Category Archives: Internet-LAN

20240821-22_BdW_projects_friends-for-dinner

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NOTE:  This is a longish post.  It has one (1) photo, with caption, taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

WEDNESDAY 21 & THURSDAY 22 August 2024 — BdW; Flooring, furniture, & new UPS; friends for dinner; fixing the garage door

 

Wednesday 21 … BdW guests sell their MH; Preparing food for dinner with friends

Tammy (RAMTAM19) messaged us to lets us know that they had sold the unit and the new owners would be taking possession of it today, assuming the money transfer occurred without any issues.  I visited with Tammy & Randy briefly, and then left them to their tasks as they were in the final stages of emptying out their motorhome and putting things in storage locally.  They are closing on a house in a week, and plan to stay in a local suites motel until then.  They are from this area, and have adult children who still live within a reasonable distance of Brighton, so our BdW site has been a good, central location for them to deal with the sale of their rig and visit with their children and grandchildren.  Their stay request had them leaving on Friday morning, but they will be leaving early, which is never a problem.

I put out food for the wildlife that frequents our property and then returned to inside work.  Our first task was to remove the paper we had taped to the floor yesterday to help us visualize a round dining room table of several different diameters, located directly under the existing dining room pendant light fixture.

Linda spent the morning and early afternoon preparing food for this evening and doing some final house cleaning.  She also helped me get a few measurements to locate the point on the floor directly under the dining room light fixture.  With that information, I added a 54” diameter round table to the QCAD drawing of the hardwood floor area of the main floor of the house.  I also drew the table in it’s extended (oval/race-track) configuration, and added the refrigerator, Linda’s desk, and sideboard to give us a visual and measured indication of how the table would fit in the space.

John and Diane arrived around 3:30 for a visit and dinner.  They brought a nice wine.

 

Thursday 22 … Moving the desk; mounting networking and power components on the wall; a BdW guest arrives; and fixing the new/small garage door

With the new UPS in hand, we cleaned off the top of Linda’s desk (computer, printer, adding machine, and Lamp) and moved everything onto our bed.  We then emptied Linda’s desk and moved it to our bedroom, which she had previously cleaned and rearranged slightly.  The top of the desk was not attached to the base cabinets, but they were joined together by the center drawer assembly.  I looked at disconnecting the center drawer assembly and decided it would be more pain than gain.  We took out the six (6) drawers, 3 from each base unit, and the center drawer, so we had 10 pieces in all to move and reassemble.  Plus the large UPS, of course, but I could not move it until I had mounted the new/small UPS to the wall and moved the power connection for the network switch.

Before we disassembled an moved the desk, I marked out the open space between the drawer boxes and the top/center drawer on the wall with blue painters’ tape.  The top, box drawers, and center drawer have been removed and temporarily placed in the bedrooms.  The boxes will be moved to our bedroom and the desk reassembled in front of the doorwall opposite the foot of our bed.  It will live there until the oak flooring is refinished and then be put back in its normal location next to the refrigerator in the kitchen/dining part of the house.

I selected the new UPS in part because it has keyhole slots on the back to allow wall mounting, or anyplace that supports a VESA 100mm mounting pattern.  I mounted it on the wall in the area between the two desk pedestals, which I had marked out with painter’s tape before we moved the desk.    I then moved the small network switch into the same area and bundled up the data and power cables to keep them up away from the floor.  This area is above and either side of the duplex receptacle and networking outlet box, so a good location for the switch and UPS.  This arrangement will remain when we move Linda’s desk back into its permanent position.  The small UPS for the network switch will be on at all time, but we can switch off the big one if/when we are away.

Around mid-afternoon, BdW guest Shannen J. arrived with her dog, Jack.  ABIR a couple of weeks later, Jack was a spirited yellow Labrador Retriever.  They were here for a 1-night stay.

Dan (Everlast Doors) showed up at 16:30 to fix the smaller garage door.  This involved several things.  First, he unplugged the motor-operator from AC power disconnected the spring-loaded drive shaft (mechanic release), and manually released the deadbolt, allowing him to move the door a bit and see what it was doing.  He moved the shaft and got the lift cable on the operator side back on to the pulley.  He then reattached the vertical track on the opposite side to the front wall, using molly anchors, and got the twist out of it.  This wall is just 1/2″ chip board and the original screws, which were not in 2×4’s underneath, did not hold.  He also adjusted the horizontal tracks near the ceiling to remove any twist and make them parallel and the correct distance apart.  This required some “adjustment” of the angle irons that protrude from the ceiling drywall, which were left over from the original door installation(s).  Operator re-engaged, power ON, raise and lower the door and make any final, minor adjustments.

With the door working correctly, Dan then installed two additional LED light fixtures on the east side of the ceiling for the larger bay.  He paired one of them with the operator for the large garage door and the other one with the operator for the small garage door.  With the addition of these two lights, which are plugged in to 120VAC power but wirelessly controlled by their respective door operators, whenever either door is opened we now have light between our vehicles and between the truck and the door to the library.  He was here for several hours.

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20240820_Can-you-hear-me-now

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NOTE:  This is a longer post with one (1) photo, with caption, taken by me using a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

TUESDAY 20 August 2024 — An audiology appointment (Bruce); An RV inspector; flooring, furniture & railing decisions; another UPS; garage doors; a ZOOM call; and the DNC on PBS

The RV inspector arrived before I left for my 10:30 AM audiology appointment at the UofM Health Brighton Center for Specialty Care.  The audiologist (Sheri) was great, and it was a pleasant/interesting experience.  I’ve had my hearing tested before, but it’s been quite a while, so I no longer recall when or where it was done, or what the results were.  Today’s testing included examining the movement of both eardrums before testing my detection thresholds (faintest sound I could detect at various frequencies).  It also included a test of bone conduction and my ability to correctly identify spoken words from a recorded male voice.  The bone conduction test was interesting to me because Linda had a BAHA (bone anchored hearing apparatus) before she got her Cochlear implant, and I have recently seen ads on Youtube for headsets that rest on the bone in front of the ear rather than in the ear canal.

My hearing in both ears was in the “normal” range up to about  5 or 6 KHz (5,000 to 6,000 cycles per second), and about the same for each ear.  I do not know, however, if “normal” was an age-adjusted metric.  From 6 KHz – 8 KHz, my threshold increased in volume for both ears, with one of them slightly more affected than the other.  A graph of the data was displayed on a monitor in the soundproof booth and Sheri explained what it meant.  The upper end of the frequency scale was 12 KHz, but my hearing was only tested up to about 10 KHz.  I am not a strong candidate for hearing aids (frequency selective amplification devices) at this point, but might benefit from them in certain circumstances, and might need them all the time in the future.

I was aware that “normal” age-related hearing loss affects the highest frequencies first, so the results were not surprising.  When I was a teenager, and probably into my 20’s and 30’s, I was able to hear sounds as high as 20 KHz.  This was important for the full enjoyment of music, which was the major focus of my life from ages 10 to 21.  Music still sounds fine to me (which is not the case for Linda), but that is no longer a major concern.  My hearing is still good in the frequency range for human speech, although the roll-off in higher frequencies would affect my ability to understand females more than males.

Sheri suggested I return in one year and have my hearing tested again.  Not that she expects my hearing to change much in just one year (barring an accident or illness), but today’s measurements will only provide a baseline for future data.  Two measurements will identify if my hearing is changing and. If so, by how much.  When I was doing data analysis work as part of my last employment, conventional wisdom was that it takes a minimum of three data points to establish a trend, and more points are better, so I might go back again in two years, or perhaps skip a couple of years before testing again after next year.  But that will also depend on what the audiologist recommends after each visit.

On the way home, it occurred to me that we might want to go ahead and donate our dining room table and (4) chairs, along with the buffet cabinet, to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore sooner rather than later.  We have been discussing this for a while and had already started looking at possible replacement furniture, but the new insight was that donating it now would mean we did not have to find someplace in the house to store it while the oak floor was being refinished (in October).  Linda was onboard with the idea, so I called the local HfH office when I got home and left a message.  They called back and indicated they were approximately two weeks out for donation pickups, and that someone would call next week to set up a date.  I was reminded that all items needed to be in the front of a garage or outside; their employees will not come in the house to collect items.

Keith arrived to mow the property while I was at my appointment.  It was a nice day for mowing and, as usual, he did a great job.

Some wonderful fungi growing on the north side of the base of the large oak tree by our first driveway entrance.  I’m not sure exactly what they are, so I do not know if they are technically mushrooms.

The new Tripp-lite UPS & surge protector arrived today, several days after Amazon originally said it would be delivered.  To be fair, they provided updates on the delivery date.  I unboxed it and plugged it in to let the battery fully charge.  It is NOT a LFP unit, using an SLA (sealed lead-acid) battery instead.  The instructions said it could be mounted vertically on a wall, however, which was our use case.  The battery is easy to replace, and are available from EATON, which owns Tripp-lite.

This is a smaller, less powerful, unit than the big ones we have, but will be more than sufficient for running the small network switch that is mounted on the wall by Linda’s desk.  That switch is currently powered by the large Tripp-lite UPS that also powers her laptop computer, calculator, and the small canon ink-jet printer that she keeps on her desk.  The reason for the new UPS is that we are going to temporarily move her desk into our bedroom while the hardwood floor is being refinished, and the large UPS has to move with it.  The small switch will remain by her normal desk location, and needs UPS protection to avoid network interruptions from a loss of utility power.  Indeed, all network-related components in our house are plugged into UPS units, as are all computers, monitors, printers, the Synology NAS unit, and most of the media equipment.  We also have a whole-house generator, but it takes a few seconds to start and come online once it detects a loss of utility power, so the UPS units fill the gap, and provide power for some amount of time in the event the generator fails to start.

I had the garage doors open for much of the day to air out the space and let it cool off.  The high temperature today never reached 70 deg F, and we have a string of 3 to 4 nights coming up with lows in the 40’s.  That’s early fall weather for our part of the country, but we’ll take it.  We will be well up into the 80’s again by the weekend, so summer is not over yet.

When I closed the small garage door it stopped and went back up.  I pushed the button again and it went almost all the way down and then came back up.  I tried a 3rd time to close it and it went most of the way down, stopped, and jammed.  Whaaat?  I examined it and discovered that the vertical track on one side (opposite the motor operator side) had come loose from the wall and twisted.  I also noticed that the lift cable on the end by the motor operator had come out of its pulley wheel and started to wrap around the spring shaft.  Nothing for me to do at that point other than text Dan (Everlast Doors) and let him know.  He texted me back quickly and said he could be here around 7:30 PM.  While I thought it would wait until tomorrow, he was concerned that the garage was not secure as the bottom edge of the door was not touching the floor.

Linda set up a 5:30 PM ZOOM call with Paul & Nancy.  We had a good chat, and it was fun, as usual.  After dinner we watched the PBS coverage of the Democratic National Convention.

Dan showed up when he said he would.  He disconnected the door from the motor operator (there’s a pull cord for this), got the door unjammed,  got the lift cable back on its pulley wheel, and got the door all the way up.  I then moved Linda’s car outside.  He lowered the door onto the floor manually, I set the deadbolt latch manually, and the garage was secure for the night.  He offered to return tomorrow to fix everything correctly, but Thursday was better for us, and turned out to be better for him as well.  Until then, Linda’s car would live outside, which has for most of the time we’ve owned it.

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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 8th 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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20240708-12_illness-dental-optical-Xfin

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NOTE:  This is a moderately lengthy post that contains one (1) photo with caption, taken by Linda with a Google Pixel 6.

 

MONDAY 08 thru FRIDAY 12 July 2024 — A busy week in the context of illness; dental and optical visits, and a rare broadband outage

 

Monday 08 … More yard work, new glasses, and illness

I got up today not feeling 100%.  I actually started coming down with something yesterday, including a mild sore throat (never a good thing) but shrugged it off to just being tired.  Linda and I had both been working hard on the property (weeds and trees); we were both tired and needed a rest.  Linda was also just getting over what she thought was a bad cold.

Our BdW guests (Mark & Kathy) left around mid-morning for their next destination at Burt Lake.  Mark had spent time there at an earlier point in his life and was looking forward to revisiting the area.  They said they enjoyed their brief stay and had a very quiet night.

I received a text message around 10:30 (AM) letting me know my new glasses were ready.  I decided to pick them up before getting to work on the yard.  This was a pair of tri-focals that I intended to use for driving, but the distance (upper) portion of the prescription made my distance vision much worse than my un-aided eyes.  Hummm.  The reading portion was the same as my reading glasses, and the intermediate portion (intended for the dashboard) seemed to be OK.  The optician said they would remake the lenses if needed (within 45 days) for no charge, but they would need a new/different prescription which I would have to obtain from my optometrist.  Ugh.  That meant trying to get an appointment with our OD at the UofMH KEC at the BCSC within the next 40 days.  Double ugh.

Back home, we got to work in the yard, making a pile of dead tree branches in our firepit and lighting it on fire.  I continued to prune dead limbs and branches from pine, fir, and spruce trees and Linda helped cut them up into sizes that fit our burn pit.

 

Tuesday 09 … a “crowning” achievement

When I got up this morning it was obvious that I was really sick.  My sore throat had worsened, and I was coughing up quite a bit of phlegm.  When this happens, the problem for me is that I cannot tell if the phlegm is the result of nasal drainage or is being produced in my lungs.  I wasn’t having any breathing difficulties or pain, other than the coughing itself, but the origin was still undetermined.  A trip to the clinic was probably in order, but I did not go, in part because I had a dental appointment this afternoon.  I called to let the clinic know I was symptomatic.  They said to come in anyway.

Because of the myriad road construction projects in our area, I left about 90 minutes ahead of my 2 PM dental appointment.  I arrived early, but not stressed.  Dr. G confirmed that a partial crown (or cap) had failed on my right lower rear molar.  The hole in the cap, however, was not the result of it having been drilled out in order to do a root canal procedure on that tooth.  Indeed, that tooth still had an intact root.  I was surprised to hear that, as I have not had any discomfort following the loss of the cap.  I will need a new crown, and the appointment to prepare the tooth will take 90 minutes, which their schedule did not allow for today.  I made an appointment to return on the 17th in the late morning and will have another appointment approximately three (3) weeks after that to get the crown installed.  So, all told, it will be approximately five (5) weeks from when the crown came off until the new one goes on.  I know these things take what they take, but that felt like a really long time.  No doubt the 1-week delay waiting for today’s appointment added to my sense of extended time.

There was a major Security and Bug-Fixing Update from Microsoft today, so we made sure our computers were up-to-date.  Over 140 security flaws across all MS products were patched and some other “bugs” squashed.

The weather had turned very warm by now, and with my continuing illness I was not up to working in the yard.  I used various OTC products to try and ease my “suffering,” including Acetaminophen, DayQuil, NyQuil, MucinexDM (for expectorant), and Unisom (to sleep).  Not all at the same time, of course.  MucinexDM and Unisom were my main “go-to” products.  It was probably around this time that we discussed what to have for dinner, and I suggested that soup would be an excellent choice for the next few days.  Linda was willing and able to accommodate that suggestion.

 

Wednesday 10 … Starve a fever, feed a cold

The day did NOT dawn bright.  Rain and wind started overnight and continued through the day, very heavy at times, as the remnants of Hurricane Beryl swept up from Texas and into the Great Lakes region.  (We later learned that we got about 3” of rain in 36 hours, but some areas around us got over 6” of the liquid sunshine.)

I called the UofMH KEC at their BCSC and was able to get an appointment with our optometrist (Dr. T) on Monday the 15th at 4 PM.  It was a relief to be able to get an appointment that soon.

The base for the Vitamix small capacity blending container.  The Vitamix imprint and part number are on the blade pointing to the right.  We had to fiddle with the lighting, and do some post-processing, to get the information to be legible in the photo.

I helped Linda get a photo of the base of the small vessel for her Vitamix.  Vitamix recalled this part, but needed a photo as proof that we actually had one.  They rejected the first photo she sent has it did not have the company logo and product number clearly visible, and the file was larger than 3 Mb.  Both pieces of information were on one of the cutting/chopping blades, and I had to orient the unit very carefully relative the very bright LED lamp on Linda’s desk in order to get the inscribed information to standout from the rest of the blade.  (The blades on metal, and highly reflective.)  The new photo was also less than 3 Mb so she submitted it.  She got a fairly quick reply that they new photo was acceptable!  Good job team!

Other that that, I rested most of the day, even to the point of taking at least one nap, which is unusual for me.

 

Thursday 11 … Picking up sticks

On lawn care guy (Keith) texted me around 8 AM to let me know he would be mowing today, and ask if I wanted him to do our property.  In spite of the large amount of recent rain, I said “yes,” but as late in the day as possible.  Linda met Diane at KMP at 9:30 AM for their weekly walk.  In spite of still not feeling well, I got dressed and picked up all (most) of the tree limbs and branches that had come down in the last 36 hours.  As long as I was up and out, and put out corn and refilled the bird feeders.

ABIR, Linda worked at her desk a bit.  If she’s not doing accounting work for the bakery, or tax returns for family and friends (late winter and early spring), she is doing routine accounting and finance tasks for us.

At some point during the day, we got another Boondockers Welcome stay request, this one for very late July into early August, which I approved.

 

Friday 12 … A rare loss of service

I was still feeling poorly today, albeit a bit better, but it was still basically a “do nothing” day for me.  ABIR, Linda took it fairly easy too.

Apparently, we lost our Xfinity/Comcast broadband service sometime around 5:30 PM.  Linda and I were not aware of this at the time as we were both doing things on our iPads that did not require us to be online.  I got a call form our neighbor (Mike G.) around 17:45 checking on whether we had our Internet connection.  I checked, and we did not.  I called him back to let him know.  While chatting, I mentioned that we had both been sick, and described my symptoms.  He suggested that we test for COVID-19.  Apparently a new strain with milder symptoms like mine has been circulating.  We both tested and both results were negative, but it was good to know for sure.

Mike checked to see when service might be restored.  He got 10:30 PM SUNDAY NIGHT as an answer and shared that information with us.  What?!!!  Linda checked, and got 10:30 PM tomorrow (Saturday) as an estimate; better, but still a long way’s off.  I eventually got a text message from Xfinity about the outage and signed up for updates.  Not long after, I got an update indicating that service should be restored by 10:40 PM THIS EVENING.  Well, that’s more like it.  Our service was actually restored sometime prior to that.  No indication of what had happened, there rarely if ever is, but it was good to have the service back.  While it was out we watched OTA TV programs on CBS.  These are shows that we used to watch every week but haven’t in quite a while.  We don’t miss them.

 

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