Category Archives: Automobiles

20240801-04_A busy-start-to-August

NOTE: This is a moderate length post (for me). It has two (2) photos with captions, both taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

THURSDAY 01 thru SUNDAY 04 August 2024 — Heat, rain, mosquitoes, and a busy week (BdW guests, laundry appliances, dogs, glasses, finances, and more) but no more yard work

Thursday 01 August … New glasses, a dead battery, more work tables, and Wild Turkeys in a tree

I got a text message yesterday that my new/remade tri-focal glasses were ready, so we made a trip to the Brighton SVS Vision Center to pick them up. But not in the F-150. When I tried to start it, the battery was completely dead. It turned out that the headlight switch had been moved from the AUTO position to the Running Lights position, and left that way overnight. Mea culpa, and I should have known, but I ignored the chime that continued when I turned off the engine last night and removed the key. Dumb. We took Linda’s car instead.

My new tri-focal glasses were correct this time, improving my distance vision just enough to make road signs at various distances sharper. The reading and middle portions of the lenses were the same as before. The optician made adjustments to the ear hooks and the nose pads until they sat correctly on my face with its slightly askew nose, which was broken many, many years ago. I also had her look at my reading glasses. I got the lenses there a month or so ago, but had them use an existing frame that I liked. One of the ear covers had cracked and separated into two pieces. She was able to heat them both up (left and right, one at a time) to remove them and replace them with new ones. She also noticed that the nose pads were cracked and needed to be replaced, so she did that as well. She then adjusted the ear hooks and nose pads so they sat correctly on my slightly crooked face. No charge for the extra services.

Back home, we stopped at the barn and I retrieved a battery charger and a set of jumper cables. The truck was in the garage. The engine compartment is “tall”, so I placed the battery charger on the fold out platform of a 6 ft stepladder. This allowed the battery cables to reach the battery in the engine compartment and the power cord to reach a nearby ceiling outlet. I connected the cables, plugged in the power cord, and set the operating parameters: AGM, 25 Amps. The display quickly ramped up to 25.8 Amps and stayed there. That was good news; some battery chargers will not work unless they detect at least some minimum voltage level from the battery. I am hopeful that the battery will recover; it’s only a few years old had never been abused prior to this accidental discharge.

The bottom end of one of the Rockler Rock-Steady 32” legs with the adjustable foot installed, but not adjusted or tightened.

The Rock-Steady leg is a simple, but cleaver, design. A flat sheet of steel is machined with various openings, both round and square, to allow other components to be attached, either with machine screws/bolts, or with carriage bolts. The bottom end is partially slit at the mid-point to form two tabs, one slightly longer than the other. The tabs are then bent 90 degrees, shorter one first and then the longer one. The entire sheet is then folded along its midline, forming an angle iron, with the tabs overlapping. The overlapping tabs are drilled to accept the adjustable feet, and the whole piece is then power-coated.

I changed into my work clothes and headed to the barn to assemble the last (for now) Rockler Rock-Steady Work Table. I attached this one to the table along the south wall of the shop that was already attached to the Corner Table in the SE corner of the shop. In this configuration, I will have a work surface along the south wall of the shop that is at least 20” deep and 144” (12’) long. It will end just shy of the “protected” (no storage allowed) area in front of the shop/storeroom electrical sub-panel. A picture will make this much clearer.

The workshop (in the barn) as seen from the entry door looking east. The Corner Stand to the left (NE corner of the shop) has two Rock-Steady Work Stands attached. The Corner Stand to the right (SE corner of the shop) also has two Rock-Steady Work Stands attached, plus a third Rock-Steady Work Stand along the wall on the right, which is attached to the one from the Corner Stand.

It was warm in the shop, even with a box fan running, so I got a bit sweaty and took a shower before dinner. Having only had a muffin for breakfast, and skipping lunch, Linda made a large salad and we had an early dinner around 4 PM.

As we were eating, Linda noticed a lone Wild Turkey resting at the base on one of our large White Pine trees to the east of the valley for our walk-out basement door. We thought that was odd, but it seemed to be okay. As we were clearing the table, I saw a small turkey (jake) drop out of the tree, and then another one. I called Linda over, and we watched the entire flock, including the other adult, drift down out of the tree. So, it wasn’t a lone turkey after all; it was our usual flock of 10. It was the second time this week that I had seen them in a tree, and the first for Linda.

Friday 02 August … Boondockers, bus chat, and financial chat

Rick (BdW PeachyTravel) was out this morning with their dog, Barkley, and we had a nice chat. They pulled out before I left to meet Chuck S. at 11:30 AM for lunch at Leo’s Coney Island in S. Lyon.

Chuck and I had a lot to catch up on, and occupied a booth for three (3) hours! The restaurant was busiest from noon to 1 PM, but had open seats the whole time there, and no one suggested we should move on. It rained off and on while driving there, while we visited, and on the drive home. By 5 PM we had a lot of standing water in the usual low spots around our property.

During the afternoon, I got a call from Kishen, one of our financial advisors at Stifel-Nicolaus. We had a nice chat and made an investment decision. We have been 100% satisfied with this company and the specific team of people we work with directly. Sometime during the day, Linda also talked to Nan (of Paul & Nancy) regarding the cruise we are all taking in early December.

BdW guest Marcia B was supposed to arrive today for a 2-night stay, but cancelled last night. It happens, and cancelations are never a problem for us as long as we know. We are also RVers, and we understand that things can happen, even at the last minute, that change travel plans.

Saturday 03 August … A birthday and party planning

Today was our son’s 46^th birthday (1978). Linda wanted to have the family over to celebrate, but today was not convenient, so it was set up for tomorrow. I do not recall what I did today, but it probably included a trip to Recycle Livingston to get rid of our household recyclables, doing laundry, and working at my desk. The mosquitos have been very bad, so we have temporarily eschewed working on the property. Linda spent a good part of the day preparing for the family get-together. That included cleaning the house, a trip to the grocery store, and preparing food. At some point, I brought chairs up from the basement and we put the expansion leaf in the dining room table.

Sunday 04 August … A family gathering and a birthday celebration

Linda arranged a family gathering for today at our house to celebrate our son’s birthday. Brendan was there (of course) with his daughters (Sadie and Madeline) and our daughter, Meghan, was there with her husband, Chris. Brendan’s wife, Shawna, whose birthday was in 11 more days, had previously made plans to go out of town for a weekend with her girlfriends. She was missed, but everyone still enjoyed themselves. Our daughter made a vegan peanut-butter chocolate cake for dessert; vegan for us and peanut-butter/chocolate for her brother. It was amazing.

When everyone had left, we just relaxed. In the evening, we continued watching the NBC recap of the Paris 2024 Olympics.

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20240717-18_Construction_&_Deconstruction

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NOTE: This longer post does not have any photos.

WEDNESDAY 17 and THURSDAY 18 July 2024 — Dental, walking, mowing, and a global IT outage

Wednesday 17 … Highway construction, a motorcade, and dental deconstruction

I had an appointment late morning with our dentist to deal with the right rear-most, lower tooth that had lost its partial crown about two (2) weeks ago. In all the time we have lived in Michigan (since 1976) I have never seen so much road construction as we have at the moment, so I left early to make sure I wasn’t late. Major highways are being widened all over SE lower Michigan, and flex-lanes are being added or extended on the highways to run through our local community area. The amount of equipment I passed today on I-96 was epic. At one point there were 12 gravel haulers lined up nose-to-tail waiting their turn to dump their loads. There were two concrete forming machines in operation, several very large cranes, and all sorts of excavators, cutters, rollers, concrete mixers. My best guess was at least 50 pieces of heavy equipment, much of it specialized to road construction. It was fascinating to see and, fortunately, there were no major traffic backups.

Close to the clinic, I headed west on Michigan Avenue to make the U-turn (Michigan left) back to the clinic. I noticed a LOT of flashing emergency lights, and not long after pulling into the U-turn, a motorcade went by (westbound) probably headed to the Detroit (Wayne County) Metropolitan Airport. I later learned that the motorcade was transporting Vice-President Kamal Harris following a speaking engagement in Detroit.

At the clinic, the dentist made an adjustment to one of my night-time bight guards and then got to work on my tooth. He decided to remove some of the existing tooth to allow the new crown to be thicker on top (that’s were the old one failed) and to come down around the tooth closer to the gum line for a more secure fitment. With the tooth prepared, he used the photo/laser scanning system to “map” the inside of my mouth on my right side. The scans included the upper and lower teeth (mouth open) and the outside of the teeth in the closed position. The new crown will be ceramic (Zirconia) and should be ready in about two weeks.

The dental assistant fitted a temporary crown, which was quite a procedure in its own right. It will protect the tooth until I get the permanent crown, but I was advised to still chew on the left side and avoid hard, crunchy, and gooey/sticky foods. Before leaving the clinic, I made an appointment for August 8^th to have the new crown fitted. The tooth is still “sensitive” when touched in certain ways, so I suspect the temporary crown does not completely protect the lower back side.

Thursday 18 … Walking, mowing, and seeing what’s behind you; and a major computer outage!

Linda met up with our daughter around 9:30 AM to walk a portion or the Mike Levine Lakelands Trail. From the Michigan History Center (Michigan.gov): “The Trail runs 33 miles between Hamburg Township in Livingston County (US-23 and M-36) and Blackman Township in Jackson County (near Stockbridge). Opened to the public in 1994 as the Lakelands Trail State Park, it is a popular destination for people looking to enjoy the outdoors. The trail is also a component of the Great Lake to Lakes Trails Route #1, which extends 275 miles from South Haven (Lake Michigan) to Port Huron (Lake Huron). Local philanthropist, Mike Levine, contributed extensive resources to transform the corridor into an improved trail. In 2018, the DNR changed the trail’s name to the Mike Levine Lakelands Trail State Park in recognition of Mike’s efforts.”

Our property was not completely dry after the rains last night, but I wanted to get the grass cut sooner rather than later so it had time to grow before next Tuesday when Keith would once again be here. I had the lawn tractor out of the shed and ready to go by 10 PM. I decided to set the mowing deck at its highest setting, so the grass would be long enough by next Tuesday to make it worth having Keith show up. I decided to cut the grass on the west half of the property on a SE-NW diagonal and the grass on the east half of the property on a SW-NE diagonal. On the west side, that meant I was cutting across the old furrows left over from when this property was part of farm (many, many years ago). The lawn tractor does not have a suspension, so I got beat up today. Keith usually mows on an E-W orientation, which makes for a smoother experience. Both he and I have to deviate from that, of course, to go around trees, stumps, buildings, the firepit, and along the edges of driveway as well as stands of trees and bushes. But that was the general idea for today. I worked until 1600, with a 30-minute break for lunch around 12:30. I was tired, but it felt good to have this done.

Linda got home around 1300 and had a bite of lunch. She took her car to Serra Honda for a 14:30 appointment to have the glass portion of the driver-side rearview mirror replaced. The labor was more than the part, but it required some special tools and knowledge to remove the old one without breaking plastic retaining tangs or the housing. Besides, if the technician dropped the new mirror, it would be at the dealer’s expense, not ours.

Sometime during the day, or perhaps it was overnight last night, an update of the CrowdStrike security software was pushed to their clients with a bug in it that caused a world-wide outage of computers running the Windows operating system, including Windows Server and Windows Enterprise. The event was well-covered in the media, so I don’t need to repeat it here. We were not doing anything at the time that might have been impacted, so for us it was just an interesting and curious news story. But for many people, especially those traveling, and for many (most?) of the really big corporations around the world, and even governments, it was a major disruptive event.

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20231130_Escaping-WX_heading-home

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Note: There are three (3) photos in this post. Photos by me (Bruce), were taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro or SONY alpha 6400, unless otherwise indicated. (Photos by Linda taken with a Google Pixel 6.)

THURSDAY 30 November, 2023 — Escaping the weather and making our way home

We were keeping a close eye on the weather forecast over the last few days. Based on what was happening, and forecast to happen, we decided to leave Luxury RV Resort a day early to try to get ahead of a weather system that had the potential to make breaking camp, driving, and setting up camp somewhat unpleasant. Yesterday, Linda made one-night reservations at Birmingham South KOA (Birmingham, Alabama) and Grand Ole RV Resort (Goodlettsville, Tennessee). When possible, we like to know we have a place to spend the night before we hookup and pull out.

Our travel trailer in its site for the night at Birmingham South KOA near Birmingham, Alabama.

We were successful in avoiding the weather and had an uneventful day leaving Gulf Shores, Alabama except for the “info-navi-tainment” screen/system in the F-150, which had developed an issue wherein it could not remember previous or stored destinations or how to pair with my Pixel 6 Pro smartphone. I had spent quit a bit of time the last few days fussing around with this, resetting the system and installing updates, all to no avail. I could still pair my phone, but had to initiate it manually each time. The GPS/navigation system still worked, but if we turned the engine off for any reason, such as stopping for fuel, we had to re-enter the address of our destination. Not the end of the world, but the most annoying thing was the radio came on when I turned the ignition on, and I could NOT turn it off or adjust the volume before performing a soft-rebooting of the system. It was annoying, given the price of the truck, but we have a bumper-to-bumper extended warranty that includes all of the electronic systems onboard, so we knew it would be taken care of once we got home. Besides, Linda always puts the destination in her phone and tracks our route and progress in parallel with the built-in system.

A view of the other side of our travel trailer in its site for the night at Birmingham South KOA near Birmingham, Alabama. I mean … it’s a thing of beauty and joy to behold, so it has to be shared.

The drive to our first overnight stop was uneventful and we arrived at the Birmingham South KOA near Birmingham, Alabama, well before sunset. It was a very nice RV park, and setting up camp was routine, even if we were a bit out of practice after sitting in the same spot for a month. The park was already decorated for the Christmas Holiday season, which gave it a festive look and feel.

We unhooked the truck and drove around the area a bit, mostly to find fuel and food (Panera), but also to just have a look. In the process we found ourselves driving through some very nice areas with very nice houses. This wasn’t the first time this had happened to us. I’m not sure why, but it came as bit of surprise just how much (apparent) wealth there is spread out all over the nation.

The entrance road and office/store/laundry building at Birmingham South KOA after sunset, all decked out for the Christmas holidays with the lights turned on.

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Blog Post for 202210(18-31) – Back to Normal (for now)

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[ Note: There are no photos for this post. ]

TUESDAY 18 October

Life is gradually returning to normal, which is to say, we are moving back into the rhythm of our normal, daily routines, local activities, and commitments. Not completely, of course. Adapting back to home life after an extended trip takes time, and we are not necessarily in a hurry to complete the transition.

Linda placed an order last night with one of our local Panera’s for a baker’s dozen bagels, to be picked up this morning, so she fetched those first thing.

A technician from Schutz Heating & Cooling was supposed to be here this morning between 8 and 10 AM. Sometime between 8 and 8:30 I got a phone call from the company. The technician had called in sick and they needed to reschedule. No problem, the appointment was routine maintenance, and was easily rescheduled for Tuesday, October 25 at 10 AM.

Around lunch time we drove over to the Oceola Township Hall and picked up our absentee ballots for the November 8 general election. It turned out that our new voter ID cards had been returned to the Township as they were mailed while we were away but could not be forwarded to our daughter’s house. The reason they could not be forwarded, and that we could not pick them up in person, was that they constitute a confirmation of address. We confirmed that our mail was, once again, being delivered to our house, and the clerk said she would re-post them.

As part of the transition, bridging our travel adventures with our home routines, we met our friend, and my former co-worker, Kate, for an evening out at the Corner Brewery (Arbor Brewing Company) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Kate and Brian live in Ypsi, and she still works at Wayne RESA, so we typically drive in her direction about once a month and get together for food and beverages (usually beer) someplace relatively convenient for her.

We left around 4:45 PM in a light drizzle and drove through mist and rain of varying intensity all the way. We got to the pub around 5:30 PM and Kate joined us a little before 6 PM. We always try to arrive early enough to get a booth (we didn’t) and get our first glasses of beer at happy hour prices (we did). Linda selected a table near the booths. A booth opened up before Kate arrived, so we snagged it.

It’s always a wonderful evening when we get together with Kate, and this was no exception. She is an intrepid traveler, and has been following our trip blog with genuine interest (which I very much appreciate). And we are always interested in where she has been recently, or plans to go next, as well as the goings on of her (very talented) nieces and nephews. She had birthday presents for Linda, a couple of books, wrapped in paper that she had designed and printed herself (she’s a graphic artist) with a repeated pattern of an F-150 pulling an Airstream trailer. Linda removed the paper carefully, treating it like a treasured object. We had a couple of gifts for her as well from our travels.

We finally returned to our vehicles around 10:15 and headed home.

WEDNESDAY 19 October

The HVAC technician (Mike) from Lakeside Services (Lakeside Heating and Cooling) arrived around 1 PM today to service the Bosch hot-water baseboard heating system for the house, and the heating portion of the Bryant HVAC unit for the library. When he tried to flush out any debris from the hot-water tank, he discovered that the floor drain in the furnace room appeared to be almost fully clogged. That’s not a good thing, as the furnace is a high efficiency natural gas fired condensing unit, and the condensate drain line discharges into this floor drain. The water from the floor drains (this one and the one in the laundry room) flow to the sump in the NE corner of the basement. I could hear water dripping into the sump, but removed the lid to get visual confirmation as well. We waited a while and the water level in the floor drain slowly dropped. Obviously the rate at which the furnace puts condensate into this floor drain is slower that the rate at which it flows out to the sump, but not by much, and certainly not by enough.

Lakeside Service doesn’t not deal with drains, but Mike gave me the name and phone number of a company that does (Clog Busters). He was here until about 3:30 PM. The library furnace filter was fairly clean (last changed on May 24, 2022), but Mike suggested I get a MERV 11 filter element instead of a MERV 13, which he felt was too restrictive, and reminded me to replace the batteries in all of the thermostats. We also talked about CO detectors, making sure we had ones that were sensitive enough to actually matter, and that we had them installed in the right places. I will call the company Mike recommended to deal with the slow drain. I could run a long hose out the downstairs doorwall to drain/flush the hot-water tank, but I will probably wait for the drain to be opened up.

I got a text message from Lakeside Service not long after Mike left asking me to provide feedback. It was a positive experience, and I responded accordingly.

THURSDAY 20 October

We got our seasonal Flu shots and bi-variant CoVID-19 boosters at a local CVS this morning.

Sometime during the day, a Boondockers Welcome guest arrived. It was someone we have hosted before, and we were glad to have her return.

I called Clog Busters, the company I was referred to by Lakeside Service, and set up an appointment for Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Linda met with Dave, the Controller from Metropolitan Baking Co., to pick up work and discuss a major upcoming software project.

Yup, we were returning to our normal routines. Except for the barn, of course; having a building that size constructed on our property is not a routine occurrence, and there is nothing about the experience that is routine.

FRIDAY 21 October

According to our calendar, Linda met up with Diane to go for a walk today. I am writing this post weeks later, and have no idea what else we did today.

SATURDAY 22 October

The two youngest grand-daughters arrived today for a sleepover. Paul and Nancy also came over for dinner as they were in the area staying with their son and daughter-in-law in Ann Arbor.

The weather was also warm enough to paint, and looked like it would stay that way for the next few weeks, so I started acquiring the materials I would need to prime and paint the inside of the shop and storeroom, as well as the stairs, in the barn. More on all of that in a separate barn update post.

SUNDAY 23 October

The morning after the sleepover night, Paul and Nancy returned to have breakfast and visit. They enjoy interacting with our grand-daughters. They eventually returned to Ann Arbor in the early afternoon. We then gathered up the munchkins, drove them back to their house in Ann Arbor, and stayed with them for a bit before returning home. On the drive back, the system information screen in the center of the dashboard (navigation, entertainment, information) went completely dark.

MONDAY 24 October

Today was a slightly less routine day. First up was dropping off the F-150 at Brighton Ford for a service appointment. The appointment was originally to do a LOF, check the brakes, make sure the SYNC 3 and navigation MAPS were up-to-date, and investigate the slight hesitation when going from 3^rd to 4^th gear while driving slowly with the powertrain not yet warmed up. Since the info screen had apparently died last night on the way home, I added that to the list. The drop off was a bit less smooth than usual, however. When I made the appointment I was told to check in with a specific service advisor, the same person I have worked with exclusively for two years. I arrived on time, and asked for that person. He was busy, but that was fine, I wasn’t in any hurry. When he finally got to me, he didn’t think he was my service advisor, and that I was supposed to work with someone else that I had never worked with before. He agreed to do the write-up, however, but seemed pressed for time. Whatever, I described the issues, signed the paperwork, and rejoined Linda, who was waiting for me in her car. I should have read carefully what he actually wrote down, but I didn’t.

Clog Busters was scheduled to arrive as early as 10 AM, which they did. The technician started by adding water to the floor drain in the furnace room, and confirmed that it was mostly clogged and draining very slowly. He could see a lot of loose material at the bottom of the drain/trap, so he started by removing it, picking out the larger pieces and vacuuming out the rest. He then ran a drain snake through the drain, and was able to feel a T-intersection, which I presumed was the drain running from the laundry room to the sump in the NE corner of the basement. The snake opened things up a bit, but not that much. He then ran the snake through the floor drain in laundry room, thinking it would emerge in the sump. (It was my job to watch for it coming into the sump.) At one point he had 100’ of snake in the drain tiles, but was never able to get it to emerge into the sump, even though I thought I could hear it. In any event, by the time he was done the drains were emptying and flowing into the sump much better than they had been; probably for a long time.

We had in-home health assessments scheduled for 1:15 PM, and Clog Busters was done and gone before that. The health assessments were a no-added-cost benefit of our health insurance plan/provider. Having them done in-home was one of the options, so we gave that a try. They were conducted by a P.A. and took about an hour for the two of us combined. It was a very easy process.

Tuesday is garbage pick-up day, and the company (Granger) that bought out our service provider (Alchin’s) does our street in the first half of the morning. That means the container gets wheeled to the edge of the street on Monday at 5 PM, so as not to forget it in the morning.

TUESDAY 25 October

Schutz Heating and Cooling arrived around 10 AM, as scheduled, to service the Mitsubishi-Trane heat pump they installed in October 2021. Everything was OK with the unit in heating mode. They will return in the spring to check/service it in cooling mode.

Nothing else of special note occurred today.

WEDNESDAY 26 October

We were notified by Xfinity (via e-mail, IIRC) that they were increasing our broadband speed, apparently at no extra cost to us. Of course, our 1^st year special pricing ended in July 2022, so we are now paying more for the service. The notification said I had to restart the gateway to activate the higher speeds, so I did. That’s always a bit of work, as I like to shut down all of the devices in the house, including the network switches, and then restart them in order: gateway first, then the switches, then all of the devices. The notification wasn’t completely clear if the speed boost would be immediate, or perhaps take place by “sometime in November.” I ran a speed test anyway, and did not see any change from what we normally have. I will try again in mid-late November.

I had not heard anything about the service work on the F-150, so I called the dealership later in the afternoon and spoke to my service advisor. He didn’t have a current status, but said he would check on it and call me in the morning. He did indicate that the reason he thought another service advisor was going to handle it was because of the transmission issue. OK. I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to get the truck back, but it was unusual for them to have it for this long for relatively routine service.

THURSDAY 27 October

Linda has been doing a lot of work for the bakery and I have been working on whatever I can do in the barn. I called the Ford dealership back to see what the status was on the F-150, only to find that my service advisor had not made it into work today due to a “family emergency.” OK. That happens. I was directed to service manager, so I called him and left a message. What unfolded from there was a text message conversation rather than return phone calls, which I thought was rather odd. What I was told was that they had not been able to duplicate the “hard, delayed shifting from 3^rd to 4^th gear.” I communicated back that this was not the problem I had reported. Apparently, however, it’s what the service advisor had written down. So, they had apparently spent time trying to replicate and chase down the wrong thing.

FRIDAY 28 October

Linda spent the day in Ann Arbor babysitting. She took Halloween treats for the girls as we would not see them again until after that. I worked on the painting projects in the barn.

At some point I was notified that the F-150 was done and ready for pickup. Linda was home in time to drive me to the dealership. All I had to pay for was the LOF service. We bought the truck from this dealership, and have had all of the service done here except for the LOF and tire rotation in St. John’s Newfoundland back in August. My interactions with the staff have always been pleasant, and the work has always been performed correctly and in a timely manner, the events of this week notwithstanding.

SATURDAY 29 October

We got together with neighbors this evening. Marta was back temporarily from her contract assignment in San Francisco, so Gail arranged for a 6:30 PM get-together at their house with the usual suspects (Gail/Mike, Marta/Gary, Rose/Jerry, and us). Mike already had a really nice campfire going when we arrived, and kept it well-tended all evening. Everyone brought snacks to share and came bundled up against the impending cold. It was great to re-connect, and catch up, with our neighborhood friends.

SUNDAY 30 October

Just another day in paradise, apparently.

MONDAY 31 October

Boo! We have never had trick-or-treaters since moving to our current house, but to avoid any misunderstanding, we made sure the outside lights, and all of the lights on the main floor, were off and that the shades were closed. We then retired to basement and watched TV.

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2016/04/21-25 (R–M) Bad Brakes & More

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2016/04/21 (R) More Bad Brakes

[NOTE: There are no photos for these posts.]

We were up before 8 AM, had coffee in the living room by the warmth and glow of the fireplace, and had fruit for breakfast around 8:45 AM. We left at 9:40 to take my car to Brighton Honda for its 110,000 mile service appointment at 10 AM. Linda followed me in the Civic to drive me back to the house but as long as we were that close to Brighton we decided to go to the Verizon corporate store. To our surprise, the store was permanently closed. We were pretty sure there was still an “authorized retailer” a little farther down on Grand River Avenue (which never made any sense to me) but after the authorized retailer in Arcadia, Florida was unaware of the Mi-Fi device I was interested in (AC791L) I really wanted to talk to someone in a corporate store.

We did not investigate further as to whether the store had been moved and, not having any other business in Brighton, we headed home. On the way I got a phone call from our State Farm insurance agent’s office about a long-term care premium that was due last month. Apparently one of our children did not recognize it was a bill when they checked our mail and did not alert us to its presence. It wasn’t a big deal, and Linda took care of it when we got home.

I started a load of laundry and settled in to work at my desk. I did not have a reply yet to my support ticket for our WiFiRanger. I checked-in to RVillage and saw that our member status had been upgraded to GOLD. I did a search for used tractors and was researching a portable water deionizing system at AutoGeek.com when I got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage. While Curtis and I were talking I got a call from Gary at Brighton Honda. He left a message and I called him back. The rear brake rotors and pads on my Element needed to be replaced. It seems we have not been able catch a brake break in the last six weeks.

Linda made a haircut appointment with Renee for tomorrow at 10 AM but got a call back from Renee that she was not working tomorrow. Renee had an opening at 1:15 PM today so Linda took that instead. It was already noon so Linda heated a can of Amy’s Chili and we split that for lunch along with some fresh black grapes. We left at 12:40 PM for the drive to Twelve Oaks Mall. I went along because I wanted to stop at the corporate Verizon store in Novi.

I don’t usually go along with Linda to her haircut appointments since she now cuts my hair at home, but it was good to see Renee again. She did a nice job with Linda’s hair and we were out of there in under 30 minutes. For many years the Verizon store was located on the Twelve Oaks Mall property near Twelve Mile Road but it recently moved, so we put the address in the GPS unit. The new location was nearby on Novi Road just the other side of I-96 from Twelve Oaks and West Oaks Malls.

We were assisted by Christina, who was both knowledgeable and helpful. We went in thinking we might upgrade both of our phones and our Mi-Fi device and increase our data plan. I was interested in the AC791L Mi-Fi device. They did not have one in stock but she knew what it was and said we could have one delivered to our house on Monday via FedEx. We then looked at phones and Christina steered us towards the latest offerings from Motorola. We selected one for pricing purposes and she worked up the costs, including a higher data plan.

The new phones would have each cost $26 a month for 24 months, and the extended warranties would have been another $11 each per month for as long as we cared to pay it. The phones had some nice features—specifically a shatterproof screen, wireless charging, and a screen-facing flash (for those all-important selfies)—but $74/month ($37 x 2) for two years seemed like a lot of money to us, especially given that our Samsung Galaxy S3 phones still work just fine. Another negative for us is that the new phones are also bigger and we like the size of our S3’s. Besides, I have a belt clip flip-top soft case for mine that fits nicely and works well.

Offsetting the increased phone costs was the fact that the line charges for our phones would drop from $40 per month per line to $20 per month per line. Also, the $80 we currently pay for 10 GB of shared data per billing cycle would now buy us 12 GB of data for the same time period. Finally, upgrading the phones would get us an additional 2 GB of data per phone per billing cycle for “life”, so our 12 GB plan would actually be 16 GB. We would lose the bonus data, however, if we ever reduced the monthly gigabytes on our plan.

In looking at the cost worksheet I noticed that for $100 per billing cycle we could get 18 GB of shared data and bump that up or down at will without losing anything. In the end we bought the AC791L Mi-Fi device for $90 ($100 with a $50 rebate and a $40 activation fee), changed the data plan to 18 GB for $100 (per billing cycle), and decided to keep our current phones. Ignoring the one-time charges connected with the new Mi-Fi device we increased our monthly data from 10 GB to 18 GB, got a new/better Mi-Fi device, dropped our monthly cost from $180 to $160 (before taxes), and were not locked in to anything. Christina also said to keep our eyes open for special deals on phones, especially around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Roger that, and will do.

By the time we got back to I-96 and Grand River Avenue (GRA) in Brighton it was 3 PM so we stopped at Brighton Honda to check on my car. While waiting for parts the technician got shifted to another job so my car was not ready yet. Making a left out of the dealership onto GRA is always difficult and can be impossible in heavy traffic. Our solution is often to turn right and go to Panera on GRA just south side of I-96, which is exactly what we did. They did not have any decaf brewed but were happy to make some for us. It had been cool and overcast all day so we sat by the gas fireplace and enjoyed several cups of coffee.

While we were sitting there I took a minute to call Philip Jarrell and let him know we were back in town. We discussed the French drain he installed at the west end of property last fall, which seemed to be working well, and the trenching on the other side of the road, where the culvert empties, which had become a small pond. I mentioned that the new driveway and RV pad looked nice, and that I really wanted to get the ham radio tower erected this year. That project would require his services for a morning. By 4:15 PM I had not heard anything further from Gary at Brighton Honda so we drove home.

Gary called at 5 PM to let me know the car was done and the technician was test driving it to make sure everything was correct. The dealership was open until 8 PM, and we did not want to fight rush hour traffic, so Linda fixed dinner. We had a salad of arugula and Italian kale with slivered almonds and dried cranberries, microwaved sweet potatoes, and vegan Italian sausage. Everything was very tasty and I particularly liked the spices in the mock sausage. Linda tries to make our diet primarily plant-based whole foods, but not having been vegans for most of our lives we find a certain satisfaction (comfort) in the occasional veggie burger, soy hotdog, seitan stroganoff, or other “mock” dish.

After dinner I hung up some laundry and started another load in the washer. I checked e-mail and had one from my niece Amanda. She and Ryan were looking at Wednesday, September 27, 2017 as a wedding date and wanted to know if all of us could make it to Hermann, Missouri for the event. I replied that it would not be a problem for Linda and me and cc:d Brendan and Meghan. I then texted both of them to alert them to the e-mail. I also had an e-mail from Kate de Fuccio wanting to know when we expected to be back in Michigan. I let her know we were back and had gotten preoccupied with opening the house and unloading the bus, but I felt bad that I forgot to text her as soon as we were home.

I also had a reply to my WiFiRanger support ticket requesting that I send screen shots of three of the tabs in the control panel. I replied that I would try but did not mention that I really wasn’t sure how to do that. Linda (the Google Queen) suggested that I “Google that” so I did. It turns out that “alt+prtsc” captures the current window as an image and copies it to the clipboard. From there you can do what you want with it. Easy breezy. (I subsequently ended up with something called “Easy Capture Manager” on my computer that just requires me to push the “prt sc” key and then lets me select what I what to capture.)

By 6:545 PM we were headed back to Brighton Honda to retrieve my car. Linda dropped me off and returned home. I paid the bill and returned home a few minutes later. Thursday night is CBS comedy night and by 8 PM we were ready to just sit and laugh. But first I had to transfer some of the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. I worked on blog posts while being entertained and hung up the dry laundry before going to bed.

2016/04/22 (F) Networking

I was up a little later than usual last night and would have slept in this morning but the cats had other ideas; they always do. We were up by 8 AM and I made a pot of the Costa Rican Terrazu half-caff coffee that we bought yesterday at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas. We were both still a little tired, and the thick fog further subdued our moods. We countered that by treating ourselves to an easy start to our day enjoying our coffee in the living room to the warm glow of the fireplace.

We eventually got dressed, had breakfast, and got on with our day. Linda got a call from Bill, who handles computer and networking technology for the bakery, and he walked her through the VPN setup for the bakery’s upgraded server. She then made a grocery list and went shopping. When she returned I discovered two boxes on the front porch. UPS had obviously been here without my being aware of it. The large box was the Instant Pot Linda ordered the other day and the small box was my prescriptions, which I was not expecting to see for another week.

My main focus for the afternoon was dealing with networking issues. I uncoiled a long Cat 7 Ethernet cable that I found in the ham shack yesterday. I unplugged the network cable for Linda’s computer from our AT&T gateway/router and plugged in one end of the Cat 7 cable in its place. I took the other end of the cable into the bus, plugged it in to the HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer, and turned the printer on. I brought my laptop computer upstairs, connected it wirelessly to the gateway, and tried printing a simple Word document without success. I checked the printer settings and the TCP/IP addressing mode was configured for a manual address that did not match the address range of our home network. I reconfigured it for DHCP and it acquired a new IP address in the correct range. I tried printing again but it still did not work. I reconfigured the address in the printer device properties on my computer and was finally able to print. That was a relief as we would really like to leave this printer on the bus and have it networked rather than operating from a USB cable.

I then turned my attention to the WiFiRanger Mobile Ti (WFR-MTi). I took my computer to the bus so I could use it to control the WFR and capture screen shots. I was able to connect it to the WFR without difficulty but the WFR could not “see” (detect) any external Wi-Fi signals even though it is on the roof outside the bus and my computer could see them from inside the bus. Back in the house I plugged in the Amped|Wireless SR20000G Range Extender / Router and configured it to repeat the AT&T gateway which does not broadcast a very strong signal. Back in the bus my computer could see the strong signals from the Range Extender but the WFR still could not detect any external Wi-Fi signals. I captured the screen shots for the MAIN, WIFI, and SETUP tabs, as requested by technical support at WiFiRanger, and pasted them into Word documents for uploading to their support system.

I took my computer back to my basement office and cabled it in to the network switch. I wrote a reply to the WiFiRanger tech support thread, attached the screen shots, and posted it. Clearly the WFR is not working and I am certain I will end up requesting an RMA and returning it for service, probably sooner than later, but I wanted to start with the online tech support system in case they had any good ideas that had not occurred to me.

Linda spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the Instant Pot and running it through its test procedure. It checked out as fully functional so she used it to prepare seitan stroganoff for dinner. I laid down at 5 PM and napped for an hour, finally getting up at 6 PM when Linda put our dinner salads on the table. She served the stroganoff over brown rice with a side of steamed broccoli and the whole meal was wonderful.

We sat in the living room until 8 PM and then decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle on PBS. I had forgotten what a good movie it is and enjoyed seeing it again. Linda fell asleep right after the movie ended and I watched Episode 6 of Ken Burn’s JAZZ before calling it a night. Like all of Ken Burn’s documentaries, JAZZ is a masterpiece of historical storytelling. At some point I would like to watch all 10 episodes back-to-back.

2016/04/23 (S) Ham & Eggs

Today was our first Saturday back home, and that meant it was also our first opportunity to have breakfast with our fellow amateur radio operators (hams) from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Before going to sleep last night I set wake-up alarms for 7 AM this morning, but I was awake before then and had time to grab a quick shower before getting dressed. I also took a few minutes to reattach the ham radio antenna to the magnetic mount on my car and reinstall the ICOM IC-2820 radio control head and microphone. Even so, we were still on our way by 7:30 AM and arrived at George’s Senate Coney Island on the north edge of South Lyon around 7:50 AM. During the drive I was part of a group chat with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), and Bill (W8NN), who was on an HT while riding with Larry (K8UT). The Yaesu Fusion repeater sounded good and it was good to be on the air again with friends.

Besides our coffee, dry toast, and dry English muffin, Linda and I split a fresh fruit plate. It was OK at best, but we don’t go for the food. It was good to see and talk to folks in person and to be back into this part of our “at home” routine. Today was testing day so a few people left to run the testing session, but most of the group, which numbered 19 people, stayed until 10 AM.

There was an accident this morning on westbound I-96 just east of the US-23 interchange. It was still being cleared when we drove home so we got stuck in a traffic backup that could easily have been avoided. Fortunately we did not have to be any particular place by any particular time and worked our way slowly through the congestion.

Back at the house I worked at my desk while Linda started cooking black beans in her new Instant Pot as she wanted to use some on a salad for our lunch. Normally she would have to soak dry beans overnight and then cook them for quite a while, but the Instant Pot, which can function as a pressure cooker, took them from bag-to-plate in 45 minutes, during which time Linda went for a walk. Pressure cookers can be very useful.

Once we got back to our house my initial task was to proofread and markup corrections to my article in the latest draft of the June 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. Once that was done I uploaded the PDF to a folder in my Dropbox and e-mailed Gary and Jorge that it was there. Next I checked my WiFiRanger support ticket and discovered that my reply yesterday, with screen shots attached, did not post correctly. I replied again and this time it posted correctly, or at least appeared to. With that task taken care of I copied a few images from the Sony a99v camera to my computer. I then started transferring files from my computer to the NAS that we had with us in the bus. I was about to start copying files for from that NAS to the older one we left at home when Linda called me up to lunch.

She made a large salad for each of us with tomatoes, blueberries, sliced strawberries, black beans, slivered almonds, and dried cranberries with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. She also made some hot tea after lunch which we took to the living room. Both of us were tired and by 2 PM laid down and took naps. It was 68 degrees F in the house but it felt very cool. I think winters in Florida and Arizona have reset my comfort zone from 70 degrees F, plus or minus, to 78 degrees to 80 degrees F. Jasper found a sunny spot on the floor by one of the living room windows and Juniper curled up with me. I got up at 3:15 PM and took my iPad out on the deck to work in the crisp air and warm sun. Linda came out around 3:45 PM but decided it was too cool and went back inside; I did the same around 4 PM.

Linda arranged for us to meet John and Diane Rauch at Camelia’s Mexican Restaurant at 6 PM. Camelia’s is walking distance from our old house, but we never walked there because the route was not pedestrian friendly. It’s a half hour drive from where we live now. I reinstalled the cellular booster in my car and we left at 5:20 PM to leave a little extra time in case we encountered traffic problems. And sure enough, we did. The right lane of eastbound I-96 was closed where it ties in to southbound I-275 as the right lane continued to be closed for a construction project.

Our children’s grade school vocal music teacher, Jennifer Davidson, (who moved here from Tennessee) once remarked that Michigan only has two seasons “winter and road construction.” Truer words were never said. We stayed to the left, because that’s what we had to do to get onto eastbound I-696. Although traffic was slow it was moving, unlike the right hand lanes trying to stay on I-96/I-275. Vehicle speeds returned to “normal” once we got past the split, which around here is 5-to-10 MPH over the maximum posted limit, and a few minutes later we exited the freeway at Orchard Lake Road. This is the same exit we used for 35 years to get to our house, and I have undoubtedly used this exit more than any other Interstate highway exit in country. It was familiar, yet strange, as we rarely get back here anymore except to visit with John and Diane, meet someone at Camelia’s (or one of the other many restaurants that can be accessed from the Orchard Lake Road exit), or go to our optometrist or veterinarian, both of whom are two to three miles south of this exit.

We had our fill of chips and salsa and split an order of vegetarian fajitas. They were OK, and much better than the ones we had a week ago at Mi Camino Real in Logansport, Indiana. After dinner we went to John and Diane’s house, which is very close to the restaurant, and continued a nice conversation in a quieter setting. By 9:30 PM we were all tired and started wrapping up our visit. We left a little before 10 PM, got home at 10:30 PM, and went right to bed on stomachs that were still very full. WTVS (Detroit PBS) was fundraising around an early Rolling Stones performance that did not grab my interest so I watched Lidia’s Kitchen and the beginning of Martha Stewart’s Cooking school. She was filleting fish so I turned the TV off and went to sleep.

2016/04/24 (N) Family

We went to bed on full stomachs last night and I did not sleep well, suffering from indigestion for much of the night. I should have used a second pillow and tried sleeping on my back with my head elevated, but that is not a natural sleeping position for me and I doubt that would have slept any better. To compensate for the poor sleep I stayed in bed and kept falling back to sleep. Linda was up way before me, having apparently slept better than I did, and I finally got up to stay at 9 AM. That was unusually late for me, but at least I felt somewhat rested.

As soon as I got up Linda sliced oranges for our breakfast and prepared to toast bagels while I prepared our morning coffee. We were not quite done with our preparations when I got a phone call. It was from Chuck Spera so I answered it.

Chuck and I talk frequently but not usually at 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning. He and Barbara were on the road and had just crossed into Kentucky on I-75 having left Sevierville, Tennessee early this morning. Before pulling out this morning Chuck had noticed a little oil by the driver side tag axle during his walkaround, specifically in the holes of the Alcoa aluminum wheels. He had removed the decorative hub cap and found an oil film there as well, but did not see any pooling. He assumed that an axle seal was leaking a little but was not sure how to check the oil level in the hub or add oil if needed. Because of both past and recent experiences, Chuck figured I would know the answers to both questions. While that was probably unjustified optimism, in this case I did, and gladly shared what I knew about the sight glass and rubber plug in the wheel hub for the oil reservoir.

We had just finished our bagels and orange slices when Brendan texted Linda to see about plans for today. We had all planned on getting together at Meghan and Chris’ house this afternoon to visit and have dinner but Madeline had come down with Hand, Foot, & Mouth disease (a virus) earlier in the week and Brendan thought he might be getting it too. Given that Linda had not yet fully recovered her hearing we agreed that it would be best to avoid contact until we knew that no one was contagious.

Madeline was understandably disappointed that she would not see us today and, in lieu of that, requested a FaceTime session. We were equally disappointed that we would not get to see her (and her parents) but an hour of FaceTime made up for it a bit. After our FaceTime session we lingered in the living room by the fireplace enjoying our coffee and doodling on our iPads. We finally got dressed at noon and left for Meghan and Chris’ house at 12:30 PM.

We arrived around 1:15 PM and were greeted by our daughter with a paper grocery bag full of some of our mail. We had a long, relaxed afternoon to visit and catch up. Meghan made vegan burgers from scratch and a salad with beans, corn, red bell pepper, and avocado with a lime-based dressing. We brought a bottle of Barefoot Red Moscato and I found it very much to my taste (sweet).

We departed just after 7 PM and stopped at the new Gas 2 Go station at the northwest corner of I-96 and Latson Road. The station was still under construction when we left in November. I was pleased to see that it is a Shell Oil Company station with a Tim Horton’s. I have had a preference for Shell gasoline for most of my adult life and Tim Horton’s has coffee on a par with Dunkin Donuts, although I do not like the lids they use. There is also a traffic signal on Latson at the side road for the station, no doubt because this is also the access road for the Livingston County Road Commission complex. (Leave it to them to take care of themselves while the rest of rest life and limb to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart center just south of there.) Whatever the reason, it will slow down traffic exiting I-96 and heading south on Latson Road, making it easier to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart parking lots.

We were home a little after 8 PM and turned on the TV to watch Grantchester on PBS and Elementary on CBS. Around 8:40 PM I realized I had missed the SLAARC Information Net which started at 8 PM. I need to reestablish the habit of tuning in on Sunday evenings, but that time slot competes with some of our favorite programming on PBS.

2016/04/25 (M) Pick Up Sticks

We had a typical start to our day. After catching the weather on channel 10.2 we were up by 8 AM, had coffee and granola with blueberries and bananas, and used our iPads in the living room with the fireplace turned on. Our Kitchen Aid mixer broke last year and today Linda was finally ready to replace it. She decided to get the slightly larger and more powerful model with the crank up mixing bowl as she wants enough power to mix bread dough. She also wanted it in white to match most of the other kitchen appliances. To our surprise the white color was more expensive than red or blue but less expensive than some other colors including copper bronze. She was trying to convince herself that red or blue would be OK but I convinced her to order white. All of our appliances (and cabinet knobs) are white. With Amazon Prime it will be here on Wednesday.

The weather forecast was calling for a cold front to move through our area triggering rain, and possibly thunderstorms, starting late in the afternoon and extending through the evening and into the overnight hours. The grass in most of the yard is not very tall yet, except right in front of the house by the concrete driveway. The yard is also moist, but not soggy, and we do not expect Keith to be here to cut the grass for the first time this season until sometime next week at the earliest. The temperature mid-morning was in the low 60’s and was forecast to reach a high of 72. All-in-all it was an excellent day to pick up sticks around the yard in advance of Keith’s first visit and get the Honda self-propelled lawn mower out and cut the grass in front of the house.

I started my yard cleanup with area around the front berms, raking small branches out of the grass and stacking larger ones on existing brush piles. While I was working out front a UPS truck showed up with our Max Burton Induction Cooktop and our new Verizon Mi-Fi unit. I signed for the Mi-Fi and took the packages inside. Linda used the induction cooker to make some nectar for our hummingbird feeder and also prepared a batch of homemade granola. She eventually came outside and helped me pick up some of the downed tree limbs in the back yard. We got the easternmost two acres (2/5ths of our yard) picked fairly well. We will work on the westernmost three acres another day.

I got the Honda lawnmower out and topped up the tank with fresh fuel. Small engine Honda equipment is known for starting on the first pull, but my experience is that this is only true when they are new. No doubt our lawnmower needs to be cleaned up and tuned up, and would start more easily if it was, but I eventually got it started and once it warmed up it ran fine. I mowed the little bit of the lawn near the house/driveway that looked like it was overdue for a cut. This is also one of the only parts of the yard anyone really sees if they pull into the driveway.

I had just shut the lawnmower off and was putting it in the garage when the U. S. Mail truck pulled into the driveway. It was our mail carrier, Michelle, and she had a very large box for us, along with our typical bundle of Monday junk mail. The box was not very heavy and Linda informed me that it was the 48 rolls of toilet paper she recently ordered. Well, alrighty then.

It was approaching 1 PM so Linda made salads for our lunch with the leftover bean-corn-tomato salad (that Meghan made yesterday) on top of a bed of mixed greens. After lunch Linda took her Amateur Extra flash cards outside to study and I focused on getting the new Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi (Netgear AC791L) assembled and activated. Assembly consisted of installing the Lithium Ion battery and back cover. I decided to charge it for a bit while I read the user guide and activation procedure.

When I was fairly certain I had all of the information I needed at my fingertips I called the 877 activation number and keyed in the requested information. It took a couple of tries to get it right but I finally did. With the activation completed I turned the device on, looked up the SSID and Password, and connected my iPad to it. I then entered the relevant information in a new entry in Passwords Plus.

I got a phone call from Gaye Young and chatted with her at some length about RVillage and its relevance to FMCA. (Gaye is the FMCA National Secretary and chairperson of the National Education Committee.). She and husband Jerry are at the Rally in the Pasture at FMCA National President Charlie Adcock’s place in Arkansas (or maybe it’s Alabama?) and I knew from talking to Curtis Coleman last week that he was on his way there too. A year and a half ago the NEC researched and recommended that FMCA partner with RVillage and a year ago the FMCA executive board accepted and endorsed that proposal but then nothing happened. The FMCA Executive Director was recently let go and Charlie is now trying to get the RVillage train back on the tracks, along with lots of other things as FMCA continues to loose members at an alarming rate.

I suspect that the loss of members is a combination of several factors. For one, the median age of FMCA members has been in the upper 60’s for quite some time. That means a certain number of members are “aging out” almost daily. For another, the downturn in the economy in 2007 was particular hard on the RV industry. Not only was the industry slow to recover, when it did it was building mostly towables, not motorhomes. In the past many RV dealers basically “included” an FMCA membership with the purchase of a motorhome, or at least provided information about the Association and an application form. Another possible factor is that RVers under 50, including Gen-Xers and Millennials, don’t tend to join things. FMCA is not the only organization suffering membership decline and having difficulty attracting new members, especially younger ones.

Chuck and Barbara got home yesterday and were settled enough for Chuck to call me at 5 PM and update me on their hub oil leak. Linda made salads for dinner and reheated the brown rice and seitan stroganoff. After dinner I replied to an e-mail from Gaye and then settled in to watch TV with Linda. And so it goes.

2016/02/21 (N) Punta Gorda

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Our destination today was Punta Gorda. We arranged last night to pick up Mara and Michael at 9 AM and stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and something to eat. As a result we slept in a bit and did not make coffee or have breakfast. I stopped at the Shell Station to top off the fuel tank and then pulled into the DD next door. Coffee and food in hand we headed to downtown Arcadia on FL-70 and then headed south on US-17 to Punta Gorda.

Michael, Mara, and Linda at the historic 1928 train station in Punta Gorda, FL.

Mara had researched things to see and do and entered them into the “Map My Plans” app on her iPad. The app can arrange them in the best order (shortest driving distance) to visit. Our first stop was an historic train station from 1928 that is now a local history museum. It was closed on Sunday’s, but we got to see the outside. Our next stop was an open air arts and crafts market near the Convention Center. We saw this market last month, when we visited the Woodcarvers Expo at the Convention Center, and it was there again today so we stopped. Mara bought some earrings and Linda bought an apron. There was also a husband-wife guitar group playing some very interesting original music that seemed to be of derivative Spanish influence. They were selling CDs, and I am always tempted to buy one from groups like this as I would likely never find them anywhere else again. But I didn’t.

This is the front of the historic 1928 train station. Punta Gorda, FL.

From the arts and crafts market we drove to the farmers’ market. We also visited this market in January and really liked it. The same vendors were there so we were able to buy some more Miatake mushrooms and some Sweet Hot pickles. Linda also bought a selection of fruits and vegetables.

Linda looks over the fruits and vegetables at the Punta Gorda farmers market.

From the farmers market we drove to Ponce de Leon Park and visited the Peace River Wildlife Refuge. This was also our second visit to this facility, which has an interesting collection of injured birds who are at least living out their lives in comfort and safety.

The front end of a vintage Lincoln at the Muscle Car Museum in Punta Gorda, FL. Most of the cars were General Motors products.

After our visit to the refuge we drove to an alligator preserve but it was closed. We back-tracked a short distance to the Muscle Car Museum. Though not free, we paid the nominal admission charge and spent a couple hours examining a very large and very nice collection of Chevy cars and trucks. Among others they had a couple of 1957 Belairs and a couple of 1967 Cameros.

Bruce standing by a red 1957 Chevy Belair. He had one very similar to this when he was in high school. Muscle Car Museum, Punta Gorda, FL.

Neither of us are particularly nostalgic about our youth, or any other part of our past for that matter, but I had a 1957 Belair my last three years in high school (in the late 60s) that I customized. It was not a muscle car but it was candy apple red and it was mine. Linda’s first car after she graduated from high school and started working was a 1967 Camero. It was a white convertible with a red interior and a 327 cubic inch V8 under the hood. It had an automatic transmission, and was not a muscle car, but it was powerful and we took it to from St. Louis, Missouri to Colorado and back on our two-week camping honeymoon right after we got married.

Linda standing by a white 1967 Chevy Camero. It was similar to the one she owned except that hers was a convertible and had a red interior. Muscle Car Museum, Punta Gorda, FL.

We discussed finding a restaurant in Punta Gorda for linner but Mara and Linda did not turn up anything promising. I set the GPS and started back to our RV resort. In less than an hour we were back and dropped Mara and Michael at her rig before returning to ours.

Back at the coach we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and checked our e-mail. Gary had sent the first draft of the April 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine for me to proofread. I went through my featured bus article on Ronnie and Diann Mewbourn’s 1969 Model 07 Eagle conversion and started annotating corrections. I will need to go through it again with the original open for comparison but I was too tired to do that today.

For dinner Linda sautéed the Miatake mushrooms in EVOO with garlic, onion, and Egri Merlot. She also cooked a spaghetti squash, set out some black grapes, and poured out the remainder of the Merlot, which was left over from last night’s dinner. This was only the second time we have had Miatake mushrooms and it is difficult to describe in words how exquisitely good they are in terms of taste, texture, sight, and smell. We agreed that they were the best mushrooms we have ever had.

After dinner I connected the Sony a99v-DSLT to my computer and off-loaded the 105 pictures I took today. I looked through them quickly but did not see anything that I thought would make a good postcard for Madeline. My computer seemed to be working again so I backed up photos, blog posts, BCM files, and other files to our NAS. I tried to access the Backup and Security components in Windows 10 and it appeared they had been restored to proper operation. I checked for updates and the system said it was up-to-date. ES|ET Smart Security is still telling me I have 17 updates and most of them appear to be drivers related to the computer hardware and low level system functions. I need to contact ES|ET and ask them about what this actually means and how to resolve it.

We were going to walk over after dinner and visit with Mara and Michael but all four of us were tired and took a pass. We watched Father Brown on PBS, the Simpsons and something else on FOX, and then Downton Abbey on PBS. Linda headed off to bed after Downton Abbey and I watched the end of CSI: Cyber.

2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

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I got up a little after 7 AM. Juniper was prowling around the bed which is her way of letting us know she wants to be fed. If one of us does not get up and put food in their dishes Juniper starts chewing on the charger cords on our night stands and/or pushing things off onto the floor. I needed to get up anyway. The Tylenol PM had worn off and I was having difficulty finding a comfortable position. To my surprise and consternation, my back was much worse than when I went to bed. I could not find a comfortable standing position and was barely able to walk. I managed to get my robe and slippers on and make it to the bathroom to get my bite guard out, clean it, and put it back in its case. I made my way to the kitchen where I took three Ibuprofen with some orange juice and had a couple of cherry strudel bites (vegan). I then sat in the living room with the heater pad against my lower right back and set on high.

Linda got up at 8:15 AM. At 9 we had fresh grapefruit and cherry mini-strudels (vegan) for breakfast with orange juice and the last of the Ethiopian Yiracheffe coffee. We drank most of the coffee in the living room where I lingered until 10 with the heater pad on my right lower back.

I called Brighton Honda and the service department confirmed that they rotated my tires at my last service visit so they did not need to be rotated today. I called Discount Tire in Howell and cancelled my 10 appointment. That took some pressure off of our morning.

A clean bus is a happy bus, or at least makes for a happy bus owner. Although we have kept it vacuumed as we worked it needed a good interior cleaning. The insides of the cabinets needed to be vacuumed, the wood work need to be dusted, and the counters and mirrors needed to be cleaned. Linda did most of that yesterday. We also wanted to wash the floor but decided to do that after everything was loaded on board.

I did not get all of the tool boxes repacked last night so I continued working on that today as best I could. I also needed to go through all of the tubs that we keep in the front bay, decide what really needed to travel with us, and repack the tubs. The situation with my back, however, made for slow and uncomfortable work.

We took a break at 12:30 PM to have lunch. Linda has been using up frozen food to clear out the refrigerator so she made vegan “hamburgers.” The packing and loading work was further interrupted by several things we had to do away from the house and bus.

I dropped off my Honda Element at Brighton Honda for a 1:30 PM oil change appointment. Linda followed me in her car and picked me up. We went to Staples in Brighton and bought a pack of 9x12x4 inch boxes. I needed three of them to hold the complete sets of BCM issues (37 magazines each) that will be given away as door prizes at the Arcadia Bus Rally. I called Teeko’s to see if our coffee order was ready to pick up. It was. I called Brighton Ford’s NAPA parts department to see if the air filter had arrived. It had, but the parts guy wasn’t sure where it was and thought it might take a little while to find. No problem.

We drove to Teeko’s first to pick up our coffee and visited for a while with Mary. We then drove to Brighton Ford, which is next door to Brighton Honda, to pick up the air filter. The Honda dealership called to let me know my car was ready to pick up, so the timing was really good. Linda dropped me off at the Honda dealer and went on to Meijer’s. I got my car and headed home. In total the errand run took about two hours.

There was a USPS Priority Mail package waiting for me on the porch when I got home. It was a set of the BCM issues I need to make a complete set to use as a door prize at the Arcadia Bus Rally at the end of December. In my correspondence with Gary (owner/publisher) he agreed to send three sets and to ship them next week to the RV resort in Williston, Florida. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending time and effort communicating carefully and in detail.

I continued working in the garage and Linda started cleaning the house. We worked until 6 PM and called it a day. We did not accomplish as much today as we wanted to but we got a lot done and felt good about that. Our original plan was to have the bus loaded by the end of the day tomorrow. As things stand we plan to finish loading it on Wednesday. As of now we are still committed to leaving Friday morning and should be able to do that.

Linda picked up a couple of Amy’s frozen enchilada dinners which, along with some fresh black grapes, made for an easy but tasty meal. After dinner I integrated the magazines I received today with the issues I already had to make one compete set which I boxed up and labeled. At 8 PM we settled in to watch our Monday night TV shows before taking some more Tylenol PM and going to bed.

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

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Linda was up before 6 AM to drive to the bakery ahead of the worst of the morning rush hour traffic. I was aware of her getting up but fell back asleep. She is very quiet as she goes about her preparations on such mornings, which I appreciate.

I got up around 8AM, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray. I made half as much coffee as usual and measured out a bowl of granola, probably a little more than usual. I took my coffee to the living room and turned on the fireplace, expecting to settle in with my cats and work on my iPad, but the iOS 9.0.2 update was available so I started the installation and read the last few pages of Number Theory and Its History by Oystein Ore. I read from screens more than from paper these days, but I still like to curl up with a printed book.

Jasper used to sit next to me on the sofa in the morning but seems to prefer sleeping on top of one of the back cushions these days. Juniper, who never used to pay much attention to me, has taken his place. She has always sought out warm places to curl up but has always preferred Linda’s lap to mine.

My bus project for today was reassembling the plumbing to the two fan-coil heat exchangers that go in the bases under the two desk pedestals. Yesterday I cut new holes for the supply and return hoses. My first task was to remove the hoses from the bleeder valves and install barbed plastic plugs in the ends to prevent coolant from coming out. I then pulled the hoses back and out through the new openings.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

I worked on the hose for the right hand (rear most) heat exchanger first. I positioned the base, routed the hose to the lower fitting, and marked where to cut it. I put a plastic paint tray liner under the hose before I cut it but more coolant came out than I expected. I got as much of it in the liner as I could and grabbed a bunch of paper shop towels. I got the liner outside without spilling any antifreeze and poured the used antifreeze in a one gallon jug that I keep for just this purpose. I used a funnel that is also reserved for use with antifreeze.

I took the cut off piece of heater hose outside, plugged end down, and set the open end in the tray liner. We already had a bucket of soapy water in the bus as we had planned on hanging wallpaper yesterday. I wrung out the sponge and then squeezed some of the soapy water on the floor and cleaned it up with paper shop towels.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

With the mess cleaned up I slipped two hose clamps over the end of the hose and worked it onto the lower fitting on the heat exchanger. If only it had been as easy to do as that description! The 3/4″ i.d. rubber heater hose did not just “slip” over the 3/4″ o.d. copper pipe even with some residual antifreeze lubricating the inside of the hose and the outside of the pipe. Indeed, it took considerable and simultaneous pushing and twisting to get the hose on. It was also a lot harder than I expected to work with the heat exchangers installed in the bases, even without the desk pedestals in place.

I was interrupting my work as needed to take photographs and as I finished up the first hose the camera refused to trigger the shutter. The LCD screen indicated that the compact flash memory card was full so I went to my office to offload the images from the last few days. My other CF card was empty so I put that in the camera and set it aside. I had not backed up my photos to the Network Attached Storage units in quite a while so I decided to take the time to do that. While I was at it I backed up my blog posts from December of 2014 through July of this year along with several issues of The Gypsy Journal.

As long as I was at my computer I checked my e-mail accounts, logged into RVillage, and logged into my account at B&H Photo. My new Sony alpha 99 and accessories were on their way from New York and due to be delivered by the end of the day tomorrow. I am excited to finally be getting a new digital camera with a full frame (35mm) sensor that will work correctly with all of my old Minolta A-mount lenses.

By this point it was lunchtime so I cleaned up (antifreeze is definitely NOT good eats) and scrounged around the kitchen for something tasty but easy to fix. My “go to” meal is usually roasted red pepper hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers. We had a little hummus left, which I finished, but I was still hungry so I made a bowl of popcorn. I would probably not make a good bachelor.

I went back to the coach and contemplated attaching the other hose to the left heat exchanger. While I was thinking about it Linda called to let me know she was on her way home. It was 1 PM so I decided to wait for her to get home to help me install the second hose. I had some phone calls to make and used the time for that.

I called Karen at Bratcher Electric to schedule the upgrading of our 60 Amp sub-panel in the garage to a 100 Amp main panel. While I had her on the phone I asked if Mike would itemize the quote. I also mentioned that they had picked up two or three whole house generator customers through my referrals and perhaps Mike could provide some consideration for that in the pricing. Next I called Ferman Miller at Countertop Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to check on the Corian desk top and table. Ferman answered the phone and said he had called Josh this morning to let him know the pieces were ready for pickup. I then called Josh to see what his plans were.

We originally agreed that he would pick them up and bring them to our house on his way to visit relatives in the northeast side of the Detroit metropolitan area. His plans had changed and he won’t be visiting his relatives anytime soon. He is leaving on Tuesday for a FMCA area rally in the Carolinas and will be gone for a week. Before he leaves he needs to get something to a customer in Cleveland in addition to getting our stuff to us or deciding that we will have to drive to Shipshewana to get it ourselves. One option is that we meet him somewhere on Sunday. Ann Arbor is a possibility but Toledo or Defiance (Ohio) are more likely rendezvous points.

Linda got home around 2 PM and changed into her work clothes. With Linda’s help I was able to avoid the mess I had with the first hose. The second hose was even harder to get on than the first one but we managed to do it. In part because of the arthritis in the joints at the base of my thumbs I do not have as much grip strength as I would like and often need. The twisting and pushing was hard on my hands and the confines of the base and proximity of crisp wooden edges resulted in lots of small cuts. This was not something I anticipated in the design and construction of the bases and the installation of the heat exchangers.

I took a break and drove to Northwest Plumbing Supply to see if they had a bleeder valve like the ones in our bus system. They did not and had never do seen anything like it before. The showed me a couple of things they did have but I did not buy anything. I got a call from Brighton Honda that my car was ready for pickup so I headed home to get Linda. She drove me to the dealership and then went on to Meijer’s for a few grocery items.

I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and was fortunate to find Lars in the plumbing department. The store was not very busy and he took an interest in showing me various plumbing options that might allow me to replace the bleeder valve with something that would do the same thing while also giving me a way to add antifreeze to the system. What I ended up with was 3/4″x3/4″X1/2″ copper sweat T and a 1/2″ sweat ball valve with a waste port.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built. (Photo by Linda.)

Back home I cleaned some 3/4″ and 1/2″ copper pipe with 120 grit plumbers sandpaper. I cut two pieces of the 3/4″ pipe about 3″ long and one piece of the 1/2″ pipe about 1-1/2″ long. I brushed the inside of all the fittings and test fit the pieces. I then applied flux to all of the surfaces to be soldered, inserted the two 3/4″ stubs into the run fittings, inserted the 1/2″ stud into the bull fitting, and put the ball valve on the other end of the 1/2″ pipe. I used the lever on the ball valve to mount the assembly in my bench vise. I removed the waste port cap to protect the neoprene seal and opened the ball valve so as not to trap heat inside. I then heated the T and the end of the valve and applied the solder.

I figured there had to be an easier way to get heater hose onto the heat exchanger and that Butch was the guy who would know what it was. I called and he said antifreeze can obviously be used and works fairly well but that a small amount of dish soap would also work as a lubricant and not harm the antifreeze or the Aqua-Hot and its components. As long as we were on the phone I caught up on their activities.

They were still there at the RV Park in Bouse, Arizona but only until the 15th of this month. The terms and conditions of their employment as managers of the park had not turned out to be as described during the interview process and they are wrapping up after only a month on the job. They will move their bus back to Quartzsite and spend at least part of the winter at Joe and Connie’s place where we both spent last winter. I know it was a big disappointment to them that the situation in Bouse did not work out, but their situation in Q will be familiar, comfortable, and inexpensive, as well as convenient to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club which they joined this past winter.

For dinner Linda made a blend of onions, garlic, mushrooms, and power greens and served it over a baked potato topped with Daiya cheese. It was very yummy, and the potatoes kept the dish warm all the way to the end. The weather had turned cloudy through the afternoon and we got the first raindrops during dinner.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

I had really hoped to have the hydronic heating system reassembled today so we went back out to bus after dinner to hook up the heater hose that runs between the two heat exchangers. This was actually two pieces of hose with my homemade bleeder/fill valve half way between the two exchangers. Even with dish soap the two hoses were very difficult to get onto the heat exchanger fittings and the bleeder/fill stubs, but I got them on. Linda took pictures while I grunted, groaned, and moaned and I took a few more when I was done.

It was 8:45 PM when we finally quit working, secured the bus, and went inside. I cleaned my hands as best I could but I could not get all of the black from the rubber hoses to come off. We sat for a while in the living room and had the last of the frozen chocolate torte that Linda made a couple of weeks ago. We finally turned in around 10 PM and watched Rick Steve’s Europe, Travel in the Americas, and a couple of cooking shows while I worked on this post.

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

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It dropped into the mid-40s last night and the house cooled off proportionally. It starts getting light at 7 AM these days and cool mornings are just another reason to stay under the covers a little longer. I finally got up at 7:30 AM, got dressed to work, and made our morning coffee. After our breakfast of fresh mixed berries and homemade granola I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee to its dancing light and warmth.

Chuck called to let me know he had set out one of his sheet metal nibblers for me to pick up at the shop. I left around 10:30 AM and drove Linda’s Honda Civic to Discount Tire in Howell. (My Honda Element is tied up at Brighton Honda until the middle of next week to get a broken driver-side door lock replaced.) I noticed last night while we were out that several tires on the Civic were under-inflated and the sidewalls were badly weather-checked. They still had plenty of tread but the paperwork indicated they were put on five years and 80,000 miles ago. Time for a change.

At Discount Tire the sales associate confirmed that the date code was from 2009 and corroborated my observations. The tread was probably good for another 20,000 miles but I do not mess around with old tires with cracked sidewalls. Michelin no longer makes the Defender, at least not in the P195/65R15 size, so I bought a set of four Continentals that should perform equally well and last for 90,000 miles. That means they will age out before the wear out, which is fine with me. It was going to be a two hour turnaround time so I texted Linda and Chuck and settled in to wait. Thank goodness for iPad games.

The technician pulled the car in at noon and a few minutes later asked me if I had the key for the wheel locks. I had looked for it earlier and not found it. He wasn’t sure he could get them off at all and would certainly ruin them in the attempt. That sounded like a bad situation getting worse so I had them set the tires aside while I took the car to Brighton Honda and had them remove the special lug nut from each wheel using their master key set. I bought a new set at the Honda dealership (so any Honda dealer can remove them in the future) and had them put those on and made sure I had the key when I left.

While I was there Rob gave me a quote on four Continental tires. The installed price, including a rebate in the form of a Visa gift card, was 30% lower than the price I paid at Discount Tire so I showed the quote to the guy at the counter when I got back. He said the quote was for a different, less expensive, discontinued tire. I had no way of knowing if that was true or not but he also asked if the guy who wrote me up gave me the rebate form for the tires I bought. I said ‘no’ so this guy printed out an extra receipt and gave it to me with the rebate form. That narrowed the price difference to 20% and I was satisfied with that. I liked the tires I had purchased and did not want to undo and then redo the sale. I have also had good experiences over the years with Discount Tire, including their nationwide free rotation and balancing policy.

When the tires were finally mounted, balanced, and installed I headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi. He was there when I arrived and had three different metal cutting tools laid out to show me. One was manual, one was electric, and one was powered by a drill. We decided that the manual one and the drill powered one were most likely to work for what I needed to do. He put them in a cardboard box along with cans of three different chemicals he was getting rid of. His trash, my treasurers.

On the way back to the house I stopped at the Shell station at Beck and Grand River Avenue to top up the fuel tank. I texted Linda and then headed for home. I arrived home at 3 PM to find lunch on the table. That was a nice surprise.

After lunch we uninstalled the desk in the bus and set the pedestals on part of a large blanket in the center of the kitchen floor. We draped the blanket over them and then uninstalled the hinged sofa seat and set it across the pedestals. We folded the blanket back over the seat and set the desk bases on top of it. We now had clear access to the wall behind the desk and the wall behind the sofa.

I got a 3″ brush from the basement and then got the Zinzer 123 Primer, opened it, and stirred it. It was still in good shape as it has been in the library since last fall when we repaired and repainted the west wall after Darryl was done installing the new HVAC system. Rather than pour it into another container I found a lid from a copy paper box to put it under the one gallon can. Linda finished masking off the woodwork and counters in the bus and then helped me spread painter’s plastic to protect the floor. We spread out an old bathroom towel, put the box lid on that, and then put the can inside the (upside down) box lid. I set the can lid aside and worked directly out of the can.

I started in the back of the hallway and primed the upper half of the outside wall as I worked towards the front. The lower half of this wall has vertical mirror tile wainscoting. We wanted to remove it but assumed the pieces were glued directly to the plywood wall, as they are elsewhere in the coach, in which case removing them would have done a lot of damage. We repositioned the plastic, towel, and paint and I continued up the passenger side priming the plywood next to and (mostly) under the windows. Completing that side up to the cockpit required one more repositioning of all the stuff. I was working in close proximity to the new living room captain’s chairs so we wrapped those in painter’s plastic as well.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

I moved to the driver’s side and primed the area under the window and up the left side. Even though Linda had masked off all of the woodwork with painter’s tape I worked carefully and stayed away from the tape. We are not sure that the priming is even necessary and I did not want to risk getting any on the woodwork.

By the time we finished it was 5:30 PM and we were done working on the bus for the day. We had only worked for a couple of hours, and only accomplished a small task, but it was a critical path task that stood in the way of getting a whole chain of other important things done. Tomorrow we will sand the primer with 220 grit paper using the palm sander and try hanging the new wallpaper.

Linda made a pizza for dinner using the gluten-free almond meal recipe she got from Mara. She topped it with greens, onions, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Daiya non-dairy cheese. There is also cheese in the crust along with garlic and other good things. We had a nice salad first with walnuts, beets, and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette. The salad was very good and the pizza was outstanding.

Philip Jarrell called to let us know he would be here at 8 AM tomorrow to start our French drain and driveway project, weather permitting. Detroit Public Television shows classic movies at 8 PM on Fridays and tonight’s selection was “Bullit” starring Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset. We watched This Old House and a couple of travel shows after that and then went to sleep.

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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I had had a 9:30 AM appointment at Brighton Honda to have a drive shaft replaced and suggested that we just continue on to the Brighton Panera a half mile down the road for bagels and coffee. Linda never refuses to go to Panera so that is what we did. The Wi-Fi was out of service but we both bought things to read so we did not care. We sat in the two comfy armchairs by the fireplace, which was turned on, because the temperature inside was very cool, a frequent problem with this particular Panera store. We each had a bagel and many refills of our coffee cups and stayed long enough that Brighton Honda called to let me know my car was ready to be picked up. We left at 12:30 PM and Linda dropped me off to retrieve the ca.

Back home we had the leftover couscous with caramelized onions and the rest of the kiwis for lunch. Linda finalized her grocery list and headed off in search of food. I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Through the course of the day I had QSOs with Jim (N8KUE) on the Novi 440 repeater and with Chris (K8VJ), Steve (N8AR), and Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. I also installed an updated driver for the NVIDIA GPU in my ASUS laptop, installed updates on the older Sony VAIO workstation (which still has Windows XP Pro), installed updates on the Linux box, and took time out for dinner (a delicious red lentil potato curry) and dessert (very sweet watermelon).

I went back to work in my office and sent an e-mail to Mike (W8XH) concerning Windows 10. He replied via the South Lyon 2m repeater. We had a long chat from 10:10 PM to just after 11 PM that was joined briefly by Steve (N8AR). There was also a group QSO taking place on the Novi 440 repeater that I listened to in the background. After I turned the radio off and came upstairs Linda said it appeared that my ham radio transmissions were interfering with our OTA TV signals. The antennas are on the same tower but the OTA TV antenna is mounted below the Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm vertical ham antenna so I was a little surprised that it would be causing interference. The vertical antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern which resembles a donut sitting on a horizontal surface, so the location directly under the base of the antenna should be a region with very little signal. Apparently that is not the case and I will eventually have to do something to remedy the situation. For now, however, the solution will be to not use the radio when someone s watching television.

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

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Brighton Honda called yesterday in the afternoon to get permission to do additional work on my car. Since we plan to keep the car for a while, and then perhaps give it to our son, it was the kind of work that needed to be done regardless of the costs. They called back later to indicate that they would not have it aligned before closing time. That was fine with us as it would have been inconvenient to impossible for us to get there by 6 PM to pick it up. Linda told them to call in the morning when it was ready.

The top of the 40-foot tower from the WNW showing all of the antennas and the pulley with the haul rope. The weather had definitely deteriorated from the day before.

It is amazing how attuned we become to routine sounds and how sensitive we are to non-routine ones, even (especially?) while sleeping. So it was last night that I was suddenly aware that one of our cats was making a repetitive sound that was unusual. I turned on my flashlight, hoping to not disturb Linda, and got out of bed. Both cats were hunched down on the floor on Linda’s side of the bed with Jasper in front. He was the one responsible for the sound and the reason was next to his head and about 3 inches away; a little dark gray mouse.

My first thought when I see one or both of the cats with a mouse next to them rather than in their mouth is that it is dead but that was not the case. This mouse was alive and apparently not injured. I have seen this behavior before in which the mouse basically “plays dead” and the cats leave it alone but watch it carefully. Mice seem to know that cats are triggered by movement and that if they sit very still the cats just sit there and guard them. It was 4:30 AM and I was not fully awake so I do not recall the exact sequence of events, but the mouse somehow ended up in our master bathroom. I do not recall what I did with the cats but I think I went and got a box with high sides and tried to get the mouse to go in it and it made a run for it towards the bathroom. Linda was awake by this point so she got a towel for me. I went in the bathroom and used the towel to block the gap under the door and prevent the little critter from getting back into the bedroom while I tried to get it into the box. I was unsuccessful and it managed to find a place to hide in the hot water baseboard radiator.

Linda got one of the live traps we recently purchased and baited it with the recommended saltine and peanut butter. We set the trap near the radiator, turned out the bathroom light, shut the door, and tried to plug the gap with the towel from the outside, figuring we would deal with the mouse in the morning. Juniper kept pawing at the towel and pulling it back from the door so we put both cats out of the bedroom and shut the door. They found that confusing as they sleep with us and generally have the run of the house. One or both of them pawed at the door meowing to get back in for quite a while. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep we have had and the timing was unfortunate given the hard day of tower work.

Brighton Honda called at 8:01 AM to let us know the car was ready. Hello, I’m awake now! I checked on the mouse and it was now safely tucked away on top of the radiator fins inside the housing where neither the cats nor I could get to it. We decided to leave the live trap in place, sealed the gap under the door, and kept the bedroom door shut to keep the cats out.

I had planned to drive to Isringhausen’s U.S. headquarters in Galesburg, Michigan today but first we had to get my car. As long as we were headed that way we decided to go to the Brighton Panera for coffee, but had toast and juice for breakfast at home before we left.

The 100,000 mile service is extensive and includes changing the spark plugs. Beyond the routine service items the Element needed a new ball joint and tie rod and had a stuck brake caliper pin that had to be repaired. Given the front end work I also had them align it. Butch and I rebuilt the front brakes last year so I was surprised that there was an issue with them, but the car has been towed and driven in some harsh environments since then so that may have been a factor.

The Panera at Grand River Avenue and I-96 is not one of our favorites. More often than not we end up with coffee grounds in our cups and the bathrooms are not maintained as they should be. Today was not the first time we have been to this location that the men’s restroom was out of toilet paper. It is also often freezing cold inside the restaurant and today was no exception. The weather was overcast and a bit gloomy but the outside temperature, while not warm, was much more comfortable than inside. We were also unable to connect to their Wi-Fi signal, which is generally useable. That’s pretty basic stuff to not be able to get right and falls squarely on local management in my opinion.

While we drank our coffee I called Rick Short at ISRI to make sure he would be in but I got his voice mail again. I asked for a call back but never got one so I did not make the trip to Galesburg. Apparently they have better things to do than be of assistance to me. I only want to buy one chair, not a fleet of chairs, so I understand my relative unimportance, but I don’t like it just the same. We decided to spend the day at home completing the work from yesterday, which had made a mess throughout the house.

One of the things we needed to do was register our cellular booster system. Given that it is a five band device I was not clear on whether we had to register it only with Verizon or with all of the carriers. I called the company we bought it from, Cellular Solutions, and talked to Judy who said we only had to register it with the carriers we personally use. For us that is Verizon Wireless. Registration was via the Verizon Website and was simple enough. It did, however, require me to log in to our My Verizon account and navigate through a couple of screens to a page where we could enter the information from the label on the box. The serial number was on two peel off tags, so one of those went on the booster and the other one went in the manual.

With the unit registered I turned the power switch on and watched the ‘Alert’ lights all go solid yellow. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post solid yellow lights are not described anywhere in the manual. I called Cellular Solutions back and said I had a technical support question. The woman on the phone took my name and number and said someone would call me back.

Since I was apparently taking care of phone chores I decided to call Universal Towers and inquire about their B-30 base. The woman who answered the phone never gave her name but was able to answer some questions. She indicated that their base might or might not be compatible with older Heights Tower products, depending on exactly which product I had, and that I would have to talk to the owner, Bill, who wasn’t there at the moment. She did know that the outside-to-outside measurement of the legs on a B-30 base was 30 inches and the base cost $290. She also told me that the larger bases, like the B-30, consisted only of the three rods with the mounting yokes on top; the three rods were not otherwise connected together in any way. She also confirmed that the ‘U’ shaped yokes at the top of the base rods were welded on and not adjustable. The normal installation procedure involved connecting them to the bottom of the legs of the first section of the tower, setting them in the hole as the concrete is poured, and adjusting them by moving them around until the legs of the tower were plumb. That sounded to me like a process where a lot could go wrong and not be repairable.

I pulled a 75 ohm coax out of the ceiling of the basement yesterday. We laid it out in the basement to see how long it was and it looked to be at least 60 feet. Linda suggested we test it before running it through the basement ceiling which was a very sensible idea. I unplugged the power adapter for the TV amplifier power inserter, detached the coax that feeds the TV in the bedroom, attached the downstairs cable, and connected the other end to the basement TV set. Linda set up the TV for Antenna input, did an All Channels scan, and got the same stations we got yesterday, minus a couple.

In spite of what appeared to be acceptable performance I decided I wanted a new coax cable and Linda wanted to return three of the ropes I bought at Lowe’s but never used. She found the receipt and we went to Lowe’s. They had a good quality RG-6 quad-shield coax (75 ohm) in various lengths including 50 feet, which is what I needed. At the register I decided to buy two more 40 pound bags of solar salt. I am not an impulse shopper as a rule but their supply of Morton Solar Salt was very low and stocking up seemed like a good idea.

We stopped at Teeko’s to order coffee. Mary took our order and rang it up; one pound each of the three different half-caff blends that have become our standard. We took note of the fact that the Bennigan’s restaurant building on the northwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Latson Road was gone and a sign said a Panera would be coming soon to that location. We didn’t say anything to Mary, but that cannot be good news for Teeko’s. We will continue to buy our custom roasted beans at Teeko’s as long as they are open but it is going to be difficult for them to compete with a $2.25 cup of bottomless coffee, free Wi-Fi, a restaurant, a bakery, drive through service, and ample parking with great access to I-96.

When we got home I checked the live trap in our master bathroom and we had captured the mouse. We took the trap to the northeast corner of the property, towards our neighbor’s pond, and set it free. It did not want to leave the trap and I had to encourage it to go. Once it hit the ground, however, it scampered away looking for a place to hide.

We then worked on running the new coax from the basement TV to the sump pump room above the suspended ceiling. I disconnected the power inserter for the amplifier and disconnected the old coax we had tested earlier. I notched a ceiling panel at the corner of a boxed support column behind the basement TV to allow the ceiling tile to go back into place around the coax. We then installed one of the wire channels to contain and hide the coax from the ceiling down to the TV set and connected it to the back of the set.

In the sump pump room I attached the coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the input of the new 1-to-2 signal splitter. I attached the coax for the bedroom TV to one output from the splitter and the coax we just ran to the other output. I mounted the splitter on the wall of the sump pump room and secured the cable coming from the CEB to the ceiling. I then plugged the power supply for the power inserter back in to an AC outlet. Linda scanned for channels and verified that everything was working correctly. We then installed the other wire channel alongside the trim on the bedroom doorwall to route and hide the cable coming up from the basement.

I continued to fuss with the cell phone booster gain settings. We had not gotten the promised return phone call from Cellular Solutions Technical Support so I called them. I got Judy again and explained what I was seeing with the solid yellow lights. She checked with her tech support people and they said the manufacturer (SureCall) told them the solid yellow was the same as the blinking yellow; that the booster was adjusting the gain and it was “normal.” The manual says that normal is when the light is off, so I’m not sure I buy this explanation, but based on that I left the booster turned on.

With all of that done we started cleaning up the tools and materials we had scattered over two floors of the house. I decided that was also a good time to start a load of laundry, although it was actually rather late in day for that. I did three loads by the time I was done and it was sometime after 10:30 PM before the last load was dry. I needed to be up at 7 AM to be at breakfast in South Lyon at 8 AM as our SLAARC group would start setting up for the ARRL Field Day event at 9 AM.

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family

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I was awake at 6 AM but not fully rested so I stayed in bed. I got up at 7:30 AM, fed the cats, cleaned their litter tray, and then settled in at my desk to continue editing blog posts. I had edited four more posts by 9 AM when I heard footsteps and running water, signaling that people were up and about. I wrapped up my work and went upstairs to make coffee.

We sat around drinking coffee and tea and visiting. Both cats have gotten more comfortable with Ron and Mary being here, but especially Juniper, who is seeking their attention and sleeping on the living room sofas while we sit and talk.

Ron and Mary were expecting a package today but found out late yesterday that it had not been sent. As a result they needed to have documents e-mailed to us so they could deal with them and return them before they leave tomorrow for a week-long bicycle ride in northwest Illinois. The e-mails came through and all of the documents were PDFs so they were easy to save and print. I restarted my old Dell Precision Workstation in Windows 2000 Pro mode as that is where the scanner is installed and we would need it later to scan the signature pages, save them as PDFs and e-mail them back to the sender. (I normally use this computer to run Linux.)

I left at noon for a 12:15 PM appointment at the Honda dealer to have the oil changed in my Element. My car has just under 99,000 miles and really needed its 100,000 mile service, but I did not have time for that today so I had them change the oil and scheduled a return visit for Wednesday June 24 at 10 AM. It has a torn driveshaft boot on the driver side front and the mechanic thinks the drive shaft should be replaced as water and dirt have certainly gotten in there and there is probably rust. Ron tended to concur with that opinion.

Linda gave me a short grocery list before I left and I went to the Brighton Meijer’s after my car appointment. By the time I got back Ron and Mary had finished reviewing documents. I was going to scan the signature pages but it turned out that one of the signatures had to be notarized and the documents had to be faxed back in their entirety. Linda researched places to get all of that done and they were headed out to take care of that as I returned home. While I was out UPS dropped off a package from Prevost Parts with the window panel seal I ordered earlier in the week. That’s two UPS deliveries to this week so my confidence is restored.

While Ron and Mary were out Linda made potato salad and I worked in my office. I restarted my Dell Workstation in Linux mode (Ubuntu 14 point something) and installed about 45 updates. While that was happening I edited a few more blog posts and got caught up. Now all I have to do is post them.

Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline drove up after Madeline got up from her afternoon nap. They arrived around 4 PM. I quit working at my desk just before that and came upstairs. Madeline is always excited to visit Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce but having Ron and Mary here was a bonus for everyone.

For dinner Linda served the potato salad, baked beans, and vegan cheese burgers with all the fixin’s. We had a break in the rain and she cooked the burgers outside on the grill. We had fresh strawberries and non-dairy “ice cream” for dessert. Ron and Mary picked up an apple pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Company store in Brighton so everyone else tried some of that as well. Conversation was about family, work, and travel.

By 7 PM Madeline was showing signs of being tired so Brendan and Shawna gathered up their things and headed back to Ann Arbor. We stayed up until 10 PM talking, but did not play Mexican Train, and then turned in for the night.

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Category Archives: Automobiles

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2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family