

He was also here to see the work Village Landscape Development had done. He agreed that the hardscape work looked good but the grading in the rear did not look right and the tracks in the yard from the equipment had not been raked out properly. He suggested I let the grass grow in and the ground dry out before assessing whether anything needs to be done.

He also looked at the west end of our property, which sits lower than the east end where the house is located. The timing of his visit was good as all the low-lying areas had water standing in them, allowing him to see clearly the exact nature of the (lack of) drainage problem. His suggestion was a “French drain.” Basically it’s a trench that is shallow at the far/high end and gets deeper as it goes towards the place where the water needs to end up. Plastic drain tile, the kind with perforations and a nylon “sock” covering, gets laid in the trench and then the trench is filled to grade with pea gravel. The dirt that came out of the trench gets spread around to cover the pea gravel and blend in to the undisturbed soil on either side.

When completed, the drain would take all of the standing water plus much more out of the surrounding soil and allow it to flow to a culvert that runs to the southwest under the road just west of the culvert along the side of the road that will eventually be the entrance to our bus barn driveway. A French drain is cheaper to build than hauling in large truck loads of top soil and re-grading that part of the yard. We probably should have had Village Landscape make a French Drain around the two plastic drain lines they ran out into the yard from our basement walkout. Oh well, “can’t should‘a done it.”

We had tofu hot dogs for lunch and then Linda left to meet up with Diane to see a movie (Boyhood) and then go out to dinner at Bahama Breeze. I stayed home and worked at my computer, taking a break mid-afternoon to make popcorn. The worst weather of the day was happening at that time, so I stayed upstairs for a while and read the new 2nd edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook that I had just downloaded this morning. I worked until 7 PM and then stopped to have a light dinner consisting of chickpea spread on whole grain toast and half of a small watermelon. Linda got home as I was finishing my watermelon.

In spite of AT&T switching our phone and DSL service to all new wire pairs our Internet service went out occasionally throughout the day and evening, although it usually returned quickly. I think the sad truth is that their landline infrastructure is not as tolerant of wet weather as it should be and most of their money is going into expanding cellular service. We had the same problem over the years at our house in Farmington Hills.

2014/08/11 (M) SLAARC/WordPress

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Some of the members of SLAARC are former Detroit Edison employees (now DTE Energy) and one of them (Bruce, W8RA) currently works for Intercontinental Transmission Company (ITC). Bruce was curious what size transformer we had and said that there were likely numbers on it that I could read with a pair of binoculars. I went out this morning to check, but the only info on the transformer can is a metal plate that is too small and illegible to read from the ground even with our fairly good binoculars.

Darryll (DCM Heating & Cooling) had not shown up or called by 10:30 AM. His work doesn’t make a mess of our yard or house, at least it hasn’t yet, so it is less of a concern that he is not here working today than it was with the landscaping. When he left Thursday he had a short list of parts he needed to get and perhaps could not do that until this morning. Or he may have gotten emergency service requests, which take priority over new installations. Still, we would like to have the new HVAC work completed in the next week or so to make sure it is done ahead of the natural gas hookup.

As part of that work I have to complete some of the electrical pieces, finish dry-walling the utility closet, and continue cleaning, repairing, and organizing the garage while we have the storage pod. I then need to get to work on a long list of bus projects. I also have a lot of desk/computer work to do and I prefer to do that when I know I can settle in for a long stretch. I tend not to be in the right frame of mind for desk work when I do not know if/when contractors are going to show up. It’s turned out to be a busy, and in some ways complicated, summer that way. Darryll called late morning to say they would be back first thing Wednesday morning. That information allowed me to adjust my expectations and settle in for a long day and evening at my computer.

My main focus was working on the page content for the new SLAARC WordPress website, which occupied me until dinnertime with some e-mail mixed in. After dinner I started uploading blog posts beginning with the one for July 7th. I decided that I would not select and upload photos for most of the posts in July and early August and instead create more extensive gallery posts for the landscaping work and the garage/HVAC project.

One of the things I have noticed in the past week is that our Internet connection seems to be faster, or at least my e-mail processes much quicker than it used to. That could be the result of the AT&T repair on the 4th, which ended up moving us to entirely new wire pairs, or a change that AT&T made to our DSL service back on the 3rd (when it kept going off temporarily), or it could be that QTH upgraded their e-mail server system, or some combination of these. Whatever the case, it seems to be an improvement.

Phil from Precision Grading called at noon to see if he could stop by sometime after 3 PM today. It was raining gently at the time but when he called back a little after 3 PM the rain had finally opened up into a sustained downpour. He had an 8 AM appointment in Hell (Michigan) and we agreed that tomorrow morning after his appointment would probably be a much better time for him to stop by.

We ordered a “cat tent” the other day and it showed up this afternoon. We opened it and set up in the living room with the “door” tied open so the cats could explore the inside. They were wary, but did go in briefly. It’s kind of like a back-packing tent but all the fabric, including the floor, is mesh. We thought the floor would be a solid material, but it’s not. It will be OK for use on our deck at home, but seems less suitable for use on the ground when we are RVing. We intended to use it for both so we are not sure if we are going to keep it.

For dinner Linda made a tomato-onion-mushroom ragu and served it over a three rice blend with a dark mixed greens salad on the side. Later she served fresh strawberries with Lotus brand cookies and dark chocolate with bits of almond and sea salt. Seriously, what’s not to like about that?

2014/08/10 (N) Kathi Comes To Visit

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Kathi Slater is a long-time friend, the mother of three girls who went through middle and high school at the same time as our children. Her oldest daughter, Emily (who is now an MD) was one of our son’s best friends in high school. Kathi ended up working at Metropolitan Bakery with Linda and is still there. We have been trying to find a mutually agreeable time for her to come see our new house and today was finally the day.

Kathi arrived around 10:30 AM. As with all first time guests we gave her a tour of the house and then, being another gorgeous summer day, we walked the property. After the tours we settled in at the table on the deck under the shade of the umbrella and had a nice long chat. Linda made her wonderful chickpea salad and served it sandwich style for lunch with sourdough pretzel nibblers, fresh grapes, and sweet cherries. She left to return home around 2 PM.

I worked at my desk on website usernames and passwords until 5:30 PM. For dinner Linda made sautéed green beans and a dish with whole grain macaroni, cannellini beans, kale, other ingredients, and spices. Both dishes had a hint of garlic and red pepper flakes; just enough to elevate the dish but not so much as to dominate or overwhelm the primary flavors.

We finished eating a little after 6 PM and I had to leave for the 6:30 PM meeting of our ham radio club. The meeting was well attended with several of our newest club members there. After a short business meeting we had a brief introduction by Mike (W8XH) to ham radio projects that can be done with the Arduino (and similar) micro-controllers. Mike and Steve (N8AR) then led a discussion on the subject of antennas; specifically simple ones that can be built fairly easily.

I got home rafter 9 PM and had a piece of watermelon. We stayed up a little later than usual and decided to turn in without watching an episode any of the TV programs we are currently following.

2014/08/09 (S) WP User Accounts

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We went to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon for the first time in several weeks after which we visited with Chuck Spera at his shop in Novi. A while back I helped him retrieve an RV sofa/bed that he purchased from Pat and Vickie Lintner in Osceola, Indiana (near Elkhart). He had removed the old couch from his Liberty bus conversion and installed this new (to them) one. He wanted to show us the result and we wanted to see it. We sat and chatted for a while about bus conversions and then left him to work on his race car while we finished a morning errand.

We loaded our weeks’ worth of recyclables in the car before we went to breakfast and headed to Recycle Livingston from Chuck’s before returning home and having a bite of lunch (we do not eat much for breakfast at the restaurant in South Lyon).

I worked the rest of the day on cleaning up the SLAARC portion of the spreadsheet I created for generating usernames and passwords for WordPress websites. I had just received an updated roster from the treasurer, Paul (N8BHT), and had to bring my spreadsheet up-to-date before creating WordPress users. A portion of each of the organization websites I am creating will be restricted to current members and require a username and password to gain access. Each user account, in turn, must be tied to a unique e-mail account. It’s been a bit of work to set up and I am far from done at this point. While I was working on the SLAARC info I realized that I had not finished the same work for the other two organizations so I worked on that as well.

The last few weeks have been physically and mentally demanding and we both needed and enjoyed the easier days we had yesterday and today and the one we plan to have tomorrow when a long-time friend and co-worker of Linda’s is coming to the new house for her first visit. We watched another episode of Peroit on our Apple TV before turning in for the night.

2014/08/08 (F) Decked Out

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Today was the first day in over a month that we did not have contractors at the house, were not wondering why we did not have contractors at the house, or were not working on projects getting ready to have contractors at the house. I like working on projects, but today was a deep breath day for both of us. The weather was near perfect so we both spent much of the day on the rear deck where we made great use of our table and sun shade umbrella.

We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the deck, a first since we moved here. Linda read there, and I worked at my computer there during the afternoon and early evening. At one point our male cat, Jasper, was sitting by the dining room doorwall crying for us to come in and pay attention to him. Instead, Linda put him in his carrier and put it on the table. I don’t think he was comfortable at first, but he was near us and seemed to like being “outside” and able to look around. At least he stopped crying. Linda got online, found a “kitty tent” on Amazon that we liked, and ordered it. It’s a 5′ x 6′ tent that folds up and stores like a backpacking tent. All of the sides and the floor are nylon screen mesh. It has a zipper door. It should be here on Monday.

I worked at my desk all morning and finished up the test items I was writing for the Lectora version of the Michigan Assessment Consortium professional development series on Common Assessment Development. I got the items e-mailed off to the MAC and to Bill at Wayne RESA and e-mailed an invoice to the Kathy, the president of the MAC. Linda spent some time cleaning part of the house; she’s been doing a little bit each day.

The high point of the day was a low altitude flyover by five World War Two vintage aircraft from the Yankee Air Force based at Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti about 40 miles SSE of our house. They came directly over our house in a V-formation banking to the left and heading south. A B-17 bomber (4-engine) was at the point with a P-38 and a P-51 fighter on either side and two additional fighters at the tips that I could not identify. We heard them coming from some distance away and the sound was as impressive as the sight as they passed overhead. Linda checked online and discovered there was a major air show tomorrow at Willow Run Airport so we surmised they were on a practice flight.

For dinner, Linda made sweet potatoes topped with a mixture of black beans, tomatoes, onions, and several spices.

2014/07/23 (R) My Platform

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The primary elections are just around the corner but my platform has nothing to do with politics. My platform is a 46″ x 40″ surface 12″ above the floor in the northeast corner of the garage, or will be once I build it. This platform will be the base for the new HVAC unit for the library and I need to have it built before the equipment gets here and Darryll shows up to install it. Once the unit is installed I need to enclose it to isolate it from the garage to prevent explosive vapors or noxious fumes from entering the combustion chamber or fresh air circulation. That will require the construction of two walls one of which will have an exterior grade door.

John’s chop saw, which I borrowed the other night, allows me to make more accurate cuts (clean and square) than I can with my circular saw. In the meantime I have some work to do removing/installing a few studs in the north wall of the garage and running some new electrical wire. I need to run 120V 15A circuits for the furnace portion of the library unit and for the ceiling mounted garage furnace and a 240V 20A circuit for the library air-conditioner. Eventually I will have a 240V 30A outlet for our radial arm saw, which would be great for the woodworking aspects of this project, but that’s a project for another day.

Three landscapers showed up a little before 8 AM (Tommy, Matt, and Spencer). Tommy was on the phone with Steve getting their instructions for the day and then they got to work building an additional section of the west retaining wall with medium size boulders and preparing the area under the east end of the deck for a layer of egg rock. They took off around 9:45 AM for some unknown reason, but the sound of their truck reminded us to put the trash out at the street for pickup. They were back in a little while, worked until noon, and took their lunch break. By 3:30 PM they had the boulder wall built, the egg rock placed, a strip of edging set into a small trench, and small boulders placed on the eastern slope below the large boulders. That certainly looked like progress.

Linda worked at her desk until mid-afternoon and then started working on dinner. Although simple in presentation at the table, she put a lot of time into our meal. She made a potato and lentil curry that was very good with deep, complex flavors, and garlic naan bread. Both were as good as anything I have ever had at an Indian restaurant and the naan was vegan, made with unsweetened soy milk in place of dairy milk and olive oil in place of dairy butter.

I spent most of the day taking the measurements I needed to turn my mental concept for the utility closet into a set of design drawings from which I could produce a material list. By supper time I had a good set of drawings to guide the carpentry work but was still puzzling over some electrical issues. By the time Linda had dinner ready I was ready to set thus project aside for the night.

It was after 7 PM by the time we finished eating and cleaned up, but that left us plenty of time to sit on the deck and enjoy a cool northwest breeze and the muted light of scattered clouds. It eventually got too cool to stay outside so I worked at my computer until bedtime.

2014/07/20 (N) Company

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The landscapers were back at 7:45 AM as promised. We were up and ready for them and I was back working on the new sub-panel in the garage by 8:30 AM. I finished the work (for now) and cleaned up the mess as best I could. Electrical work, especially panel wiring, is very physical and tends to produce a lot of scrap. Once the garage was cleaned up I applied the same treatment to myself. By 1 PM I was ready for part 2 of my day, which began with a load of laundry, and then off to my desk to put a little time into our much neglected blog.

I have been taking photographs and writing daily blog posts all month but have not been taking the additional time to select and process the images and upload the posts to our WordPress site. The last blog post on our website is from July 6th. During the early afternoon planned to upload a few of the posts while we waited for Ron and Mary to arrive. I ended up filing and deleting e-mails, which I have also neglected for the last few days.

Ron (Linda’s brother) and Mary (Ron’s wife) arrived at 3:30 PM. They are on their way back to Pennsylvania after a week in Madison, Wisconsin participating in day-long bicycle rides. They are fairly serious bicyclists; a few years ago Ron rode from Seattle to Boston with a large group over the summer. This was their first visit to our new house so they got the full tour of the house and the property. We were sitting on the deck enjoying cool beverages and good conversation when the landscapers returned. They were still working with their heavy equipment, so we went back inside to talk.

Linda started pulling dinner together at 5:30 PM with Mary’s assistance. We had a green salad with cut up vegetables and seitan stroganoff served over white rice the way I like it. A glass of Merlot balanced nicely with the richness of the stroganoff. Linda, Ron, and Mary went for a walk after dinner while I loaded and started the dishwasher. When they returned we talked into the evening and Mary showed us pictures from family gatherings and their just-completed bicycle rides. Linda had baked a vegan chocolate cake this morning and served slices with fresh cut strawberries and vanilla coconut milk ice “cream” for dessert.

2014/07/15 (T) Files Files Files

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I have been concentrating on getting my ASUS laptop set up as my primary computer. I have most of the software (apps) installed and configured that I need, at least for now. My focus recently has been copying files from my older Dell laptop to our network attached storage units, but it has been a bit more complicated than that. I have to compare the folders and files I already have on the NAS units with the ones on the computer and consolidate them in such a way that I do not inadvertently “lose” some along the way, while at the same time trying to eliminate duplicates to the extent possible. Once I have the files on the two NAS units I delete most of them from the Dell laptop and used Defraggler to defragment the HDD.

I (we, but mostly me) have what Linda considers to be a ridiculous number of files. One backup directory related to the work I did in my 12 years at Wayne RESA had over 147,000 files with almost 15 GB of data. That’s a lot of files, and I have them stored on both NAS units. I am NOT moving all of them to my new machine; only the ones I need, as I need them, and will probably move new/revised documents back to the NAS units and take them off of my laptop. I’m retired, and do not feel the need to have work-related “stuff” on my laptop. Besides, we travel with one of the NAS units, so it’s always there if I need it. Yesterday I moved most of the RV-related files. Today it was ham radio and then K-12 education, which included all of the aforementioned work files. I have been putting off a couple of projects until I get the ASUS set up.

I chatted with Dan Fregin, the treasurer of our FMCA Freethinkers chapter, at length on the phone this evening. Our chapter has existed since June 2010, but most of us have never met more than a handful of other members face-to-face or even talked with them on the phone. We are a group of approximately 70 people spread out over North America (Canada, Mexico, and the U. S.) so we mostly interact via e-mail.

2014/07/14 (M) Education

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Linda was up at 6 AM and was out the door and on her way to Twelve Mile, Indiana at 6:30 AM. She decided last night not to have breakfast at home in favor of getting on the road. I slept in and got up at 7:30 AM. Lind’s homemade granola made for an easy, tasty breakfast.

Two landscapers showed up a little before 9:00 AM as I was getting ready to leave to run some errands and said Steve was on his way, so I stuck around until he got there. We looked at a few things together and then I left.

On the way home from running my errands I got a call from TOMTEK reminding me that we have an annual service contract with them for the main house furnace (hot-water base-board heat) and air-conditioner. I agreed to have them come on Thursday to service the A-C. Perhaps while they are here they can figure out why it makes a noise that sounds like the thump, thump, thump of a helicopter blade.

About a mile from the house I spotted a small Painted Turtle trying to cross Hacker Rd. A truck going the other way spotted it at the same time. We both turned around and came back. I got there first and put it on the front passenger floor mat after assuring the other driver that I was going to take it to our property and release it near the (neighbor’s) pond. Turtles have very little chance of successfully crossing a road most places, including around here.

The two landscapers worked into the afternoon. They could only go so far before needing Steve to inspect and approve their work. He did not make it back today and I think they quit working around 3 PM.

Education is what I did professionally for the last 21 years before I retired, and I am still doing it to some small extent. Back in the late winter I agreed to serve on a newly reconstituted FMCA national education committee. There are 6 – 10 people on the committee, depending on how you count, and except for a couple of staff at FMCA headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio we are spread out all over the U. S. Our meetings are, therefore, conducted by telephone conference with ideas and information shared via e-mail in-between. I also set up a folder in our personal Dropbox as a place to put documents so the committee can retrieve them.

We had our third meeting today from 4:00 to 5:30 PM EDT. I spent the rest of the evening creating an outline of a possible RV curriculum and dealing with e-mail related to our meeting. Linda got home at 8:00 PM and we had leftovers for dinner, after which I returned to my work and she headed to bed.

I have one, maybe two, days to concentrate on desk tasks. Once the Pack-Rat storage container arrives on Wednesday I will be tied up with house-related chores through the 19th and then company through the 23rd. I expect delivery of some HVAC equipment and materials during that window. With any luck Darryll will be here starting on the 24th and I will be tied up working with him through the end of the month. I’m hopeful, if not optimistic, that the landscapers will also be done with their two projects by the end of the month.

20140713 (N) Pack-Rat

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Guilty as charged. I am one of those guys who likes my stuff; it’s one of the main reasons we are not full-time RVers. In order to get the garage and library ready for Darryll, and not trash the house in the process, we checked online for portable storage units. We decided to order one from 1-800-Pack-Rat. They were slightly less expensive than PODS, but the main factor was their ability to deliver a 16-foot long unit on Wednesday this coming week. That will give us Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to clear enough stuff out of the garage to store the materials for Darryll and give him the space he needs to work.

Linda got a call from Butch at Service Motors to let her know they were back home from the Crosley Automobile Club national meet in Wauseon, Ohio and to see if she was available to come down tomorrow to finish up some critical accounting tasks related to the sale of most of their businesses assets. The purchasers were in Wauseon for the rally and arrived at the business as I was chatting with Butch. They plan to load all of the stuff they have bought into the five vehicles they brought with them and leave sometime on Tuesday, so Linda will be there mid-morning tomorrow and probably be home by 9:00 PM. It will be a 15 hour day for her; 8 hours of driving and 7 hours of accounting, but she can/will do it. I would normally go along, if for no other reason than to keep her company and share the driving, but I expect to have landscapers here tomorrow (and the rest of the week) and need to be here to interact with them. Besides, there isn’t anything useful I can do at Service Motors at the moment so I would just be in the way and twiddling my thumbs.

We were both tired this morning and slept in a little later than normal. That meant a later breakfast, which meant we skipped lunch and had an early dinner. That, in turn allowed me to have dinner before going to our monthly Ham radio club meeting in South Lyon.

The morning overcast gave way to scattered clouds and blue skies on pleasant northwest winds, bringing cooler temperatures and lower humidity. It was a perfect day for sitting on the (north facing) deck and doing sit down things, and that is exactly what we did. Linda spent some time reading Veganomicon while I finished up a couple of blog post drafts and reviewed the SLAARC/WP website in advance of having to demonstrate it this evening for the ham radio club. The site still needs work. Some pages still need content, I found a few spelling errors, and I still need to resize photos so they take up less disk space and load faster. The login feature is still working and the roster/database still displays correctly, if somewhat inelegantly. But it’s functional enough to give the club members a preview and I will only demonstrate one photo gallery with a limited number of images so it shouldn’t be too sluggish.

By mid-afternoon it was warm enough that I decided to work in my office and get a few more blog posts uploaded to our WordPress site. Linda made a “pasta e fagioli” recipe from Veganomicon and added some chopped dark leafy greens she had on hand. She needed a dry white wine for the recipe and opened our bottle of Semi-Dry Riesling from Chateau Chantal, a gift from our daughter’s recent trip to the Traverse City area. It was a little dry for my taste as a before dinner wine but paired very nicely with the meal.

I got to South Lyon just ahead of the 6:30 PM start of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) monthly meeting. The business meeting was short. We then had a lengthy presentation/discussion of our ARRL Field Day participation followed by a short preview of the new WordPress website. It was generally well received and I got a few good suggestions during the discussion.

When I got home around 9 PM we had chocolate cake (vegan, of course) with raspberry sauce and relaxed for a while before turning in for the night.

2104/07/12 (S) Natural Gas

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You might think that this would be a reference to the natural by-product of having breakfast with our ham radio friends in South Lyon this morning at the Senate Coney Island, but that is not the case. We had a 10:30 AM appointment at the house this morning with Darryll Mech of DCM Heating and Cooling to finalize the work that needs to be done to get the house ready for conversion to natural gas. The natural gas contractor for Consumer’s Energy (Roese Construction) started installing the main lines in our area a couple of weeks ago and they expect to have the project completed by September 26 (of this year). That means we will have natural gas to the house sometime between now and then and we need to have everything as ready as we can before they hang the meter so the final conversion will be minimal and quick once the natural gas is turned on.

The work at our house breaks down into three pieces. The first piece is running black pipe on the outside of the house from the southeast corner down the east side, across the back, under the upper and lower decks, along the back of the garage, and up the west side of the garage. The gas meter will be installed at the southeast corner of the house where the propane currently enters the house. The existing house piping will be used to supply natural gas to the house furnace, kitchen range, and outside grill connector. The whole house generator is by the southwest corner of the garage and is currently on its own propane tank. After the natural gas is hooked up everything needs to be on a single natural gas service/meter.

As the gas pipe runs along the back side of the garage there will be a T to supply gas into the garage. That has to do with the second piece of the work. We are having a ceiling mounted garage heater installed and a small furnace/air-conditioner for the library. The HVAC unit will allow us to heat the library in the winter without cycling the main hot-water baseboard heating system, which is at the end of a long run through unheated attic space and is not particularly efficient or effective. More importantly, it will allow us to control the humidity on humid summer days (it’s a library, after all, so it contains a lot of books and other humidity sensitive paper materials). As part of that work we need to remove a propane space heater that is mounted in the wall abutting the garage and cap the line. We also need to remove a window mount air-conditioner in that same wall. Yes, that’s right, the current A-C for that room exhausts into the garage.

The third piece of the puzzle will be disconnecting the propane and converting the appliances that currently run on propane; the kitchen range, the main furnace, and the generator. We will have Darryll take care of disconnecting the propane from the house and connecting the natural gas to the existing house piping and start up the two new furnaces once the gas is available. We will then have TOMTEK convert the main furnace since they already service it for us. Depending on timing we may be without our main furnace and domestic hot water until TOMTEK can complete their work. I may convert the range, have Darryll do it, or have TOMTEK do it. Regardless of who does the conversion I will need to get the conversion kit. Bratcher Electric will connect the gas line and convert the whole house generator and do the annual service at the same time.

While Bratcher Electric is here we are going to have them run a 100 Amp, 4-wire cable from the outlet of the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage to the panel in the northeast corner of the garage. The existing setup has the 200 A main panel in the basement of the house with a 60 A / 240 V breaker supplying the cable that feeds the sub-panel in the garage. That means the power to the sub-panel goes from the garage all the way to the house and then all the back to the garage. That’s a lot of unnecessary forth and back. In part because of that, and in part because of the electrical needs of the new garage furnace and library HVAC unit, I am going to replace the sub-panel in the garage with a 100 Amp main breaker panel in advance of all of this work.

The current sub-panel is a General Electric but the main house panel is a Square D Homeline. Lowe’s and Home Depot carry both the Homeline and QO product lines from Square D, and Home Depot also carries GE and Siemens. If I installed a GE main panel in the garage I could potentially reuse the existing breakers and save a little money. On the other hand, they have been in an unconditioned space for who knows how long, and they are not physically compatible with the Homeline breakers. Indeed, the four different products are not generally interchangeable. But the main consideration is selection and availability, and the Square D products win on those criteria.

Once the new furnaces are installed we will still have some work to do. We will have to repair the walls in the library, insulate the hot air duct in the garage (although Darryll may take care of that), and enclose the library HVAC unit. Because the library HVAC unit will be installed in the northeast corner of the garage it has to be in its own little sealed room to prevent automotive engine exhaust or other noxious fumes in the garage from being drawn in to the conditioned air or explosive fumes, such as gasoline vapor, from being drawn into the combustion chamber. The furnace will have its own air intake and exhaust tubes. The garage heater uses a sealed combustion chamber with a special concentric intake and exhaust tube, so it does not have to be enclosed.

Darryll indicated he could start the last week of July and would need about a week to do all of his initial work. We have company coming the 20th through the 23rd, so we have the upcoming week to prep (clean out) the garage and library for Darryll. This is the kind of situation that could give us gas if we weren’t used to it and enjoy it. There’s nothing like a construction project to get you up and moving first thing in the morning and keep you up late at night.

20140711 (F) Nice Weather Lately

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Steven’s nephew, Spencer, was here a little after 8 AM and spent some time cleaning up the driveway. He was joined by Tommy, who was only available for the morning. Tommy got instructions from Steve by phone and they tried working on the retaining walls, but I’m not sure what they accomplished. One of the large boulders Steve positioned yesterday on the lower west wall had dropped 6 inches and they were unable to re-position it.

It was another pleasant day, so I decided to work outside during the morning. I cut up some previously trimmed tree limbs and then started pruning our apple tree. I tried to cut all of the dead limbs and branches I could reach from the ground using our new Fiskar’s ratcheting lopper. With that material removed I was able to use the pole saw and compound lopper to remove some larger and/or higher limbs. By noon it was getting warm and I knocked off for the day and had lunch. Linda made the chickpea (garbanzo bean) salad that we both like so much and served it on a bed of greens with red grapes and sweet Bing cherries on the side.

Tommy had to take off for the afternoon and left Spencer to start moving smaller rocks onto the slope of the east retaining wall. We would occasionally hear one thud against the foundation and I decided I should check on his progress. He was doing a fine job of tossing rocks into place, but I did not like the way the earth was pitched as it appeared to slope back towards the house. I examined the west wall and it appeared to have the same problem.

Since the whole reason for this project was to get water to flow away from the house, I asked Spencer to take a break while I called Steve. I told him that something just did not look right to me and that I could not see any evidence of a drain tile behind the upper wall on the west side. He was running the excavator at another job site and wasn’t able to come look at our job so he sent Kyle over to pick up Spencer, who did not have a car. With a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday through Monday it is looking more and more like this job will not be done until the end of July.

In the afternoon I continued working on configuring my Windows 8.1 laptop. My challenge today was getting Outlook 2013 to preview PDF files. I used the search feature on the Start screen to locate information, some of which indicated I would have to create and/or edit the registry. In the end the solution only required two steps: installing Adobe Reader 11 and then setting it as the default program for PDFs.

With that problem solved I edited my blog posts for July 1 through 9 and started uploading them. I managed to get the posts for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd uploaded before dinner. I also got a return call from Darryll at DCM Heating and Cooling and we agreed he would come to the house tomorrow at 10:30 AM to finalize the work we need done and pin down a start date to prep the house for natural gas and install a small HVAC unit for the library and a furnace for the garage. We also need the main air-conditioner serviced. Luckily it has been a cool summer so far. The conversion of appliances will have to wait until the natural gas line is connected to the meter and turned on, which could be as late as early October.

I got a call from Gary at GM Construction sometime in the last few days. He finally had all of his supplier quotes for our pole barn / bus garage project and had a price for us. It was higher than I would have liked, but less than the quote from Morton Buildings, which was for a much smaller barn. Last night I called Phil from Precision Grading to update him on the status of the project and to see if he would swing by and look at the pull-through driveway which the landscapers have torn up more than I expected. My best guess is that we will get a barn up somehow, but I’m not sure when or how.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled sliced tofu with onions and Bar-B-Que sauce served on a toasted sandwich bun with a side of lightly oiled and baked potato wedges and a few fresh strawberries. Of course, that meant ketchup with Tabasco sauce. We split a can of cold Yuengling beer which was the perfect beverage for this meal. Sometime in the last two days Linda made a raspberry sauce from frozen raspberries we picked last year. Earlier today she made a vegan chocolate cake and this evening the cake and raspberry sauce came together for dessert.

2014/07/10 (R) Home And Garden

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On Tuesday I agreed to demonstrate the new SLAARC WordPress website at our ham radio club meeting this coming Sunday. I would like to spend some time working on the site between now and then but it is well enough along at this point to give folks a preview at the meeting, time permitting. My current goal is to unlock the public portions of the website by the August meeting and then supply each of the members with their username and password shortly thereafter. My “stretch goal” is to have the site set up so a member’s username and password also allows them to edit their roster record in the Participant’s Database. It’s a stretch goal because it is unlikely I will meet it unless I really stretch myself, which is to say, I put aside a lot of other tasks to concentrate on this on, or I work more/harder and sleep less. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

In fact, it was a nice enough day today that we both decided to work in the yard. I concentrated on pruning branches, mostly dead, from two fir trees and cutting them up into manageable size pieces for the fire pit. Linda took some time to weed the plant beds on the east end of the house and the juniper beds behind the garage. By mid-afternoon I’d had enough of this work for the day and turned my attention towards reorganizing our RV-related computer files.

Steve (Village Landscape Development) showed up mid-afternoon with the excavator and re-positioned several large boulders on the west retaining wall so one of his crews could continue working on the walls first thing tomorrow morning. He also brought samples of three different color bricks so I could select one for the front sidewalk. The one I selected is slightly darker than the pre-cast steps and similar to the reddish color mortar used on the main house bricks. The pavers will be solid, rectangular, and installed flat in a herringbone pattern on a 45 degree bias. We also discussed placing one or two medium size boulders on either side of the upper steps to keep folks from stepping off of the porch or the side of the stairs.

For dinner we had a large salad with lots of “extras” and then opened a bottle of NV Cesar Florido Moscatel Dorado. This is a sherry from Jerez (Spain) that our son and daughter-in-law got me for Father’s Day. It was recommended by their friend, Jorge Lopez-Chavez, who manages the wine department at The Produce Station in Ann Arbor, MI. We each had a small glass (it is 17.5% alcohol by volume) served at ~50 degrees F and agreed that was very good.

After dinner I finished re-organizing our RV-related computer files, backed them up to our NAS units, and the copied them to my Windows 8.1 laptop. We watched the last episode of season four of Doc Martin using our Amazon Video account.

2014/07/09 (W) vCard Magic And Adult Tonka Toy

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This morning when I turned my computers on there was an update available for Adobe Creative Cloud so I let it download while we had breakfast using our new Corelle dinnerware. Adobe updates are either very large or their servers are very slow or both. Whatever the reason, their updates seem to take a very long time to download and install.

A couple of the landscapers arrived at 8:00 AM and resumed work on the front stairs. It was overcast at dawn but the clouds were forecast to clear by the afternoon with temperatures in the low 70’s and zero chance of rain. That would normally be a perfect day to work outside, if the ground wasn’t saturated with water from the recent rains. They worked on the front stairs until lunch time, took a short lunch break, and then worked a little longer. When they quit for the day they had all nine of the large precast steps installed and the crushed limestone base built for the brick paver sidewalk. I think they left because there wasn’t anything else for them to do at our site until they either had some additional materials (slag and paver bricks), more crew members (for moving dirt in wheelbarrows or digging trenches by hand), or dry enough conditions to get the excavator around back ( to trench and set boulders in the retaining walls).

Linda decided not open more boxes today and focused instead on deep cleaning the kitchen, including the freezer/refrigerator, stove, and microwave and getting things ready to go to the recycling center and the Salvation Army donation center and resale store. While all of that was going on I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and got to work on my computer tasks. I checked my e-mail using my new ASUS laptop computer. Everything looked OK, so I started reading and replying to e-mails on the new laptop. That was a major milestone in that I am now committed to using the new machine as my primary computer.

With that transition in mind I spent much of the morning copying files from my old laptop to both the old and new NAS units. I then copied critical files having to do with my websites and photographs from one of the NAS units to my new laptop. Getting the new laptop setup with everything I need will take quite a while, but that’s OK as it also affords me the opportunity to move over only those things that I absolutely need when I need them.

I installed the vCard Wizard (vCard4Outlook) add-in without difficulty but the installation of the Duplicate Killer add-in failed. I checked the 4Team.biz website and then e-mailed their support address. My ASUS is running Windows 8.1 / 64-bit and apparently my Outlook 2013 is also 64-bit. According to their website the vCard Wizard add-in supports the 64-bit version of Outlook 2013, but the Duplicate Killer add-in only supports the 32-bit version. One of my reasons for buying vCard Wizard was that I figured the companion Duplicate Killer program from the same company would work better with it than it would with a vCard converter from another company. If I had realized it wasn’t compatible with my configuration I could have pursued other options.

I sync’d my Palm Tungsten T3 to my old Dell laptop and then did a vCard export of all my contacts and moved it to the ASUS laptop via one of the NAS units. From there I was able to import all of my old Palm contacts into the Contacts folder in my Personal Folder, creating duplicates if/as needed. The Personal Folder is a carryover from my previous conversion from MS Outlook Express to MS Outlook 2007. I am a bit unclear about the distinction between the “address book” and “contacts” within the context of MS Outlook and I am not sure I have accomplished what I intended to accomplish with vCard Wizard. I have accomplished something for sure–my Palm contacts are now clearly in my Outlook 2013–but I thought they would be added to my address book, which does not appear to be the case. Perhaps I chose the wrong destination folder? More research is needed.

By 4:30 PM it was obvious the landscapers were not coming back today so that gave me the opportunity to practice using the Kobelco 35sr excavator again. I worked for about 90 minutes digging more junk out of the woods just southwest of our house and adding it to the pile I started on Monday. Think bricks, cinder blocks, railroad ties, landscape timbers, dimensional lumber, cut up tree trunks and large downed tree limbs and you will have the picture. In addition to the bucket for digging and transferring material, the excavator has a claw “thumb” that can be closed to hold things in the bucket, like tree limbs, or pick things up, like boulders and cinder blocks. It turned out that the bucket/claw combination are much stronger than a cinder block; I broke several trying to pick them up.

By the time I parked the machine and turned it off Linda had dinner ready. She made a salad of dark greens with almonds and grapes and a barley, split pea, lentil risotto with carrot, red onion, celery, garlic, and a few chopped up greens. We finished the bottle of Merlot we bought at Whole Foods on Saturday. At $3 per bottle (750 ml) it was competitive with box wines like Franzia, and of comparable quality. Although slightly dry for my taste, it was a good accompaniment to the somewhat savory dishes Linda has made this week. I would be tempted to stock up at that price if I liked a bit more than I do.

After dinner I edited photographs on my new computer for the first time. They will appear in the various blog entries starting with July 1st, which I will also edit and upload using the new machine. Although the transition to a new computing platform always feels awkward for a while, and there is desire to return to the comfort of the old familiar one, from here on out I will be focused on making the ASUS my primary computing platform.

2014/07/08 (T) New Dinnerware

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I did not get all of the debris pulled out of the woods last night with the Kobelco sx35sr-3 excavator. I was just learning how to use it so I wasn’t very efficient, and even if I had been experienced I could not have moved everything before it got dark. I was up early this morning to get some more stuff moved before the landscapers showed up and needed it, but they beat me to the punch.

Steve showed up briefly to get the two-man crew on task and then left. They worked on preparing and setting the next course of steps in front. By the time they had one set it had started misting and progressed quickly to a light, steady rain. They tried taking the excavator around back to do some trenching but the rain intensified and the ground was already very soft. They almost got it stuck so I waved them off and made them take it back around to the front of the house. They left shortly thereafter. The afternoon weather was dry, cool, and breezy–very pleasant working conditions–but no one returned to resume the work. The forecast for the rest of the week is for drier, cooler conditions, but it will take days for the ground behind the house to dry out enough that they can work efficiently and safely.

We still have a lot of unopened boxes from our move last year and Linda decided yesterday to start opening them and trying to deal with the contents. She is always eager to get rid of things while I tend to be reluctant to part with stuff, but I am slowly coming around accepting that we have a lot of stuff we do not need, will never use, has no value, and that we have no place to store.

Her target was five boxes today. I thought that was optimistic, but she dealt with five yesterday and five more today. One of the boxes today had a collection of stemware with all the pieces individually wrapped in newspapers from circa 1995. The newspaper was from our previous community, so we are the ones who packed them and obviously had them for some time before that. We think we got them from my parents but no longer remember when or why. Some of them may have belonged to my mother’s parents.

The discovery of the stemware led to them being washed and set out to dry followed by a re-thinking of what is stored/displayed in the kitchen/dining area. That, in turn, led to a reconsideration of our everyday dinnerware. We bought our Mikasa Studio Nova dinnerware a long time ago, perhaps more than 30 years, and it has served us well. I still like the pattern; a simple round white plate with a colorful geometric edging that reminds me of the work of the Russian artist Kandinsky. We have broken or chipped enough pieces over the years that we no longer have a complete service for more than four people, and many of the remaining pieces have developed stress lines and will eventually break.

Mikasa no longer manufactures the Studio Nova pattern and we have been looking for a replacement for the last couple of months. We found one we liked at Bed, Bath, and Beyond but held off buying it while we continued to look. We get 20% off coupons from BB&B regularly and when the rain let up Linda decided to go to the store in Brighton and buy the Noritaki set we liked, but came back empty handed. It turned out that what we thought was a set of four pieces for four place settings (16 pieces) for $40 was just one place setting of four pieces. We wanted to get 12 place settings plus service pieces, so this was not going to be our new dinnerware.

We spent some time looking at products online and found that the price of Mikasa products was similar to the Noritaki. This changed our view of the price of Corelle dinnerware which we had also looked at and liked but mistakenly ruled out as too expensive. We live about 11 miles from an outlet mall that has a Corning store (I know, I know, we live in a rural paradise) so we drove over there to see what they had in stock. They had a 40% off sale on all open stock items (if you bought 12 or more pieces) and 20% off on boxed sets.

We looked at square designs and modern patterns, but decided to go with their plain Winter Frost White round product. This is one of their longest running and broadest product lines with all items available as open stock. They had boxed sets of five pieces for six place settings (30 pieces total) so we bought two of them to have a service for 12, and filled in an extra set of 12 medium plates, some serving bowls, and a couple of serving platters. The simple white dinnerware makes any food look good and easy to see. Our walls and appliances are white and our dining room table is a darker oak so the plates will both match and contrast nicely with our decor.

When we got home we opened everything and put it in the dishwasher. While it ran Linda boxed up all of the old Mikasa pieces that were still serviceable. She will donate them to the local Salvation Army store tomorrow.

My focus for today was purchasing and installing an add-in that allows Microsoft Outlook to import multiple vCards from a single file. It’s really galling that I have to spend money to get Outlook to do something that it obviously should be able to do as a standard, built-in function, but there it is. I researched plug-ins for this a few weeks ago so I revisited what I had previously found. I finally selected the vCard Wizard (vCard4Outlook) along with Duplicate Killer, both from 4TEAM Corp. By purchasing them together I got Duplicate Killer for 50% off. As soon as the purchase was completed I received the downloaded links for both programs and downloaded them but did not install them right away.

Why all the bother? My old Palm Tungsten T3 PDA can output my contacts in vCard format, but it puts them all in one file. There are manual ways to import this data to Outlook, but it would take days instead of minutes. I may be retired but I do not have the patience for that and have better things to do with my time; even a nap would qualify. The problem with the manual (free) approach is that it requires you to review each contact and decide what to do with it. I have over 1,000 contacts in my Palm and there was no way I was going to review them one-by-one.

Dr. Michael Greger (NutritionFacts.org) recently did a nice video on the research findings about the health benefits of eating yams. Linda picked up a nice big yam at Whole Foods on Saturday and baked it for dinner this evening, topping it with black beans cooked with tomatoes and onions, and finished off with vegan sour cream. Yes, the “sour cream” is added fat calories, but we do not use it very often.

After dinner I copied over the Outlook mailbox (.pst) files from my old Dell laptop (Win XP / Outlook 2007) to my new ASUS laptop via one of the NAS units in preparation for moving to the use of Outlook on the new laptop tomorrow morning. I spent a while after that selecting and processing images for blog posts going back to July 1st. I have been keeping up with writing these posts, but not with posting them.

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

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My first task most mornings is to make coffee and my second task is to eat breakfast. Linda puts a lot of thought, time, and effort into our meals so I take my responsibility to eat them very seriously.

Bruce operating the excavator!

After breakfast I called Steve at Village Landscape to check on their plans and he said they were headed our way shortly. He was bringing the excavator so I let him know that the retaining wall worksite behind the house was a muddy pond from last night’s rain but the front of the house looked suitable for working on the sidewalk/stairs project. We would really like to have a front sidewalk and stairs before Ron and Mary get here on the 20th of this month.

My first computer task of the day, after starting my machines, is always to log in to RVillage and my second task is to check e-mail. Those tasks usually recur throughout the day. Beyond those tasks it’s whatever else needs to be done that I also feel like doing and there is often a considerable lack of congruence between those two ways of considering the tasks at hand. At the top of both lists this morning was installing the Jetpack plug-in on the other two WordPress websites I run; the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches and our personal one. I actually managed to get this done today, but not until the afternoon. Go back to any of the previous gallery posts and click on one of the images to see how much nicer they are to view now.

When the power flickered last night it interrupted our viewing of Doc Martin. I was momentarily confused by that until we realized that Linda’s iPad was connected to the Amped Wireless access point in the basement which was not plugged in to a UPS unit. It was at one point but that UPS unit failed and I had not yet replaced it so I went to the Best Buy store in Brighton this morning and bought a small APC unit. It will be adequate to maintain power to the access point and also provide surge/spike protection for the audio equipment. And it was on sale. While I was out I picked up a new pruning lopper at Home Depot (a Fiskar’s ratcheting model) and some soy milk at Meijer’s. Such is the way with tasks and errands.

The landscapers had not yet arrived by the time I got back from my errands but did arrive around noon. Steve brought the excavator and a crew of four and they worked all afternoon on the front stairs. They removed the old half circle step from in front of the porch, excavated for the new steps, back filled with crushed limestone, leveled and compacted it, and set the top three steps and the bottom step. The steps are precast concrete 46″ wide, 19″ deep, and 7″ high. They are being installed with a 17″ tread depth which is very comfortable for walking up and down the stairs. The stairs flare out at the bottom by the driveway, so the bottom step is three of these precast units set end-to-end. The next step up will use two of these precast units. All of the other steps are a single unit in width. The area between the upper steps and the lower steps will be a brick paver sidewalk.

Before Steve left for the evening he positioned the excavator over by the trash pile and walked me through the controls. After dinner I spent a couple of hours “practicing” with the machine by picking cinder blocks, bricks, and cut up trees out of the woods and putting them in a trash pile. The controls were “touchier” than I expected and I had a tendency to jerk the machine around rather than operate it smoothly. I also found it tricky to coordinate the two joysticks to make it move in certain ways. There wasn’t anything intuitive about most of the controls; certain functions are simply assigned to the two joysticks, and the buttons on them, and you have to operate it enough that it becomes second nature. As fun as it was to play with, you would be pretty sore at the end of a long workday if you had to run this machine for a living.

Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia hosted another live video chat this evening for the Mobile Internet Aficionados (MIA) private/membership group. We were going to participate but did not because I was playing with the excavator, a task that wasn’t even on my list this morning. Membership in the group was one of our premiums for contributing to their Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. They used the campaign to finance the re-write of their Mobile Internet Handbook. This is THE definitive resource for people, especially RVers, who are mobile and need to be online. The technology is changing so rapidly that a re-write and expansion was already needed just a year after the book was originally published.

I did not accomplish all of my computer tasks today, but I did accomplish the one at the top of both my need and want lists. It happens; sometimes. I also got to play with a life size Tonka toy, which was very cool. I think that is the first time I have operated a piece of construction larger than a two-person posthole digger.

2014/07/06 (N) Charmed

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Between the landscapers, tree trimming, and having grand-daughter Madeline here for several nights I have not worked at my desk very much this past week. I have several projects in process that require me to work at my computer(s) and the most efficient place for that work is generally in my office at my desk.

Since we did not get to go out for our usual ham radio club breakfast yesterday we treated ourselves to a trip to Panera in Brighton this morning. Comfy chairs, good Wi-Fi, yummy bagels, and tasty, unlimited coffee made for a pleasant morning. When we were working we went to the local Panera by our previous house almost every Sunday morning. We did not expect to see the landscapers today, and that turned out to be the case.

I had three main objectives for today and got one of them partially completed. That’s about “par for the course,” as the saying goes. I continued to research WordPress plug-ins that would provide a better display of WP gallery images and finally concluded that the best option was the Carousel feature of the Jetpack plug-in from Automattic. My second choice was the Responsive Lightbox by dFactory but, based on the descriptions, the Carousel more closely matched the functionality I was looking for.

I installed the Jetpack on the FMCA Freethinker website I am developing to test it. This website only had a few image galleries, each of which only had a few images, so it was a contained experiment. The plug-in installed without difficulty and it was easy to activate and link through my WordPress.com account. It was also easy to activate and configure the Carousel component and de-activate most of the other components that I did not need/want at this time. When I viewed the existing galleries the thumbnails on the page looked the same as before but when I clicked on an image the Jetpack Carousel took over the display of the gallery. Instead of opening the image in a browser page it displayed the image in a full screen lightbox with forward and backward arrows. It also had a button to view the current image at its “full size” and provided information about the technical aspects of how the image was created (camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, etc.). So without having to recreate galleries, or edit the shortcodes on pages/posts where the galleries appear, any native WP Gallery on the site now displayed better; much better. And it was free.

I have learned not to be overconfident when it comes to software, so it did not surprise me when the installation on the new SLAARC/WP website did not go as smoothly as the Freethinker installation. The SLAARC site is hosted on GoDaddy and, according to the Jetpack support forum on WordPress.org, users were having all sorts of problems following a GoDaddy server upgrade just a week ago. I got an “internal server error” on my first attempt, followed by an installation failure due to the presence of pre-existing folders. I had to log in to GoDaddy and use the file manager to delete the Jetpack plug-in folder and everything it contained. While I was logged in to GoDaddy I had to close and re-open the file manager twice to get it to work. I also ran CCleaner on my laptop which cleared the Google Chrome browser cache. “The third time’s a charm,” as the saying goes, and I finally got it installed, activated, and configured. I tested it and it worked like a charm. I sent an e-mail off to Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) to let them know and ask them to take a look when they had time.

We watched another episode of Doc Martin, during which we had another momentary power failure. This one was so brief that our whole house generator did not even notify us of the power blip. As the episode was concluding we heard the faint rumble of distant thunder. A check of The Weather Channel and Wundermap on our iPads showed a large storm cluster north west of us moving east. It looked like it might miss us, but a little while later we lost our power again, this time long enough to trigger the notification from the GenSet, but not long enough to cause it to start. Within 10 minutes of that second power blip we had a steady summer rain event. It looked like it might rain through the overnight. If so, the landscapers won’t be able to work on the retaining walls on Monday, at least not with the excavator.

2014/07/05 (S) Re-Search

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Contractors who do outside work, such as excavators, builders, and landscapers are at the mercy of the weather, so they work when they can, and when they can work, they often put in long hours. For those of us who made our living doing “white collar” work for companies with paid holidays, the 4th of July often meant a 3- or 4-day weekend. For other kinds of workers, the 4th of July is a day off; one day, and for yet others (think retail) it is just another workday. It doesn’t matter that it fell on a Friday this year. The landscapers couldn’t work on Thursday because of the overnight rain. No work means no pay. Saturday July 5th, however, was forecast to be great weather for working outside, and with sunny skies and no rain since Thursday, our job site had dried out sufficiently to allow people and machines to work. Alas, the holiday spirit was with them and they did not show up first thing this morning like I thought they might.

Since grand-daughter Madeline spent her second night in a row with us last night she was still here this morning. Consequently we did not go to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon like we usually do on Saturday morning. Madeline woke up hungry and Grandma Linda had her bottle warmed up and ready to go. She had also prepped all of the ingredients for her yummy vegan blueberry pancakes. Madeline had a little banana and some fresh blueberries while grandma cooked the pancakes and I made the coffee. We all enjoyed our breakfast.

Madeline Eloise sitting on our fake rock in our front yard (it’s the cover for our well).

After breakfast we played and read and went outside to walk around in the driveway. Our son called and we figured out who was going to travel where and when to get Madeline back home. He was working on a project to rebuild their front porch/steps and was involved in painting wood pieces prior to assembling them, so we agreed to drive Madeline to their house in Ann Arbor in time for a light lunch before her usual nap time. That also allowed us to stop at the Whole Foods market near their house on our way out of town. A Whole Foods market is the only thing we do not have in the Brighton/Howell/Hartland area that we truly miss. We would shop there several times a week if we had one nearby.

I managed to sneak away to the basement occasionally to do a load of laundry and install 126 updates on our Linux computer. The updates involved file downloads totaling just over of 310+ MB so I started the process and let it run. We get an effective download speed from our AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) DSL connection of just over 1 Mb/sec or 64 Mb/min. That is roughly 8 MB/min. At that speed, 320 MB takes about 40 minutes to transfer, assuming AT&T doesn’t detect the amount of data being transferred and “throttle” (slow down) the speed. Cell phone companies are known to do this but it is less clear whether AT&T does that sort of thing with their landline services.

We got back to the house at 2:15 PM. Linda developed a headache while we were out, so she took some meds, put the groceries away, and laid down to rest. There was no sign of the landscapers and no phone call, so there was no chance at that point that they would show up today. That was OK with us; it is a holiday weekend and it was their idea to come work today, not ours; I just said it was OK if that’s what they wanted to do. Apparently they didn’t. The one thing I was looking forward to was having Steve show me how to operate the Kobelco sk35sr-3 excavator and then practicing operating it by removing concrete blocks, bricks, downed trees, and other detritus from the woods by the road southwest of our house. Just behind these woods is where they are piling all of the construction debris anyway, so I would be able to position the excavator to allow me to grab most of the trash out of the woods and then swing it over and deposit it on the pile. Maybe Monday?

Yesterday I posted a question to the WordPress.org support forum for the Jetpack plug-in and I got a reply a couple of hours later that directly answered my question. I wanted to install/activate the Jetpack on more than one self-hosted website and needed to know if I could use a single WordPress.com account or if I needed a separate account for each site? I was glad to find out that I only needed the one account that I already have. The Jetpack plug-in is massive overkill for what I need to accomplish immediately, but some of the reviews suggested that it is so comprehensive it may be the last plug-in I ever have to install. That is unlikely for a number of reasons, and a bit contrary to the open source nature of WordPress and the international community of developers that support it, but the plug-in does have 33 different “components.” For most of those features there are other plug-ins available–in some cases lots of them—but this provides everything in a neat package with its own special place on the admin panel menu.

Linda was feeling better after a long, much-needed nap but did not feel like cooking. She picked up ingredients at Whole Foods today to make mock beef stroganoff but decided to make it tomorrow. Our go-to for no-prep meals are the various frozen products from Amy’s. We try to always have a few in the freezer for occasions when Linda does not have the time or interest to prepare a meal from scratch. Tonight we had the lasagna. Linda wanted some fresh greens with dinner but did not feel like making a salad so she used a bed of mixed greens as a base for the lasagna. If that sounds a bit strange, all I can say is that it was very nice for both taste and texture.

I spent more time this evening investigating the WordPress Jetpack plug-in, the result of which was that I deferred installing and activating it. The attraction of this plug-in is that the Carousel feature works with the existing WP Gallery shortcode(s). That means it works retroactively with every page and post containing a WP Gallery and that I would continue to create galleries they way I always have using the native WP Gallery functionality. That sounds like exactly what I need, except that on further investigation I started seeing comments about banner ads, and a feature that allows website/blog visitors to comment on individual images with no easy way to disable it. The workaround involves custom CSS code. Ugh.

I kept looking and found a plug-in where the “author” had simply “forked” (extracted) the code for the Carousel function from the Jetpack plug-in and offered it as a separate plug-in. Ignoring whether that was even ethical, some of the reviews suggested that it did not work correctly and that support issues were not being resolved. I need something more reliable and better supported so I kept looking and found a very extensive plug-in that was free and had been downloaded over 1,000,000 times! Now that has to be a great plug-in, right? Maybe; maybe not. The reviews were very mixed and many seemed to complain about the constant “tinkering” the author does with the plug-in, issuing updates every 3 – 4 days.

If I was willing to spend money for a plug-in my options would be greatly expanded, but I have looked at those as well and they all have mixed reviews. The leading contender is the NextGEN Gallery plug-in, but the biggest downside with all of these gallery plug-ins is that they do not work with the native WP Gallery shortcodes which, in turn, would require me to rebuild existing galleries from within the plug-in. The ones that I find the most annoying are the ones with a free version that turns out to just be a teaser; the features I need are always in the “pro” or “premium” version. An episode of Doc Martin gave me a needed and entertaining break from my research, which is appropriate in this situation as I have searched for a good image display plug-in before and now I am searching for one again.

2014/06/15 Family Time

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We were parked in a fenced compound area next to the regular “campground” at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds. The campground has gravel sites with 50A full hookups, and we were allowed/encouraged to use the sewer connections to dump our holding tanks before departing this morning. We had checked out the campground last night and decided that it would be easier for us to pull around to the dump stations on the outer road than to maneuver into and out of one of the open campground sites, all of which were back-ins.

I have mentioned before what a nice facility this is. Several of our GLCC members are from north central Indiana and explained to us that the fairground is as nice as it is because it is booked every week for most of the year, winter being the exception. Elkhart is considered the center of the RV industry in the U.S., but the reality is that RV-related industry is located throughout north central Indiana, and a little bit of southern Michigan, with a few facilities in other parts of Indiana and Ohio. There is also significant RV industry in California, Oregon, and Florida, and to a lesser extent in Pennsylvania and Alabama. By “RV Industry” I am referring to manufacturing, not RV parks, resorts and campgrounds, or RV dealers and service facilities, which are obviously located all over the place.

We skipped breakfast and coffee, as we always do on travel days. Linda prepared the inside for travel and then we visited for a while with our GLCC friends. Around 9:00 AM I unplugged the electrical power, stowed the cord, turned on the chassis batteries, opened the air valve for the engine accessories, and fired up the engine. I did not have any trouble getting out of our parking spot or the compound. I drove over to the dump station, which can accommodate nine RVs at one time, and Linda followed in the car. While the holding tanks were emptying we hooked up the car for towing. With everything stowed and secured for travel we checked the toad controls and lights and were on our way, exiting the fairgrounds at 9:25 AM.

We followed the same route home that we used when we left the Escapade rally a month ago: CR-34 (Monroe St.) east to CR-29 north to IN-4 east to IN-13 north to US-20 east to I-69 north to I-96 east to M-59 east and finally a couple of miles of dirt roads to our house. We stopped at the Travel America (T/A) truck stop on M-60 at I-69 to put biocide and Stanadyne diesel additive in the tank along with 75 gallons of diesel fuel.

We had just over 1/4 tank of fuel indicated on the fuel gauge when we pulled in to the T/A. If the gauge is anywhere near accurate that was approximately 50 gallons of fuel, enough to travel another 200 miles and still have 15 – 20 gallons in the tank; more than enough to get us to the Mobil truck stop on I-96 about 25 miles before our house. I wanted to use as much of the fuel in the tank as I could before adding more but did not want to risk running out or sucking sediment off the bottom and clogging the fuel filters. In the end we decided it was safer to stop and add fuel while we still had the 1/4 tank. The 75 gallons brought the fuel gauge up to 5/8ths, which is what I expected. The fuel tank capacity is 235 gallons, but I assume the full mark on the gauge corresponds to 200 gallons. That makes every 1/8 of a tank on the gauge correspond to 25 gallons. We also presume that our average fuel economy, based on prior data, is 6 MPG which equates to 150 miles per 1/8 tank.

We did not fill the tank because the bus is going to be sitting for a while and we did not want to have all of that fuel onboard aging in the summer heat. There is a reason, however, to keep the fuel tank as full as possible. Most of the fuel that is pumped to the engine is used to cool the injectors and the DDEC engine computer and returned to the tank. The more fuel in the tank, the less frequently any particular molecule passes through the engine giving the fuel in the tank more time to dissipate the heat.

Our trip was easy and un-eventful other than the powered driver-side windshield shade quite working. Add that to the list. We got home by 1:30 PM which gave us time to unload food and a few essentials from the bus and take showers. Since Linda spent Saturday morning preparing food, she only had minimal cooking to do for dinner. Our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter arrived at 3:30 PM and our daughter and son-in-law arrived at 4:00 PM. Madeline had a cold, wasn’t feeling well, and had only had a short nap, but she was fine as long as she was busy. This was a combination birthday and Father’s Day gathering, but mostly an excuse to gather our small, immediate family. We had a lovely summer meal of potato salad, collard greens cole slaw, baked beans, and cheeseburgers with chocolate cupcakes (from a local bakery) and fresh strawberries for dessert. All vegan, and all delicious.

Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline left shortly after dinner and Meghan and Chris left around 8:00 PM. Although our morning departure and drive home had been quite routine and the family gathering had been relaxed and relatively easy, it all added up to a long day. I started the download of an update to my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription that looked like it was going to take a while, so we skipped watching an Episode of Doc Martin and turned in for the night.

2014/06/06 (F) Chapter Business

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I spent a good portion of the day working on the membership and financial records for the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. My work as VP/Secretary of the chapter is sporadic. Weeks-to-months go by where there is very little that needs to be done, but when something pops up I have to take care of it in a timely manner and it often takes half a day to do it. This usually involves updating the roster and notifying the members and FMCA HQ when a new member joins. It also involves updating the financial reports as people pay their dues.

We have a chapter treasurer who handles the money and maintains the checking account but I maintain the membership records, which include keeping track of how much members have paid in dues and what calendar year those dues are for, and prepare the financial statements. The busy times of the year for me, however, are September and October, when we prepare for and hold our annual meeting, and December through March, when I have to certify our roster to FMCA HQ and most members pay their dues.

Linda had more work to do for the bakery today but was able to do it at home. She heated up an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza for lunch. This is now my favorite pizza and cheese, vegan or dairy, would not improve it.

When I bought the Apple TV unit last night I also bought a Logitech wireless (Bluetooth) t630 optical Touch Mouse that I have been considering since I got my ASUS laptop. I let it charge overnight (USB port) and today paired it with the computer, which was very easy. There are some things about Windows 8/8.1 that I like and this is one of them. I downloaded Logitech’s software package and installed it, which was also very easy. Besides the usual cursor movement and left/right click functionality this mouse supports “touch” movements for vertical/horizontal scrolling and single/double finger soft taps for switching between the Start and Desktop screens and for switching between apps. It’s very thin, but large enough to fit my hand comfortably, and feels solid and substantial. So far I really like it.

Linda made a one pot dish for dinner with potatoes, black beans, kale, onions, and spices, including cumin, and probably some other ingredients. It was delicious and healthy with lots of dietary fiber. Earlier in the day we watched the latest NutritionFacts.org segment on the typical protein-rich, fiber-deficient American diet. Most Americans, including vegans, consume way more than the recommended daily average of 42 grams of protein, but very few come anywhere near the recommended daily intake of fiber. Vegetarians and vegans are the exception as dietary fiber comes only from plants, and the more whole-food the plant-based diet, the better.

We watched Season 2, Episode 1 of Doc Martin before turning in for the evening. As with any TV series it has a formula, but it’s a formula I like. I’m waiting for the episode where Doc Martin finally accepts and embraces the dog. The dog is very loyal and will obviously win the day in the end.

20140605 (R) Apple Roku

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Linda had to go into the bakery today which left me to catch up on phone calls and errands. I made more phone calls to contractors this morning and had better luck than yesterday reaching people or at least leaving messages. I rescheduled with Gary from GM Construction to come discuss the pole barn project. I also got hold of Bratcher Electric and determined that the annual maintenance on the whole house generator could wait until we are ready to do the conversion from propane to natural gas, which they can handle. In talking to Mike Bratcher I also determined that we can install a main panel in the garage just after the transfer switch and then run power directly from there to the pole barn rather than from the main panel in the basement. While we are at it, we could redo the sub-panel in the garage, feeding it directly from the new main panel rather than the main panel in the basement. The basement panel is very crowded and we have wires carrying electricity back and forth unnecessarily.

I got a call from Butch with an update on the negotiations of the sale of the major portion of their business assets. Linda has been advising them relative to valuation, accounting, and tax issues and we have been helping them with purchase agreement language. It looks like they are in the final stages leading up to a closing of the deal. Their big annual event is coming up in early July and they will likely be busy with the transfer of inventory and training of the buyer during and after that event. I need to get our bus down to their place to work on some projects and help Butch work on getting their bus conversion done enough that they can live in it this winter in the southwest. Based on things going on at both ends, it looks like the window for that work will be mid-September to sometime in November, weather permitting.

Our converted coach friends, Pat and Vickie, have some older Motorola GMRS handheld radios that they like but the charger bases have disappeared. My ham radio friend Scott (AC8IL) is in the commercial mobile communications business so I checked with him to see if chargers were still available. They were and he had a couple of the drop-in style charger/bases in stock! Scotty is just that kind of guy. I picked them up this morning and will deliver them to Pat and Vickie at the GLAMARAMA rally.

Apple Roku sounds like an interesting dessert, but it’s not. It might be an either/or situation, but it could be a both/and. John Dewey was a both/and kind of guy, so I favor that approach. We were intrigued by Steve and Karen’s Roku Internet TV streaming device last night so I stopped at Best Buy today on my way home from running my errand to see if they had them in stock and if so at what price. Not only did they have them, they had three different models. The “stick” was $50, the Roku 2 was $70, and the Roku 3 was $100. (The Roku 3 does not have A/V connectors like the Roku 2, only HDMI, but it has a five times faster processor.) But that was not all, oh no. They also had the Apple TV device for $100 and two other similar products, one of which looked like an Amazon/Kindle thing and the other one a WD thing, whatever that is.

The Roku units (2 and 3) have access to a lot of content on a free, subscription, and pay-per-view basis. The Apple TV unit has access to content on the same basis but the selection may not be as extensive; it’s hard to say for sure as the devices are not easy to compare directly. The Apple TV unit, however, has one huge, unique feature; it can mirror anything on an iOS device, such as our iPads, to a TV/monitor. The iPad can also be used as a control panel for the Apple TV device.

We do not have to choose between a Roku and an Apple TV unit, of course, we can get and use both if we want; it’s just a matter of money. Between the two TVs in the house and the two in the bus it could be a lot of money if we wanted dedicated units of both types on all four TV/monitors. We always have the option of moving things back and forth, but in general I prefer not to do that. To the extent we can afford it I prefer to have the house and the bus set up so that the only things we move between them are the things we have to, such as ourselves, our food, our laundry, our computers, our cats, and some of our ham radio gear (at least for now). The best solution, however, may be to get one of each device and move them around as needed. That would give us the best cost/benefit ratio, but not the most convenience.

When Linda got home from her day at the bakery we finished the Egri Merlot we had opened the other night and caught up on the day’s events. We decided to try the Apple TV device first and see how it worked in our situation. Linda made an onion, mushroom, tomato Ragu, and served it over the leftover power grains. It was very tasty. After dinner I went to Best Buy to get the Apple TV device while Linda prepared fresh strawberries for dessert. Fresh strawberries are a favorite treat of ours. She served them with small pieces of Dandelion Small Batch Chocolate made from 70% Ambanja Madagascar 2013 Harvest beans. The chocolate was excellent and unique. It was a thank you gift from our son and daughter-in-law for Linda’s babysitting services while they were in San Francisco, California.

We connected the Apple TV box to one of our HD TV/monitors and went through the setup procedure. We decided to test it on some PBS content, which required us to set up an account with PBS and enter a validation code that the Apple TV box provided. We also downloaded an app onto Linda’s iPad2 that allowed it to mirror whatever was on its screen to the Apple TV.

We used the mirroring feature to watch Season 1, Episode 5 of Doc Martin, but it proved to be unusable. The image was fine on the iPad2 but the Apple TV could not keep up. I found that to be odd as our home WiFi network should have more than enough bandwidth to deliver the data stream between the devices, but maybe not. I presumed that the limiting factor in our network was the data rate coming into our DSL gateway from our AT&T landline, but that was obviously fast enough to deliver the content from the gateway to the iPad without buffering hesitation.

We turned off the mirroring and finished watching the episode on the iPad. Still, the content delivered directly from the gateway to the Apple TV looked great, and the mirroring will be useful for showing photos and anything else on our iPads. We may reconfigure the Apple TV to use one of our other wireless networks and see if that helps.

2014/05/30 (F) Outlook Contacts

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I have had a Palm PDA for most of the last 13 years, and for most of that time it has been a Palm Tungsten T3. While I was still working at Wayne RESA it was synced to their GroupWise e-mail and calendar system but also synced to the Palm Desktop software on my laptop for Contacts and Tasks and my Passwords Plus program. I did not use the Tasks list much, but I did keep all of my personal contacts, and some of my business contacts, on the Palm along with all of my encrypted passwords. Linda also had a Palm PDA for a while and had it synced to Outlook on her office computer. Her PDA quit working years ago and never got replaced. Once she was settled in at the bakery she did not have a need for a PDA.

When I retired I reverted back to using the Palm calendar, which I always liked. I even installed a new Lithium Ion battery, which was no easy job, to prolong the unit’s life. But three things have converged to finally spell the end of the Palm era for me: 1) the unrecoverable failure of the Passwords Plus app on the Tungsten T3; 2) the porting of our home Outlook Express information into Outlook 2007 after the loss of our twmi.rr.com e-mail address, and; 3) getting a new laptop computer due to the end of support for Windows XP.

Over the winter we were able to purchase an updated version of Passwords Plus (CS 2.0) that synced through the cloud. Versions were available that ran on our iPads, Linda’s Samsung laptop, and my then current Win XP Dell laptop. It is also available for Android (I think) but so far we have not installed it on our phones. The new PWP apps allowed us to successfully migrate all of our passwords from the old Palm version and make them available on four devices with back-up and synchronization via the DataViz cloud servers. Just this past week I installed PWP CS 2.0 on my new Win 8.1 machine and got it synced with the other four. When the passwords are available and secure, life is good.

When we moved from the previous house to the current house last year we lost our long-time home e-mail address. I took that as an opportunity to export our home address book and all of our personal e-mails from Outlook Express and import them into Outlook 2007 on my Win XP Dell laptop. Since that time I have continued to build out the address book with contact information, but I still have and use my Palm Contacts. Yesterday I learned that I could export my Palm contacts in a vCard (.vcf) format. Further research suggested that I could convert the file to a comma separated value (.csv) format and then import it into Outlook 2013 on my new laptop. It would be a lot more work than it sounds as the vcf –> csv conversion would require me to review each entry, but it would still be a lot less work than re-entering everything by hand.

I figured I would need the better part of a long day to accomplish this task, so before rushing into it I decided to do more research. Today I discovered that there are add-ins available for Outlook that will take my single .vcf Palm output file and import it into Outlook directly, as long as I am willing to pony up the $$. The idea of spending $20 -$25 for a program I will use once does not sit well with me, but the idea of sitting all day reviewing entries one at a time does not sit well with me either. If I want to clean up duplicates, I can do that semi-automatically for another $25. I’m thinking about it.

The calendar is another matter. The Palm calendar can be “archived” but not exported. My Palm calendar goes back at least a decade, and this history may just have to remain in the Palm Desktop on the old laptop. On the upside, once I start using the Outlook calendar I may be able to set it up so I can access the address book and calendar on my Android phone. That would be nice; I have long enjoyed having my contacts and calendar information “in my pocket,” or “on my belt,” depending on my clothing choices that day.

It was yet another beautiful day today; when Michigan weather is nice, it’s the best. Linda decided to do some weeding in the front planting beds and I decided to install the new rear-view mirror on the bus. You just can’t let a day like this go by without doing something outside. After a little break we decided to work in the back yard. We had several large pine trees that had large limbs broken over the winter. I used our pole saw to cut those loose and dragged them over near an old burn pile. I cut the small branches off, cut up the larger central limbs, and made a pile. We gathered up some of the dried grass clippings from Tuesday and stuffed them under the limbs and twigs. We added a few old, large logs to the pile that were laying around in the yard and soaked everything in diesel fuel. Forget gasoline and charcoal starter fluid; let the diesel fuel soak in (it does not evaporate like gasoline) and put a match to it. You will get a sustained fire.

After the fire had burned down to a smolder we moved some of the blocks from the rear retaining walls and laid them around the burn pile. We’ve decided to use some of them to build a fire pit and wanted to see how many it would take to make a circle of the appropriate size. We plan to build the pit 2 or 3 courses high on the low side.

Kimber, from GM Construction LLC (GM Decks), called to let me know that Gary had taken ill and would not make it out to the house late this afternoon to discuss our pole barn project. We will try again next week. Village Landscape Development also did not show up or call today. I will give Steve a call tomorrow and suggest that we set a firm start date for Monday June 16.

The afternoon mail brought a Jury Summons for Linda for a two week commitment for U. S. District Court in Flint, Michigan starting Monday, June 30. That interferes with some travel plans we have and will now likely have to adjust. She won’t be able to find out if she needs to report on the 30th until 5 PM on Friday the 27th.

2014/05/29 (R) 43

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Today was our 43rd wedding anniversary, and it was a beautiful day for it with blue skies, few if any clouds, nice temperatures, and a faint breeze. While we were eating breakfast Linda spotted what she thought was a female wild turkey in the back yard. Binoculars revealed it to be a male Mongolian Ring-Necked Pheasant, the first one we have seen here. A pair of robins have a nest under our deck and we have been watching them come and go. We had a rabbit on our front porch this evening that was intent on picking something out of the sisal fiber door mat. It kept the cats transfixed for a very long time as they sat stone still and watched it from less than three feet away through a window next to the door, never revealing their presence. The hunting instincts of domestic cats are still very powerful.

We took it easy yesterday and the day before as were both still recovering from being ill. We were both finally feeling enough better, however, to get a decent night’s sleep and spend enough time at our desks during the day and get some things done. I also had a nice chat with my sister and filled her in on our plans to visit St. Louis in late June.

Keith came over and cut our neighbor’s grass (5 acre lot) and then cut ours (another 5 acre lot). The boundary line between our two lots is a long low swale that drains towards the pond to our east, sort of. It has marsh grass in some low spots and Keith managed to get his zero-turn mower stuck in the soft ground near one of them. Neither of us had a tow rope, strap, cable, or chain but I found some scrap 10-3 + ground electrical cable. I added some “fresh” gasoline to our lawn tractor tank (it had been in a full, air-tight can with fuel stabilizer for the last year), checked the oil, put a battery charger on the tractor battery, and managed to get it started. The electrical cable was long enough (20+ feet) that I was able to keep my lawn tractor out of the really soft soil. A little bit to my surprise the lawn tractor and electrical cable were up to the task and able to pull the zero-turn free. I was thinking of getting rid of the lawn tractor but perhaps I will keep it. Not to cut grass, but to haul around a small utility/garden trailer for moving mulch and other garden and small landscaping materials. I may just remove the mower deck as it does not work well anyway.

Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon and some of the evening writing an article for our FMCA GLCC newsletter on the recent Escapade rally. After Linda proof-read it I selected 10 photos I had used in blog posts about the event, inserted them at the end of the article, provided captions, packaged everything in a Dropbox folder, and got an e-mail off to the newsletter editors with the Dropbox link and editorial instructions.

Butch (and Fonda) called yesterday evening to wish us a happy anniversary because they thought our anniversary was the same day as theirs. It’s not; they have been married one day longer than we have.

Gary was scheduled to come over yesterday morning to discuss our pole barn project but it was raining heavily at the time, and was forecast to rain most of the day, so we rescheduled for Friday afternoon. Village Landscape was tentatively scheduled to start work today on our front entrance sidewalk/stairs and rear retaining walls. I knew that wasn’t guaranteed as they were still finishing up projects that fell behind because of how wet May has been. Once it started raining hard I knew I would not see them today and probably not this week. If they cannot start soon we may have to put them off until next month after GLAMARAMA.

Mike (W8XH) came over this morning to help us with some Windows 8/8.1 issues. We had a problem this winter in the bus where Linda was not able to connect her Windows 8 Samsung to our NAS device via a WiFi connection to our network. She has had the same problem when connecting wirelessly to our network at home. Mike suspected that it had to do with the workgroup name settings and/or the Win 8/8.1 “home group” settings. He took care of Linda’s Samsung laptop first and that turned out to be the case. She left to get her hair cut and we turned our attention to my new ASUS laptop. By the time we finished we had all of the issues on my list resolved and some good thoughts about how to approach a few other things. We discussed the SLAARC WP website development and made a few decisions about when/how we want to unveil it and what functionality needs to be in place by that time.

In the past we would normally go out for dinner on our anniversary but decided to dine in tonight. Linda made amazing pasta and lentils dish with salsa and walnuts. I know, it sounds crazy, but it was soooo good. It was one of the top 10 recipes for 2011 from the OhSheGlows website. She also made a refrigerated vegan double-chocolate torte dessert thingy. It was almost too good to eat, but we managed to each have a piece. 🙂

2014/05/26 (M) Memorial Day

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This is what I think about on Memorial Day. For most Americans Memorial Day, or rather the Memorial Day weekend, marks the beginning of the summer “play” season; time to prep the cottage or the get the RV out of storage, get out the summer “toys”, attend summer camps (or summer school), and take vacations. It has a much more serious and official meaning, of course, which is to remember those who served and died in the defense of our country while on active duty. It is not necessarily a day to honor “all” veterans, although it seems to have turned into that. We have another holiday for that purpose; it’s called Veteran’s Day.

Regardless, there is no doubt that each citizen owes the existence of our nation, and the freedoms we enjoy within it, to those who served to build it and defend it, and especially those who paid the ultimate price. It a shame that some of those lives were wasted in the name of foolish nationalism, but the shame is not the soldier’s, it is the government’s. And the government is merely a political manifestation of the will of the majority. In our system the majority rules (or is supposed to) but that does not always make its actions right. Those who served did so with a sense of duty without which we could not have a functioning military. My father survived the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. He was one of the troops who took Omaha Beach. His unit suffered 90% casualties. He was barely 19 years old at the time. He was wounded on the drive inland through France and received the Purple Heart and almost 50 years later a unit commendation for the service his unit rendered that day and in the days that followed.

My cough subsided enough that both Linda and I finally got a little sleep last night. She made her yummy vegan pancakes for breakfast and my sense of taste had returned to the point that I enjoyed them. I still wasn’t feeling up to much physical activity, but managed to pull up all of the stakes for the pole barn and mark the location of each one with green marker paint. I was feeling well enough to work at my desk and spent a good portion of the rest of the day downloading and installing apps on my new ASUS laptop.

I was working at my computer this afternoon when I had one of those associative moments where I suddenly remembered something I was trying to recall a week ago. As a young pre-teenager in the early 1960’s there were three things that I had set as “life goals” but I could only remember two of them, although I was clear that I had accomplished all three. I was looking at the support thread for the Participant’s Database WordPress plug-in, where there was a lot of detail on “coding,” when I recalled that the missing goal was to “learn to program a computer.” Duh!

These “life goals” were not career goals; they were just ideas that sounded interesting and “out there” at the time. I actually ended up “programming computers” for a living for a while and did some very fancy FORTRAN programming for my electrical engineering Masters Degree project and again to create the Monte-Carlo simulations that were the foundation of my doctoral research and dissertation. My other two goals where to “understand nuclear energy” and “learn to fly an airplane” both of which I also accomplished, at least to my satisfaction. I never made a living in aviation, although my dad spent almost his entire adult working life in the aerospace industry, both defense and space. I did end up studying physics as an engineering student, and teaching it at the high school level, so in a sense understanding nuclear energy also touched on earning a living at one point in my life. As an Air Force ROTC cadet from 1973 – 1976 I was a pilot candidate. If not for the sudden end of the Vietnam Conflict, I would have made my living in aviation, at least for a while.

Perhaps these seem like strange life goals for a pre-teen, but they were very forward-looking and exotic notions in the early 1960’s. The fact that I accomplished them does not mean my life is complete or that I have accomplished everything else I attempted in the last half century. Nor does it mean that I ran out of things to do or the motivation to do them. I simply find it interesting that I accomplished them and find a certain satisfaction in that. To this day whenever I see an airplane fly by I wonder how many people see that same plane and wonder what it must be like to fly it or are mystified by how it is able to stay in the air? I also wonder how people manage to make sense of a world connected together by technologies about which they have no real understanding, or how they understand a universe ruled at its most fundamental level by randomness and chaos. Downloading and installing software leaves me a certain amount of time to think, and I downloaded and installed a lot of software today.

Linda made a wonderful vegan potato salad this afternoon and we had it for dinner with jumbo vegan hot dogs, with mustard, onion, and relish, of course. And grapes; but no adult beverages as they are contraindicated for my medications, and frankly are not the least bit satisfying when ill. I know I’m getting better when my appetite starts to return. I will know I am fully recovered when I once again look forward to a glass of wine with dinner.

Technomadia did a one hour live video chat at 8 PM with RVillage founder/CEO Curtis Coleman. It was a good, relaxed chat with enough questions from the audience to keep it moving. I think they had 45 people online at one time. They use UStream for these live video events and were interrupted three or four times by commercials. The first one I got was in Spanish, but someone else got one in French. The problem was that the hosts do not get a heads up that UStream is going to cut them off, so they keep talking until someone messages them that they are not on the air. But it’s a “free” service, and of course almost everything in life that’s free has a hidden cost, especially if it involves the Internet. Somewhat ironically the RVillage website went offline during the broadcast. The head of development was monitoring the chat and got right on it as soon as it was reported; something about “backend server overload.” RVillage passed the 7,500 member level just before the video chat went live. Whatever the issue was they had it straightened out quickly. RVillage lives on very robust servers run by Amazon.

2014/05/22 (R) Still Resting

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I called Mike (W8XH) last night and we agreed that it would be better for him to wait until I was better to come over and help us with our computer issues. I finally got up around 8 AM, having spent 11 hours in bed. I took a nice, warm shower and felt almost human. Not well by any means, but enough better to have some granola for breakfast and catch up on the blogs I follow in Feedly. It was a spectacularly beautiful morning and I opened all of the doorwalls and some of the windows.

I planned to take it easy today and maybe just sit on the rear deck and enjoy the weather, the view, and the sounds of the birds. It got cloudy as the morning wore on and never got as warm as I had hoped so I closed up the house. I worked at my desk for a while and got badly chilled and started shivering uncontrollably. I had forgotten to turn the basement furnace zone back on and the temperature had dropped to 65 degrees. I made some hot tea and some hot soup for lunch, which helped a little, and finally wrapped myself in an afghan and lay down on the couch. Around 3:00 PM I called Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi, Michigan to see if I could get an appointment with our internal medicine doctor. She was off tomorrow and it was too late to book an appointment with anyone else. I was told to call back at 6:30 AM tomorrow for a same-day appointment. Duly noted. I went back to sleep on the couch. The chills and shakes had left me completely drained to the point where I could not sit up or read.

I was finally tired of lying down, so I examined the printer drivers for our HP CLJ 3600n network printer on Linda’s Samsung laptop to see what was installed. There were 40 files listed! Someone has got to be kidding. A notice popped up on her screen that Windows 8.1 was available as a free download. I checked with Linda (it’s her machine, after all) and she gave me the green light. I let it install and then restarted the machine. I sent a test MS Word document to the printer and it printed just fine. Great, so the printer can be installed under Windows 8 and then the machine updated to Windows 8.1, put it cannot be installed directly into Windows 8.1. Microsoft “blames” HP stating that printer manufacturers are solely responsible for their drivers. Even if true it’s still lame, very lame and there’s plenty of shame to spread over both companies. It’s a “business class printer” designed for high volume use. Since our volume is not high, our (expected) use is obviously long. It’s enough to make my next computer a Linux box or a Mac and my next printer anything but an HP.

Speaking of which, I signed up for a free Intro to Linux course from The Linux Foundation offered through edX. It starts August 1st. My friend Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for a long time. My problem has never been a lack of interest but a lack of a good, organized approach into the subject. There are books on the subject, but I am unlikely to just sit down and read one as an academic exercise. I have Linux running on one of my old computers (a dual processor Dell Precision Workstation) and Steve has been helping me set it up as a local web-server that I can use to test my WordPress sites, so that provides the needed sense of purpose.

I spent a little time in the evening uploading blog posts and then went to bed. I can’t remember the last time I felt this bad.

2014/05/21 (W) A Twilight Zone

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Linda has been ill since last Thursday with a cold and/or allergies. Until yesterday I had managed to avoid her symptoms, but in the morning I started sneezing and in afternoon I developed a cough. It wasn’t a response to a tickle in my throat from post-nasal drip, it was the deep raspy cough that comes from the lungs and makes them hurt. By evening the cough had become productive. I have not been sick in a very long time and the one thing I try to avoid getting is pneumonia, which I have had three times in the same spot of the same lung. The scar tissue there makes me more susceptible to re-infection, and I take my nasal spray and allergy pill every day to avoid sinus problems which can settle into my lungs. Until Tuesday this had been very successful.

We both had a very poor night’s sleep last night and got out of bed feeling like we were in a twilight zone. Instead of coffee I had a big cup of Tazo Ginger Spice tea. The warmth and ginger taste were soothing and I figured it could not hurt to stay hydrated. I put a load of laundry in the washer (I only have two loads to go) and then had a large glass of orange/grapefruit juice. Linda also had some tea and then gathered up clothes for the next five days. She will be watching grand-daughter Madeline around the clock until Sunday when her parents return from San Francisco, California.

I checked on my new laptop and the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop (ACCD) app showed that Photoshop had been successfully installed; at least it showed that in one place, but in another place it said I had no apps installed. Hummm? I did not see the icons at the bottom of the screen but the one thing I have learned about Windows 8/8.1 is that I can go to the Start (Metro) screen and start typing and I usually get directed to what I am looking for. I noticed a little arrow in the lower left corner of the screen that said “4 new apps.” I clicked on that and it took me to the screen where all if the installed programs are listed and there they were! I opened Lightroom and registered it and then opened Photoshop; twice. It appears that I have a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. I’m not sure why, as my new laptop has a 64-bit processor, but they are both listed.

I got out my iPad2 but did not have the energy or interest to even play a game and lay down on the couch to take a nap. Linda had a couple of hours before she had to leave for Ann Arbor, and made a batch of her super special granola. I got a call from Kimber at GM Construction letting me know that Gary would not be able to stop by the house today to look at our pole barn project. He had to go up north for family reasons. Given how I felt it was for the better. He will stop by on Friday or sometime next week.

I didn’t feel like sitting up but I was tired of lying down, so I had some granola, sans soy milk, and worked at my iPad2. I have been keeping up with writing my blog posts, but not with posting them. I want to select a few photos from the Escapade to include in the posts but have not felt like going through them. I shot over 2,000 images during the event. Linda keeps suggesting that I only write weekly posts when we are home. It seems like that would be easier, but I have tried that and it’s not. For one I lose track of details, and sometimes even the day/date something happened. I also found that the weekly posts just ended up being very long. What I really need to do is focus on writing shorter posts. But as a weblog, the blog is first and foremost an online diary, so the details I include are there because they are important to me at the time.

Although I did not feel like doing it, I forced myself to select a dozen photos from the 15th and 16th and post process them. I have everything I need to upload my posts for the last week except the energy and desire. UPS showed up around 5 PM with the mirror from Prevost. I spent most of the day lying down on the couch and finally went to bed around 9 PM.

2014/05/20 (T) Software Redemption

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Linda was off to the bakery again this morning, but not as early as yesterday. She had a mid-afternoon meeting which put her return trip at the worst of the evening rush hour. She is still under the weather, so the last two days have definitely been more work then fun.

I was disgusted enough with my experience yesterday trying to download and install the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop app (ACCD) that I decided not to work on my computers this morning. I had, however, left my new ASUS laptop on all night in the hope that the ACCD app would finish downloading and install correctly. Sometimes you have to just step away so I started a load of laundry and made a list errands. Sometimes the best way to step away is to literally get out of the house (or bus) and since errands have a purpose, and provide a sense of accomplishment, they are always good therapy. I got the laundry out of the dryer and left just after noon. I got back around 4 PM with bags full of essential but inexpensive stuff; think “TP” and you will have the right idea.

While I was out I got Mike (W8XH) on the S. Lyon 2 meter ham radio repeater and arranged for him to help me with my e-mail issues on my new laptop. I started another load of laundry when I got home and then checked on my computer. ACCD had finished installing correctly! I have no idea how long it took; the progress bar did not move when I sat and watched it. I started up my old laptop to check e-mail and discovered that we appeared to have a very slow Internet connection. All of my online programs worked fine yesterday (except the ACCD installation), and they were all working today, but not very fast. The difficulty I had installing ACCD may have been an Internet connection issue rather than an Adobe issue, but I will never know. We have an AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) landline. The only thing slower is dial-up.

ACCD was open and showed me a list of apps. Most of the apps had a “Try” button, which is an attempt on Adobe’s part to inflate our monthly bill to gigantic proportions. Lightroom (Lr) and Photoshop (Ps), however, had “Install” buttons, a good sign that Adobe had the correct details for our ACC account. I clicked the Install button for Lightroom and went upstairs. I was feeling progressively worse through the day and after Linda called with her ETA I decided to take a nap.

Linda reheated the leftover pasta from Sunday’s dinner. After dinner I checked on the progress of the Lightroom download/install. It was done and showed the status as “Up To Date”. Today was turning out to be a good day, so I clicked Install for Photoshop, finished editing some blog posts, answered a few e-mails, and turned off my old computer. With no other devices trying to use our Internet connection I was optimistic that I will find it downloaded and installed in the morning. Linda tried to install Microsoft Security Essentials on her laptop earlier today and suddenly had programs she did ask for or authorize as best she was aware. Thanks Microsoft. Attempting to remove them brought up additional vendor dialog boxes so we let it be for now. We were both too tired and feeling to poorly to think carefully or do online research to figure out what was going on. With any luck Mike can help us with this on Thursday.

2015/05/19 (M) Software Frustrations

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Linda had to go into the bakery today and left early this morning before I even woke up. I wasn’t all that hungry when I got up, which us unusual for me, so I started a load of laundry and got to work at my desk. I have had my new ASUS laptop for a couple of weeks now, but I do not yet have it set up for use. I’ve lost track of the exact count of updates, but it was somewhere between 70 and 80 when we left for the Escapade and 25 more got installed yesterday. The only software I have added so far is Microsoft Office 2013, but the computer came with quite a few “apps” already installed. The salesman at Best Buy had alerted me to expect quite a few updates initially so this has not come as a big surprise.

At one of the Geeks On Tour seminars we attended at Escapade they suggested that laptop computers may eventually disappear. I doubt that desktop or laptop computers will ever completely disappear from the market, but we know from recent experience that the selection is narrowing and there are fewer companies making them. Perhaps someday I will be creating documents (text and spreadsheet) and editing photos on a tablet, but if so, it will be with a large external monitor, full-size keyboard, and a mouse. It’s not that I am “old fashioned” or resistant to change, it’s that some tasks are more easily accomplished in certain ways.

On the other hand, I write most of these blog posts on my iPad2. It’s small and light and I can work on the couch, the deck, outside our motorhome, at Panera, in bed, or pretty much anywhere, and I have worked in all those places and more. Before they go into WordPress, however, I e-mail them to myself, copy and paste them into Word, edit them, and insert captions as markers for the photographs. I select and process all of the photographs on my computer. The post is copied from Word and pasted into the WordPress editor where I make some final changes and then upload and insert the images. I often review the post on my iPad to make sure it formats OK and if I find a typo I will log into our site from my iPad2 and make the correction.

This morning I purchased, downloaded, and installed the password program we use on our other devices. The process was easy and it sync’d up with our Cloud account as soon as I activated it. This is one of those cases where the Cloud really makes a lot of sense to me as the amount of data that gets moved around is small. We now have this same app on three laptops and two iPads. The original password program was on my Palm Tungsten T-3 and was sync’d only to my old laptop via a USB cable. We were able to install the new version of the program on that laptop, capture all of the existing password information, and store it in the Cloud account that was included in the price of the app/program. From there it was a simple matter to put the app on other Windows laptops and install the iOS version on our iPads. We can add/change the information on any device and it updates the Cloud database (if we are connected to the Internet) and then updates all of the other devices the next time they are online.

I still have a lot of contact information and my main calendar on my Palm, and it is still sync’d with my old WinXP laptop via a USB cable. I plan to “move” that information to Outlook on my new computer, but in this case “move” may mean “manually enter.” If so, I am not looking forward to that process.

Prevost’s U. S. parts center in Elgin, Illinois operates from 7 AM to 7 PM Central Time, Monday through Friday. I called them a little after 8 AM EDT and talked to Aeleen. They had the mirror assembly in stock in New Jersey so I ordered it. It should be here on Wednesday or Thursday; 2-day shipping is almost always included in the price. She is also going to have the home office in Quebec mail me an updated CD with the CatBase Viewer program/database to install on my new laptop. This program/database has diagrams and parts lists for almost everything in the bus for all models back to the early 70’s. It filters the diagrams and parts lists to our VIN numbers and I have found it enormously helpful in figuring out what part I need before calling the Elgin parts center to place an order. Prevost also has an online ordering system and using it would save us 3%, but I often find that I am not quite clear on the part I need, or the part has been superseded by a new one that is not shown in (my version of) the CatBase Viewer. The telephone order desk folks are usually very helpful.

I had sent a text message to Chuck earlier and got a return phone call. We talked at length about bus projects, pole barns, and recent travels. Having gotten the bus mirror ordered and my password app installed/operating I was feeling like it was going to be a fairly productive day. As an “expert” on data I was aware that two data points do not establish a trend, and so it was that my winning streak came to a halt when I tried to install our HP LaserJet 3600n network printer and the Adobe CC Desktop App.

I had my laptop search for network printers and it found the 3600n. I downloaded and installed the Win 7/8/8.1 printer installation wizard and ran it. When I tried to install it I was taken to the list of manufacturers and models to select the appropriate driver. Alas, the LaserJet 3600n was not on the list and the wizard told me that our printer was not currently supported by the wizard. It seems that the printer wizard has something in common with the Wizard of Oz.

I tried Windows Update, but no luck there either. I went to the Win 8.1 “metro” screen and searched for “install printer” and “install network printer” which led me to various web pages on Microsoft’s and Hewlett-Packard’s websites. I eventually found a driver for Windows 8.1 USB, but I am not trying to connect to the printer through a USB cable, I am trying to use it through our Ethernet LAN. The odd thing is that Linda’s Windows 8.1 Samsung laptop prints to the LaserJet 3600n over our LAN just fine. Unfortunately I have no recollection of how we got her machine to do that at year ago. This took up at least an hour of my morning, without success, for what should have been a 3-minute task. Being retired does not make this waste of time any less frustrating.

In late December (2013) I subscribed to Adobe’s Creative Cloud (CC) Photography Program. For $10/month we get to download and use Lightroom (Lr) and Photoshop (Ps) on two computers, with updates whenever they are available, and access to training materials and forums. We can also add other Adobe products (apps/programs) to our subscription for an additional monthly cost. We installed Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, Lightroom, and Photoshop on Linda’s Samsung laptop right away to make sure the subscription was set up correctly, but could not install these programs on my old 32-bit Win XP Pro machine (even though I specifically asked the pre-sale consultant if it would run on Windows XP and was told “yes”.) One of my main reasons for getting a new laptop (besides the end of support for Windows XP), and for selecting the one I did, was to be able to run these two programs. Alas, I was able to download the Adobe CC Desktop installer, but the installer was unable to install the Adobe CC Desktop App. The Desktop App is used to install and update the other programs, so my Adobe installation efforts ended for the day shortly after they started. Or should have; I plugged away at this several times before giving up. I did notice in a news feed that Adobe had a 24-hour outage recently, and on one attempt to download I got a screen saying the site was down for maintenance, so I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the next time I try this it will work correctly. If not, I will find out how helpful Adobe Customer Service really is.

Linda got home around 5 PM, having spent almost 1.5 hours in rush hour traffic. She was tired from a long day and the effects of a cold and/or allergy, so dinner was a simple salad and vegan brats on a hotdog bun with the rest of the fresh fruit from last night. She headed off to bed and I returned to my ham shack/office where I responded to e-mails and updated three of my four WordPress sites. I then configured my e-mail accounts in Outlook on my new computer. I sent test messages for each account and got them all working after correcting a couple of typos.

To set up the e-mail accounts I copied all of the “.pst” files from my WinXP machine to a folder on our NAS. I copied the folder from the NAS to the ASUS in a place where I could find it easily. I then configured and tested each e-mail account using the corresponding pst file. Everything appeared to work except I did not have my address book. One of the pst files was named Outlook.pst, and that file was associated with the Personal Folders entry on my WinXP machine. That folder was moved to Outlook from Outlook Express where I only had one e-mail account, and that account went away last May after we moved. Since I was not setting up an e-mail account to go with this pst file, I decided to import it into Outlook. It showed up in my list of e-mail accounts and I appeared to have all of my contacts when I clicked on People at the bottom of the screen but I was not able to select them as recipients for a new e-mail. Ugh. So close and yet not right. I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to see if he could assist me with this as he has in the past, and then went to bed.

2014/05/05 (M) Towering Heights

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It dropped into the upper 30’s early this morning. Although I did not really want to go outside and work, it was the perfect time to adjust the pressures in the bus tires and reset the baseline pressures on the Pressure Pro TPMS. I had a 10 AM service appointment for my car and wanted to take care of the bus tires before the air temperature warmed up or some of the tires sat in the sun.

I took the Honda Element to Brighton Honda for the 85,000 mile service which consisted of an oil change and multi-point inspection. A quick trip to Best Buy to look for a case for my new ASUS laptop computer did not result in a usable case but I did discover a new Logitech mouse, the T630; very thin and stylish but unfortunately not in stock. They printed out a sheet for me to take along.

I called Wayne (KD8H) and arranged to go see the Heights Tower he had for sale at 2 PM. Mike (W8XH) came along to help me inspect it. Mike has a Heights Tower so he is very familiar with them. The tower was already down and disassembled into sections that were stored horizontally on saw horses. The fold-over mount (FOM) was made of steel rather than aluminum and was rusty but very substantial. Wayne had the motor for the FOM but no longer had the threaded rod. The top tower sections had the mounting plate for a Ham II rotator and the bearing plate for the rotating mast. He also had the Ham II rotator, and was willing to include that in the deal. I wrote him a check and arranged to come back later in the week with a truck or trailer to pick everything up. After I dropped Mike back at his QTH and returned home I e-mailed several SLAARC members to see if they might be have a truck and/or trailer and time to help me retrieve the tower parts.

I had been doing research on cases for the ASUS G750 series (ROG) laptop computer and found two on Amazon Prime from Everki that looked promising as they were designed to hold up to an 18.5 inch (diagonal) computer. The Advanced was a padded top-load zipper case with a slender front zipper pocket. The Lunar was also a padded top-load zipper case but had a larger zippered front pouch and a slender zipper pocket in front of that. It also had a slot across the back that allowed it to be placed over the extended handle of a roller case. The Lunar was 3x the price of the Advanced, but the Lunar looked like it would better accommodate the AC power adapter and other accessories I tend to haul around. I had checked the ASUS ROG forum (Republic of Gamers) previously and the general opinion was that these two cases were both of good quality and big enough to hold my computer and related stuff. I ordered one for delivery on Wednesday (2-day), no extra charge with Amazon Prime.

2014/05/04 (N) Northwest Winds

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The weather yesterday was mostly cloudy with occasional light rain and the winds came up strong starting in the afternoon. They tapered off by bedtime but resumed a hard blow this morning with low, puffy, white clouds streaming in from the northwest and making the trees dance. It was a brighter morning than we have had most of the week as the sun played hide-n-seek with the clouds. The temperature remained cool, making for a brisk day, but it was a nice change from the cool, overcast dreariness of the past week. Except for Thursday, when the high temperature is supposed to hit 80, the daily high temps will be around 60 all week.

Linda made her scrumptious blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then went for a walk. She had barely left the house when she returned, very excited, to tell me she had just seen a young albino deer running through our yard. By the time I got outside it had moved on to the woods west of our property. We often see the same deer day-after-day as they travel their circuit, so I also hope to see this one someday.

After checking in on the blogs I follow using the Feedly app on my iPad2 I made a couple of corrections to a recent blog post, approved a comment from our daughter-in-law (the first one has to be approved), and deleted the 59 spam comments that the Akismet plug-in/service trapped since last night. I put a load of laundry in the washer and then spent some time looking online for a padded case for my new laptop computer and a replacement for one of our APC SmartUPS units that has failed.

With the move to tablet computers, the choice of laptops is diminishing, especially those with larger screens, and along with that fewer choices for accessories such as cases. In the past 14 years I have always purchased larger roller cases, with separate cases for the computer that fit inside, as my laptop traveled with me every day everywhere I went. I had the most recent of these cases with us in Florida and, after getting the computer/case and accessories out of it, I stored it in a closet (where it tended to be in the way). The next time I touched it was when I unloaded it from the bus to bring back into the house.

It was clear from that experience that I do not need another roller case. I do, however, want something that will protect my new laptop computer. I think I have narrowed the choice down to the Everki Advanced or the Everki Lunar, both available through Amazon Prime. The Advanced is very reasonably priced at under $40 and has generally favorable reviews, mentioning the ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ROG) models in particular. The Lunar has more storage space, and also has generally favorable reviews, but is over three times the price at just under $130. Posts on the ASUS ROG Forum seem to favor one of the Everki backpack models, but I do not want a backpack style case.

Our failed APC uninterruptible power supply is a Smart-UPS SUA1000. By trading it in on a SMT1000 we can save $75 off the retail price. I need to confirm that the discounted price includes return shipping; the SUA1000 weighs 48 pounds.

I revised the RVillage Quick Start doc I created for the GLCC, CCO, and FTH RV clubs, making it generic for use by Bus Conversion Magazine or anyone else. I then uploaded it to a new RVillage page on our website and revised a couple of other pages to link to the new one. I then uploaded blog posts for the last three days. I set up my new laptop in my office and installed seven more updates.

At breakfast yesterday I got a tip from Paul (N8BHT) on a used tower. He e-mailed me the owner’s contact information later. I called the owner, Wayne (KD8H), this afternoon and got a little more information about the tower. It is an aluminum Heights Tower, 80 feet, with Fold-Over Kit (FOK) including the drive motor, a rotator and antenna mounting plate. It is already on the ground and disassembled into sections. Wayne is retired and I will likely go look at the tower tomorrow afternoon. I e-mailed Paul (N8BHT), Mike (W8XH), and Steve (N8AR) to see if they were available to go with me.

Linda made lentil loaf for dinner with baked yams and fresh asparagus. After dinner I drove to South Lyon for the May meeting of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club. SLAARC usually meets on the 2nd Sunday of the month but pulls the May meetings forward a week to avoid Mother’s Day. Our topic of discussion this evening was the upcoming ARRL Field Day operating event, which takes place the last full weekend in June. We had a couple of new hams at the meeting and afterwards several of the guys helped Christine, KD8VEA, get the PL tone set correctly on her radio so she was able to participate in a group QSO with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), Fred (AC8VL), and myself on the drive home. In spite of what many people think, including some older/former hams, amateur radio is alive and well in the North America and all over the world.

The Phase Place

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Category Archives: Computers

2014/08/14 (R) All Computer All Day

2014/08/12 (T) Popcorn And A Movie

2014/08/11 (M) SLAARC/WordPress

2014/08/10 (N) Kathi Comes To Visit

2014/08/09 (S) WP User Accounts

2014/08/08 (F) Decked Out

2014/07/23 (R) My Platform

2014/07/20 (N) Company

2014/07/15 (T) Files Files Files

2014/07/14 (M) Education

20140713 (N) Pack-Rat

2104/07/12 (S) Natural Gas

20140711 (F) Nice Weather Lately

2014/07/10 (R) Home And Garden

2014/07/09 (W) vCard Magic And Adult Tonka Toy

2014/07/08 (T) New Dinnerware

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

2014/07/06 (N) Charmed

2014/07/05 (S) Re-Search

2014/06/15 Family Time

2014/06/06 (F) Chapter Business

20140605 (R) Apple Roku

2014/05/30 (F) Outlook Contacts

2014/05/26 (M) Memorial Day

2014/05/22 (R) Still Resting

2014/05/21 (W) A Twilight Zone

2014/05/20 (T) Software Redemption

2015/05/19 (M) Software Frustrations

2014/05/05 (M) Towering Heights

2014/05/04 (N) Northwest Winds