Getting the bad news out of the way first … Mike Bertch is doing worse. Most of the time, he is too weak to swallow. Our Circle group plans to have a lunch at Mike’s hospice Tuesday. They might have to roll Mike’s bed into the room we’ll be using because he is sometimes too weak to use a wheelchair. A couple of Mike’s friends visited Mike last week with a bottle of Jameson whiskey. They found Mike couldn’t swallow, so they used a pad to put some on his lips.
I’m feeling like I’m back to normal life. The sump alarm appears to be working. I’ll give it a full test next time it rains. I did this alarm with a technology called Smart Home. I’m using a hub from Samsung. It takes a while to figure out, but it’s incredibly flexible. What surprises me is how dependent this technology is on the cloud. The idea is simple. If the float switch indicates the sump is full, send a notification to my tablet and an Email to me. Perfect operation requires my WiFi is working, the Samsung server is working, and the Google server is working. It’s cool technology and a lot of fun to play with, but not nearly as reliable as a device that dials my phone number through a land line. It’s really too bad the old alarm died.
I took my bike to South Dakota with us, but when we got out there, I didn’t like the roads and decided not to ride. We had plenty of physical activity, but that’s not equivalent to riding a bike. When we got back home, I found that somebody had jacked up all the hills. I’m making excellent progress on that. I’m doing most of my rides as well as I had done them before we left. I haven’t tried my toughest ride yet, but I should be ready in a week or two. I’ve been lucky to have beautiful weather. Highs are around 70 and most days are sunny.
After two drives across the country, our car was a mess. I decided to get it detailed. The guy worked on it about 4 hours. When he was done, the result was amazing in almost every way. The only problem is that now that the bugs and dust are removed, it’s easy to see the paint chips.
The project I just now finished is to banish Microsoft Outlook from Danita’s and my life. I used to like Outlook because of it’s calendar view and contacts list. I could see personal Emails as well as emails to our neighborhood’s “Webmaster” all in one screen. One could have categories and assign colors. One could have groups and send an Email to many people. Outlook had a nice feature set without being overburdened with a lot of junk. Of course,Email, calendar, and contacts are available online directly from Google. But back in the day, “contacts” was just a list of the Email address of everybody to whom you ever sent an Email. It couldn’t be edited, and there was so much junk in it that it was worthless. Colors weren’t available. Neither were categories. Most importantly, one couldn’t see any of this when not connected to the internet. But it was getting harder to keep all our laptops and phones synched. I took another look at Google’s web services. They have improved immensely. They don’t work exactly the way I would like, but they meet every last one of my needs. That is, once the options are set and the “Offline” helper is installed and configured. It was a little work, but our lives for Email, calendar, and contacts are significantly improved.
Backyard water drain egress
The project I’m working now on is related to our condo. The previous owner connected the sump pump and roof gutter to pipes, buried the pipes under ground, and ran them 20 feet down the hill behind our house. Seven years later, the association decided that needs to be changed. They want me to run the pipes all the way down the hill, almost 60 feet. At the bottom of the hill, they want me to dig a gravel pit. This will do nothing to improve the drainage from my house. And most of the 60 feet of land is owned by Hughes Corporation, not our condo. And water will be dumped right at the border of land owned by Howard County. The board doesn’t seem to understand that one should receive permission from property owners before building things on their land. All of this is to avoid a small hole in the ground in an area where nobody walks anyway because the ground is always wet and it’s on a steep hill. But the board is sure they want the gravel pit to have brown gravel. The board is nuts.
That’s all the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.
