Once again, over due for an update, so you are getting a long rambling post.
So, Thursday and Friday were all about work. Working and sleeping odd hours to support an issue going on in Kiev Ukraine. Opted out of the Parks pot luck Friday night as they were having Pizza and wings. Mmmm… Pizza… My biggest Achilles heal when it comes to trying to eat healthy. After a couple of long work days, I didn’t feel like fixing anything at the trailer to eat alone, so I headed to the Tavern for some food and social contact.
Met Russ and his girlfriend (Barbie if I recall correctly). As I was finishing my meal and drink, Tom came in with a young couple that had broken down a few miles south of town. Tom seems to have a heart of gold and goes out of his way to help folks in need. All the locals at the tavern were pitching in trying to think of other locals with mechanical experience and/or equipment to help tow their vehicle back to Douglas that Tom could reach by phone. Eventually, they were able to reach someone they knew back in Douglas that was going to help them out. Tom was planning on driving them back to their broken down vehicle so they could meet their contact there. As Alicia (Tom’s wife) had just arrived with a friend, the kitchen would be closing soon, and I was done with my food and drink, it occurred to me that I should offer to take the couple back to their vehicle so Tom and Alicia could enjoy their dinner together. So that is what I did. After I dropped the couple off at their car, I headed back to the property to try to find that NE corner (I had studied google map’s satellite pic and thought I had a better idea of where it should be). It was a nice walk in my snake boots over frequently rocky terrain, but I still had no further success at locating the marker and it was getting dark. While walking, a cottontail rabbit and I spooked each other, and I saw three deer on our land. As it was getting dark I decided I better head back to the truck and leave the search for another day.
Upon returning to the trailer, I spent some time jumping into a new tech / hobby / consulting project. I wanted to setup a Raspberry PI3 (small computer about the size of a deck of cards) as a controller of a new indoor/outdoor Ubiquiti wireless access point I bought to test for both myself at the property and for use by Rusty here at the RV Park. Seems like the stars were aligned against me on this project. I had never played with the Raspberry PI (been sitting and waiting for me for 6 months), so there were some prerequisites that I did not have covered. Very helpful to have a keyboard, mouse, and HDMI monitor (with appropriate HDMI cable of course). I had none of that. Could do it a more difficult way of formatting and installing the OS on a microSD card using another computer, and configure then network, and blah blah blah… More than I wanted to deal with. As my real goal was to test the wireless access point, I decided to use the linux laptop I brought with me. Ugh, wrong flavor of Linux to support the wireless software and with my slow internet, downloading an install for the right version of linux (was thinking of switching anyway) would take hours. Start the download. In the mean time, I lamented and decided to install the controller software on a work laptop to just test it out. Software installed fine, but the Windows firewall installed on it prevented it from operating properly. So that was a dead end. Uninstalled the software and called it a night. Guess I just wasn’t meant to test it Friday night.
Most of Saturday was spent on a trip to Tucson. 3 hour drive into Tuscon. Worked with a salesman on what would do what I need in terms of a tractor and filled out a finance application form. Still need to spend a bit of time looking for used in hopes of saving some green. Time will tell. Picked up a keyboard, trackball, Smart TV to use as a monitor, and a microSD card from Best Buy, a Dremel and shelving for the shed at Lowes, some lumber at Home Depot (Lowes’ panel saw was out of order and I didn’t feel up to dealing with a 8×4 3/4 sheet of plywood by myself), lunch at Taco Bell, bread, soymilk, fruit at Whole Foods, water at target, Midnight Mint Mocha Frappachino at Starbucks (YUM), taillight bulb for the truck from ORilley’s. 3 hour drive back to the park.
While in Tucson, got a call from my realtor informing me that the buyers were backing out due to the outdoor motor sport activities of the neighbors. Se La Vi.
Sasha was very happy to see me. After all the time she spent alone in our back yard in Michigan guarding the birds, she sure is liking all the attention and benefits of staying with me in the trailer. She is even getting a bit demanding for attention like his highness Hershey. I sure am glad she doesn’t give kisses – yet. Anyway, I digress.
Saturday evening was spent chatting on the phone with family and setting up my new toys to further the effort on the tech project. Tested the keyboard and mouse on the laptop, works well. Looked high and low in the trailer for an HDMI cable to connect my work laptop to the new smart TV without success – ordered one from Amazon. Connected up the Raspberry PI and ran through the new out of box software install. Just as it was finishing, I thought, hey, let’s connect the network cable – bad idea. It abandoned the install that was in progress that was being pulled from the microSD card installed in it, and instead wanted to download the install from the internet which would take hours… Oh well, bed time anyway. Let it download while I sleep.
If I haven’t bored you to death yet… I do have what I think is a humerus pet story from Saturday evening as I was sitting at the dining table in the trailer working on computer stuff. So one thing that I have noticed is that when Sasha is in the trailer, Hershey refuses to walk on or be on the floor. He has found a path from one end of the trailer to the other where he can manage to make it without stepping a single foot on the floor. I observed him making multiple trips to the kitchen sink looking for water and sitting on the couch looking longingly at the water dish on the floor on the far side of the trailer. One obstacle he was not willing to overcome- a sleeping dog 2 feet from the water dish. So finally, I had enough of watching him struggle with his fear and I decided to help him face it. So as I was putting him on the floor by the water dish, he pulled a YouTube cat video move and stretched out all his paws to catch whatever he could to prevent me from putting him on the floor. Once there, he looked at Sasha, two feet away, looked at the water 6 inches away, backed up, looked at the dog, looked at the water, then decided it was not worth risking his life for and jumped back up to an elevated position where he felt safe (although he really isn’t if she wanted to get him). I give up.
Sunday (today) I got up and worked a bit more on my WiFi project, made a smoothie, and headed off to the property to try to organize the shed. The shed was so full of stuff just thrown in in a hurry, I couldn’t get in the shed once I open the door much less find anything. So, remove everything from the shed, assemble three shelving units from Lowes, then put everything back was the order of the day. After getting everything out, and assembling two shelving units, I took a break and headed over to DD Gamble Ranch (Tom’s place) for horseback riding lessons, a nice visit with Tom and Alicia, and then Tom worked with me to help me locate two of the four property markers visually, and put together a good estimate of the GPS coordinates for the other two. Then back to work on the shed. It sprinkled a bit on me as I was trying to get stuff in the shed (again, a good motivator to pick up the pace and get stuff in out of the rain). The end result is I got all of the stuff that would fit on shelves on shelves with shelf space to spare (so now I can move more stuff from the trailer to the shed). However, the big stuff is sitting on the floor in the middle of the shed and once again, there is no space to walk in once I open the shed door. At least now, I just have to move the generator and the table saw out of the shed and I will have easy access to the rest of the contents of the shed.
Once back at the trailer, I grabbed a bite to eat and finished configuring the Raspberry PI as a controller for my new WiFi access point. Ready to test in the RV Park now. Spent a fair bit of time writing a rambling blog post. Now I’m ready to crawl in bed to rest up so I can start on a fresh to-do list tomorrow.
Night all.
Seeking Simplicity 