Addie, Suzanne, Bud, Gene

We have a neighborhood breakfast once a month. I was the guest speaker this month. I talked about our new website. It went well, but I had a panic. A neighbor generously offered to let us use his projector. I hooked the projector up to my computer, and got — “No signal”. After a half hour panic, I figured out that the solution is to hook the computer up to a monitor, then switch it to the projector. I thought everything was all set. Then, 7 minutes before the presentation was to start, I found the same problem. The first two monitors I went for didn’t have the correct interface. I was quite relieved when the third monitor fixed the problem.

Pete, Ed, Lynne

Lynn (Danita’s sister)

My 4-year-old super-fancy Android smartphone started acting up. Sometimes when I answered a phone call, the phone didn’t connect the audio. I couldn’t hear anything, and I think the other person couldn’t hear anything either. Not only was this was happening more often, but it happened when Mom tried to call me. This added to her anxiety. The rest of the phone’s features are working OK. I decided that a phone isn’t much of a phone if it can’t be used to answer phone calls. I couldn’t bear to buy another expensive smart phone. I went to Amazon, and found a flip phone for $100. That seemed a little expensive. I walked down the street and into our local brick & mortar AT&T store. I found the same exact flip phone for less than $20. The guy even switched my account over to the new phone. How they can sell it that cheap, I don’t know. I have a pre-paid plan with no contract. But I gave them a Jackson and took the phone, plus some pocket change. With a one-year warranty, how bad can it be? It turns out to have good sound quality. And there’s no phone that’s easier to use. Well, it’s not so easy to load phone numbers and such. But I have a super-fancy Android smartphone for that. Now I use the flip phone as a phone, and the smartphone as a camera and very portable computer.

Mark, Joe

Ed, Toni, Joe

Our big news this week is the sour beef dinner. Bud turned 85 recently. He really likes sour beef and dumplings. We hosted a birthday sour beef dinner for Bud. Ed and Lynne brought the dumplings and made some vegetarian chili. Danita made the sour beef, appetizers, sides, and desserts. I bought the wine and beer. I think the sour beef was great, but Bud cast the important vote. He took seconds, and he doesn’t do that very often these days. A good time was had by all. Danita’s sister Lynn and her husband Gene don’t come to a lot of family events, but they made this one. Danita and I had a miscommunication with Mark about transportation. Mark ended coming up by bicycle.

At the Table

Bike Back

We had an entire week of fabulous fall weather. I find it’s a lot easier to appreciate dead leaves when I know I don’t have to rake them. I finally got my bike squared away. There are some pics below. I’m particularly proud of the bracket I made to mount a second rear light towards the outside of the bike. It was a simple thing, but it came out well.

Bike Side

Our other activity this weekend was a BSO concert . The second piece was Mozart’s Piano Concerto #20, with Valentina Lisitsa our pianist. I saw an article on the internet that she has quite a Youtube following, and she is controversial. The rest of the article was paywalled, so I had no idea why she is controversial until we heard her. There’s no doubt she played more note than Amadeus wrote, and I’m pretty sure she did it on purpose. All those fussy music purists need to get a life, because she did a fine job of it. And whose to say this wasn’t closer to what an audience would have heard in 1790?

I hope this finds everybody is doing well. I’m off to find some piano Youtube videos.

There are pics on the website.

We had a second day of  perfect weather. It was pretty cool in the morning, but it warmed up nicely in the afternoon. Is there a better way to spend the day than in the park? (Not shown — beware of the Grandpa monster at the bottom of the slide.) And what better way to end it than helping Nanna make cookies? Tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy. A perfect day for driving home.

Making Cookies

At the Park

At the Park

At the Park

There’s so much excitement here in Charlotte, I decided to give a mid-visit review. Excitement started the moment we arrived yesterday, with a very scary front door. Today we went to Aw Shucks Farm. The visit was so successful that we had a request to visit again next fall. All I can offer is a brief overview.

Princess Elsa (from Frozen)

Necessary House

Big Chair

Animal Feeding

Grain Bin Slide

Hay Ride

Tractor

Scary Door

Hi,

There are no pics this week.

It was a busy week. For many months, I have not been able to get a perfectly reliable internet connection at my office upstairs. It’s very good, but not perfect. About once a fortnight, it goes out for several minutes. Then it starts working again and it’s fine. It’s driving me nuts. I have been eliminating components one at a time. To get internet from the basement to the second floor, I’ve been using a pair of “Ethernet over power line” units. They were the only component I couldn’t eliminate. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Our house was pre-wired for cable, data, and telephone. But the the way the did it, only the phone and cable worked. All wires go to a connection box in the basement. The connection box is not capable of handling Ethernet signals, the cables normally used for Ethernet had no connectors at the box, and the room I use for my office had all the wires (phone, Internet, and cable) in the wall behind a blank plate. I decided to wire it up. My first attempt was not successful. I decided to hire somebody else to do it. The salesman said the only way they could do the job would be to replace the connection  box (about $500). Then he showed me what I was missing. I ordered the stuff I needed on Amazon. It arrived this morning. (That’s right, Sunday deliver at no extra charge. What a country we live in!) I wired it up, and now it’s working. Before I button everything up, I want to add the coax cables in my office and put connectors on all the data cables in the basement. That way, if I want to make additional changes, all I have to do is plug and unplug the wiring that’s already there. I’ve done enough for today. (I am *not* getting more patient as I get older.) I should have everything wrapped up this week.

We tried to move our neighborhood web site and office Email to our domain again this weekend. It went very well. Everything is up and running with our domain and our new servers. I will have to set our office manager’s phone up to get Email when she is at work. That won’t be a problem. Wednesday, I’m giving a presentation on our new web site at a neighborhood breakfast. I’m quite happy to have everything “in production” before that presentation.

I bought a new bike this week. My old bike was a Trek touring bike. It had a steel frame — heavy but extremely sturdy. I won’t be doing any more touring, so I didn’t need the Trek any more. The Trek had 25,000 miles on it, and it was starting to show some age. Some things were starting to be a problem. They could all be fixed, but it would be kind of expensive. I was wondering how much money I wanted to spend on a 6-year old bike. Riding was literally becoming a pain in the neck. When riding the Trek, the rider leans forward because it’s very efficient to do so. I wanted to sit upright so my neck wasn’t bent so much. Finally, it’s really fun to have a new bike. I was able to get an aluminum bike with straight handlebars for less than it would cost to fix the Trek. My new bike even has disk brakes (the latest buzz in bicycles). It’s not a high-end bike by anybody’s definition. But it’s a nice bike and it gets me down the road. It’s not fully assembled yet. Fenders and a rear rack are on order. I’ll include a picture later when it’s done. I donated the old Trek to “Bikes for the World”. They can repair it economically because their mechanic labor is all donated. When they’re done, it will give somebody good service for a long time. It feels good knowing that somebody somewhere will get benefit from it.

Danita had some marginal results in her last blood work. The doctor ordered additional tests. Those results came in this  week. She’s fine, but would benefit from losing some weight. She’s been going to an aerobics exercise class twice a week and we’re both doing Yoga once a week. We’re thinking about whether there’s another exercise option that we can do together.

I’ll probably write late next  week and I’ll almost certainly have some pics. We’re going to Jul’s for a long weekend visit. We’re both excited about that.

That’s plenty of news for now. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pictures  this week.

It’s been damp, soggy, wet, cool, miserable. I only got one ride in last week. Fortunately, the hurricane veered out to the ocean. We had rain all week, but nothing worse.

There are five condos in Snowden Overlook. Ours is Kendall 1. Our houses are all similar and were all built by Ryland. Our condo is comprised of houses on Endless Ocean Way, which is a big circle. Houses are divided into “inside loop” (those houses where the back yards face each other) and “outer loop” (those houses, like ours, that have back yards go down the hill.) The outer loop houses have walk-out basements and decks. The inner loop houses have a patio, with a half flight of stairs from the basement to ground level, and another half-flight of stairs from ground level to the main floor.

Some people have had ongoing problems with water in their house. The board hired an engineer last year. He spent a lot of time standing around and talking, charged us $14,000, and did nothing. I heard his company fired him. Then the board hired another engineer. This guy spent two days inspecting a sampling of units. He found that while the houses were built with the correct materials, the installation of flashing and such was sometimes done incorrectly. Some inner loop units have major rotting problems and need major repairs. Some outer loop units have water getting into the deck ledger, resulting in rotting wood. We have been advised not to use our decks until they are inspected and repaired. We haven’t had any problems with water leaks in our house. I think our deck is OK, but we don’t use it anyway. (I use the porch under the deck where it’s shady. Danita stays inside to avoid the bugs.) However, I do see unanticipated expenses on in our future.

This was supposed to be the weekend when we put our new website into it’s permanent web address. Technically, we are transferring the domain (snowdenoverlook.com) from Mike to our condo association, changing the domain to point to our new web site, and switching our Email service to our new servers. Unfortunately, the first step didn’t work. Bummer.

Our FIOS stopped working early this week. It took Verizon several days to get out here to fix it. It’s nice to have a clubhouse nearby with public WiFi. It’s a lot nicer to have WiFi in our own house.

My old computer sold. I am disappointed in the price. However it’s a done deal, and it’s for sure I didn’t want it any more.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week. It was an easy week.

Our neighborhood is doing some repairs on our houses. They found that a board outside and above the sliding doors to the deck is not weathering well. They tend to collect water and rot. They had a work crew go around and cover these with metal. Ours was covered today. The workmen did a wonderful job.

You will remember we re-did our deck. The rest of the neighborhood decided the problems with our decks can’t be ignored any longer. Their repair is not nearly as nice as what we did. And I have no idea what it will look like in several years. But it should solve the problem. *My* problem is to make sure the workmen don’t accidently “fix” our deck. I have signs up in English and Spanish reminding them not to fix or paint our deck. It looks like they will be done this week. Then I’ll be able to remove the signs and clean the back porch.

We had some terrific weather last week. I rode every day through Thursday. We had our normal dinner out Thursday evening. Friday was cloudy and threatening rain. Danita stayed home to get some medical tests done. We took advantage of a lazy day and had breakfast out.

Saturday was the Columbia “Bike About”. They lay out a 20 mile route, mostly on paved trails. They have stops at points of interest. Tons of volunteers direct traffic, lay out the route, and in general make sure everything goes smoothly. The weather cleared enough to make rain unlikely. The ride was a lot of fun.

Today, after our normal Church and breakfast, we went to a BSO concert. After the concert, we took a second dinner out. Life is hard!

I mentioned earlier that my laptop was broken. The case had come apart. The top and bottom units were separated. I was able to prop the display up and use the laptop while we were in Alaska. When we got back, I contacted HP. They agreed to fix the laptop for free. I’ve had several problems with this computer over the last 16 months. I decided to get a new Dell Latitude and E-bay the HP. The new Dell is great. I don’t know what I’ll get for the HP. Apparently I’m not the only one who has had problems with this HP model. But there’s already been two bids. So it will definitely be sold at 2:00 Saturday afternoon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

No Door Knobs!

Is this true or is it fabricated? I don’t know for sure, but it’s my memory and I’m sticking to it. When I was young, the world was so simple that parents didn’t have enough to worry about. That’s why they made stuff up. For example, the schools asked children to draw a picture of a house. Then they reported psychological profiles back to the parents. The worst thing a child could do was to leave the door knob off the door. This more-or-less implied the child was in danger of becoming the uni-bomber. I remember this because that’s exactly what I did. After *that* lecture, I made sure to always put a doorknob on the doors of my houses. But what if an architect built houses without doorknobs .. or even front doors? What does that mean? This is a picture of the *fronts* of houses in a development I rode through this week. There’s an alley between the garages. I suppose there might be a door at the back of the alley, but you sure can’t see it from the street. I have to admit, it looks unfriendly.

This was not a laid-back week for us. Besides escaping from uni-bomber neighborhoods, I cleaned the deck and garage and Bruced the floors. I still have the porch under the deck to go. Danita did a major food shopping trip and a cooking marathon. (We still had almost no food in the house from our cruise and my shortened trip to NY.) We helped out at a Church dinner to raise funds for our sister parish in Haiti Friday night. We had a neighborhood Caribbean Night at the clubhouse Saturday night. And Sunday was a money counting day for me at our Church. It’s a good thing I came back from NY early. There were only three of us available to count. That’s the minimum size crew. If I hadn’t shown up, they wouldn’t have been able to count. In addition to all that, I moved a copy of our website to my laptop. Now I can experiment with new features without disturbing the public website. And I am getting a daily backup of our website.

The food at the Caribbean night was quite good. The highlight was skewers with spicy pineapple and shrimp. The live music was provided by a one man band. From very black skin to dreadlocks, he certainly looked the part of a Caribbean steel drum musician. He sang, played the steel drum, and had a recording for backup music. He did all the famous Caribbean songs and it all meshed perfectly. The music was quite good. He performed for two hours without a break.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Lake Luzerne Motel

After a long but uneventful drive, I arrived in Lake Luzerne. I got a hotel room at the first place I tried. $80 / night includes access to this lake, including the boats. This is definitely an old vacation stay place. The room is quite basic. But it’s clean and dry.

Driving up I couldn’t help notice that I went right by New Paltz. That’s where I holed up in a hostel for 3 rainy days on my “Baltimore to Bangor” ride. It’s beautiful country here.

Lake Luzerne Motel

After a long but uneventful drive, I arrived in Lake Luzerne. I got a hotel room at the first place I tried. $80 / night includes access to this lake, including the boats. This is definitely an old vacation stay place. The room is quite basic. But it’s clean and dry.

Driving up I couldn’t help notice that I went right by New Paltz. That’s where I holed up in a hostel for 3 rainy days on my “Baltimore to Bangor” ride. It’s beautiful country here.