Volunteers spent the day putting up 16,000 flags at the Vet Cemetery. Lots of people there the night before. Some teenager was playing taps. The local cemetery also had a few dozen flags flying. There are official ceremonies today along with the annual motorcycle ride from the dam.
The old water heater finally died. I tried flushing it out but the thermostat would either run WAY TOO HOT or NUTHIN AT ALL. With all the crap in the water I bet the heating elements were calcified too, so a full replacement was in order.
Rants had one in stock and got it installed right away. I also had them replace a faucet in the sink and all the drain parts below that were leaking.
If I attempted to do all this myself I would never get it done and have leaks and break things and say lots of bad words out loud. I hate plumbing. I never get it right the first time.
So thanks to the crew at Rants for fixing all my broken stuff
How come nobody told me about this band. Japanese psychedelic rock – with a sitar. Name translates to geometric patterns.
Not sure if we are 6 months late on the spring cleaning binge, or 6 months early, but we have been thinning out the junk. lots of FREE signs on the curb. Moved a bunch of storage boxes outside of the house to a new shed. Moved all the coats to the laundry room. Converted the old coat closet into a pantry. The new pantry is in the air conditioned part of the house which makes a lot more sense.
It has taken me half a year to get this all figured out but I am finally generating a little ‘free’ electricity. You can see all the pictures on the Projects tab above. I saved $0.06 yesterday!
I have 2 panels of 300W and a big ass lithium battery. There is a regulator thingy that measures the house current in real time and lets the solar power trickle in less than what I am using. No power goes to the grid and I don’t need a special meter. The battery will trickle current back out at night and charge during the day. It is a clever little system.
It took a while to run the circuit and get the antenna wires and get everything communicating properly.
The parts from Legion Solar via indigogo set me back $1500 with a few hundred more in rails, wire, roof parts. This is a ‘do it yourself’ kit and this was a big job. I actually have 2 more panels coming and an inverter. The inverter will let me run AC items from the battery if the power goes out.
How come I am just now finding out about this Houston trio? (It is Thai for ‘airplane’)
I built three MagicMirror variations about 5 years ago and they have been running non stop without issue until last week. #2 stopped getting data and when I manually ran updates the whole thing ‘shit the bed’ as we say. I had a backup file and that did not work either so I figured I would just start over from scratch. I had an extra Gen4 Raspberry Pi laying around just like the one running this web site. I put in the newest OS, the newest MM software, rewrote some scripts and after a day of tweeking the config file, it is running again. All text is in white but the monitor is behind stained glass to give it the color.
Top Left
Top Right
Middle
Lulu was asleep under the bed while I was quietly working at home.
All of the sudden, I heard a thunder in far, then huge rain drops started to fall.
I love the smell of desert rain, so refreshing!
Our patio looks more beautiful in rain, with such vivid colors!
We went back to Caesars to walk around in the Air Conditioning. The mall was busy and full of tourists. There is a fairly new Italian place right next to the Fountain of the Gods. It is loud with the running water. This place does have atmosphere. The food was better than I expected. The menu is just your typical Italian standards. Lots and lots of clams in the linguine. The Lasagna was still al dente and not a reheated mush (as typically found). The Eggplant could have been thicker but overall not too bad. The service was slow but we were not in a hurry.
We had lunch at Milo’s on Saturday to meet with Kevin and his girlfriend, Abby.
I forgot to take a picture with everyone 🙁
Oh well, we will have more opportunity to take pictures later time!
Rob ordered Ruben sandwich and I had Lobster and Crab meat sandwich, they both were delicious!
