Paradise ponders: sprinkler project challenges, homecoming, an interesting meeting, finishing touches, and imminent guest arrivals...

Paradise ponders: sprinkler project challenges, homecoming, an interesting meeting, finishing touches, and imminent guest arrivals...  Our sprinkler project is facing some serious challenges, mostly of the running-out-of-time kind.  We are expecting our irrigation water to be shut off in two weeks, and we're not sure we can get the sod down in time.  This is really frustrating for both Debbie and I, as we started this project well over a year ago (with our current contractor) – and we had been promised completion by the end of May.  That was put off until June 15th – and we're still not done.  Worse, if we miss the water deadline, that means we won't have the sod down until next spring (April, most likely).  We've been living with dirt yards now for seven months, and we're kind of tired of it.  Argh!  I haven't given up on getting the sod down this year ... but it's obvious that we're at risk for that...

Our friends Tim and Jeannie D. made it back from their Alaskan cruise on Sunday night, as planned.  Their three dogs were overwhelmed with doggie joy to see them. :)  Tim (who doesn't drink and who is most emphatically not a party guy) reports that despite the crowds and drunks they had a great time.  They had lots of off-ship activities until the last two days, and the food was great.  He actually got tired of eating!  They didn't like the crowds, though, and the last two days were entirely at sea in the fog, so there wasn't much to do.  They felt sawed off from the world, too, as they refused to pay the outrageous fees charged by the cruise line for WiFi and texts.  With their numerous kids and grandkids, they're normally having dozens of interactions every day – but not while on this cruise.  So while they enjoyed it, they were very glad to be home again...

Debbie and I had a very interesting meeting this morning, at our home.  Christine Knapp is a sculptor who specializes in bronze wildlife pieces.  Debbie found her through a dog friend, and she's been talking with Christine for months.  Christine and her husband Bill planned a grand circuit, two weeks long, and this morning they stopped by to see us.  When they drove up, we could tell they were our kind of people: they arrived in a pickup, their two dogs in the back seat.  They've got an FJ Cruiser.  They don't like cities.  We were all chattering like old friends within a few minutes.  Inside the house, Bill started playing with Race right away, tossing a toy for him to retrieve.  Debbie and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting both of them!  Christine brought a small clay “study” of a piece she and Debbie have been talking about for our backyard, on the water feature we're fantasizing about building next year (after our damned sod is down!).  This piece would be a life-sized sculpture of a mother mountain lion with two cubs.  Christine's study shows the pose that she'd like to do, and Debbie and I both loved it.  Because I'm an idiot, I forgot to take a photo of it – so I can't show you here.  The cost is within our reach and substantially less than I had feared.  So we have said “Go!”, and we're expecting the sculpture to be done sometime before next summer.  That, of course, means another project added to the list – the water feature – and that feels like a bit one even before we start it...

Yesterday and today I've been working in our mud room.  Now that the cabinetry is in place, it was time to do the finishing work: caulking and painting, mainly of trim.  I did the caulking yesterday, and it was cured enough by this morning for me to start painting.  I put the first coat on this morning; the second coat will be this afternoon or (worst case) tomorrow morning.  Both the caulking and the paint are modern concoctions that are a joy to work with compared with the materials that existed when I was a kid.  The caulk is siliconized acrylic, with a texture that is absolutely perfect for filling in nail holes, joints between boards, and the like.  It cleans up nicely with soap and warm water, too.  The paint I was using was for our trim: bright, glossy white.  The stuff in the can is very thick – about like whipped cream.  There's so much pigment that only the very darkest backgrounds will actually require multiple coats.  Feathering the paint as I brushed was ridiculously easy, because of the low viscosity.  The self-leveling ability looked like magic to me – I'd brush that thick goop on, which left big brush marks, but then within 5 seconds or so those marks would all completely disappear.  What nice materials we have these days!

Tomorrow afternoon our old friends Jimmy and Michelle B. are arriving for a ten day visit.  We are so looking forward to this!  I'm going to be putting Jimmy to work helping me on our deck.  Debbie and Michelle will, I suspect, be cooking up a storm the entire time.  We'll be playing games in the evening and consuming much wine; the gameplay may not be brilliant. :)  We're going to be picking them up at the airport in our Tesla (which they've not seen yet), and stopping at Red Iguana for dinner on the way home.  Good times!

Paradise ponders: sprinkler malfunctions, birthdays, clear skies, animals in hurricanes, and different assumptions edition...

Paradise ponders: sprinkler malfunctions, birthdays, clear skies, animals in hurricanes, and different assumptions edition...  After I finished my shower this morning and was toweling off, I heard something most unexpected: the sound of large volumes of water running outside.  I threw on my robe and ran out to see what it was – and discovered that our sprinklers were running.  I've no idea why they were running, but right now, with no grass, all they're doing is making a nice field of mud.  I logged onto the controllers web site and suspended the schedule for a month – and a few minutes later, the sprinklers shut off.  I thought that was the end of that.  But ... when Debbie started her cat chores this morning, she discovered that one room in our basement had been flooded, about 50 square feet in all.  She and I moved everything out of the flooded area and mopped up; no permanent damage, I think.

Today is my birthday.  Feels just like any other day to me.  Try as I might, I can't feel anything different about it...

Our skies are mostly clear of the smoke that's been plaguing us.  Yesterday was the first relatively smoke-free day in a week or so.  There's still a teeny bit of haze visible, but no more stinging eyes or awful stench.  Very nice, that is...

I've been reading multiple stories (one example) of animals being abandoned by people fleeing the hurricane zone.  At least some of these appear to be legitimate stories, and not Twitter-fueled hype or outright fake news.  I just can't wrap my brain around people being so cruel or thoughtless – and especially when the disaster is a hurricane that people had several days warning for.  They could have gotten themselves and their helpless, dependent pets out of harm's way, but they chose not to.  People who would abandon their pets like that ... must be dangerous to their fellow humans as well.  Long prison sentences at hard labor sounds quite appropriate to me...

This morning as I walked out to my barn it was light outside, though the sun hadn't quite risen above the mountains to our east.  I could clearly see Venus in the blue sky, nice and bright.  This made me think about a similar morning a few years ago, not long after I moved up here, during the period I was alone here to remodel our house.  One of the construction workers was out working on the barn, and I remarked to him about how bright Venus was that morning.  He said “I don’t know what that is, but it’s not Venus.”  I asked him why he thought it wasn't Venus, and he showed me an app he had on his phone.  The app used the phone's orientation sensors to figure out what piece of the sky the camera was aimed at, and then it showed where bright objects should be.  It showed Venus on its map, but not exactly where the real Venus was.  That's because the phone's sensors aren't all that accurate.  The worker's default assumption, though, was that the phone's sensors (and the app) were perfect.  If there was a bright star near where the app said Venus was, that couldn't be Venus – it had to be some other star that the app didn't know about.  I could not convince this fellow that the phone and app were imperfect.  I'm fascinated by that assumption, which is just the opposite of my own.  I tried it on a few other people over the next few days (having loaded the app onto my own phone).  I found several other people who reacted exactly as that worker had, and a couple whose first reaction was to think the app was lame (but even they didn't realize it was likely the phone's sensors).  I think what's going on here is that most users of things like smartphones and apps have no idea at all how they work.  For them, it's effectively magic.  And who ever heard of lame magic?  So if the real world didn't match what the magic said – why then, it must be the real world that's at fault!

Career fair...

Career fair...  Well, as planned I attended a career fair put on by the LDS church for the young men in the stake we live in.  If you're unfamiliar with the LDS church's organization, a “stake” is a collection of “wards”, and each ward is one congregation in a church (one church generally has several congregations that meet at different times).  So a stake is a fairly large collection of people – several thousand at minimum.  The idea was to bring about ten or so adults representing a variety of career to one place where the young men could easily talk with them.  The place they selected was an area within the Cinnamon Creek church property that's east (and upstream) of Porcupine Reservoir.  It's a beautiful property set in a beautiful canyon; I spent quite a bit of time just gawking at my surroundings.

Prior to the actual career event, I sat with a group of adult men being engaged by one of the stake leaders.  This is the first time I'd ever been able to observe such a meeting, and I was impressed with what I saw.  This particular meeting was all about various ways the adult men were going to help and mentor the young men in the stake over the next year.  The leader was a skilled facilitator, adept at extracting participation of even the most reticent participant.  He was also good at communicating, and at listening.  Several of the group he was engaging with showed evidence of similar skills.  This sort of community participation is a big factor in LDS culture – it's easy to imagine that as a group they might produce an unusual percentage of competent leaders.

The presenters (which I was one of) were a great cross-section of the Cache Valley work force.  I know several of them who are part of the same ward that we live in; two are neighbors.  We had several engineers, a fellow who makes fireworks, a firefighter, a car repairman, a doctor, a graphic artist and photographer, and more.  I'd have found such an opportunity very interesting when I was in high school.

Unfortunately, the attendance (by kids) was quite disappointing – only a dozen or so showed up, and less than half of those came over to speak with me.  This career fair had been scheduled on the same day as homecoming in the local high schools and a bike race that many of the stake's young men were participating in.  They're going to try to do a better job of scheduling next year, but they've got one bad structural problem that's vexing them: they have to schedule the Cinnamon Creek facility nearly a year in advance, and events like homecoming and the bike race are scheduled months after that...

Paradise ponders: easy days and career fairs edition...

Paradise ponders: easy days and career fairs edition...  The past couple of days I've spent most of my time working on some programming.  Very satisfying for me to get deeply back into it.  I'm writing some low-level network communications stuff at the moment, to create a lightweight, convenient, and secure library for my homemade IoT stuff.  Much fun!

Tomorrow morning I'm driving to the Cinnamon Creek campground to participate in a career fair of sorts.  Some local folks asked me to be there to talk with any kids who might be interested in a career I have knowledge of.  This is a church-sponsored event, but the fact that I'm not a member of the church doesn't seem to bother anyone.  It will be interesting for me to see the Cinnamon Creek facility (I've heard a lot about it, but usually its for church members only), and to see what the young folks here might be thinking about their careers.  I'm scheduled to be there from 9 am to noon.

After I finish with that, Debbie and I are planning to drive down to Salt Lake City to meet up with a group of her friends who are in town for a conference.  Naturally, we're going to the Red Iguana!   I don't think I'll be hungry tomorrow night!  :)

Paradise ponders: outrageous fees, orange moon, lonely dogs, and hurdling hurricanes...

Paradise ponders: outrageous fees, orange moon, lonely dogs, and hurdling hurricanes...  Watched the video of hurricane Irma at right this morning.  The first thought that came to mind was borne of my days in the Navy: I wouldn't want to be on a ship in the eye of Irma.  You'd be in calm waters, but there would be no escaping that wall of wind.  The second thought that came to mind: how marvelous it is that we can actually see this hurricane, and nearly in real time.  In the '50s and '60s, when I was a young boy, photos or movies of hurricanes were impossible.  We generally only knew approximately where a hurricane was until after it made landfall.  The sort of precise warning we have today was unheard of – we just knew there might be a hurricane coming.  We had no real idea of when or where it might strike, or how powerful it was, until after the fact...

As I walked out to my barn this morning, pre-dawn, I saw a most beautiful sight: a perfect full moon hanging about 10° above the western horizon.  It was orange because the light is filtered through the smoky air, and the shorter wavelengths (the blues) are scattered more readily than the longer (reds).  The smoke particles are fine enough that they don't noticeably interfere with visual resolution, yet they still filter the color.  The smoke is, we think, from wildfires in eastern Idaho and western Montana.  Our winds were from the northwest most of yesterday (and will be again today), blowing the smoke from those distant fires over us.  Yesterday there was enough smoke to irritate our eyes, and to remind us of the scary days in southern California when such smoke meant wildfires within striking range of our homes.  Thankfully that is not the case here – we're safe, though many others not so far away are not...

Our friends and neighbors, Tim and Jeannie D., are on a cruise off Alaska right now.  They left on Sunday, and won't be back until next Sunday.  Their three dogs (at right: Debbie with Riley, Lexy, and Marley) are in an outdoor pen with access to the barn.  Abby S., a mutual neighbor, is taking care of their basic needs.  Debbie and I are visiting at least daily, just to give them a little company.  These three spend most of every day with Tim, following him about everywhere he goes.  Being on their own is a new and not particularly happy experience for them.  When we show up, they swarm us, looking for touches and reassurances.  Tim texted me yesterday with an annoyed message: it seems the cruise ship somehow manages to charge him per text received or sent – $3 each!  That is completely unjustifiable gouging.  Normally price gouging doesn't bother me, as it is an efficient way to distribute a scarce resource.  But ... texts are not a scarce resource at all!  The cruise ship is taking advantage of a monopoly it holds, plain and simple.  I already have about 17,000 reasons to never go on a cruise, but this adds yet one more.  I wonder if all the cruise ship lines behave like this, or if it's just a few?  I remember when hotels generally did this sort of thing (with telephone calls), but that's nearly gone now in this age of cell phones...

Paradise ponders: weird switches, doorbells, dusty sunrises, and fine wine edition...

Paradise ponders: weird switches, doorbells, dusty sunrises, and fine wine edition...  A while back, Debbie found a really pretty doorbell switch (with a brightly colored cat background).  Our house has no doorbell wiring between the front door and the place we'd like a bell, so a conventional 24 VAC doorbell is impractical.  Someday I'd like to build a doorbell that actually uses mechanical bells (I love the sound of them!), but for now we decided to get one of the bazillion electronic doorbells – the kind with a radio transmitter behind the doorbell switch and a receiver you plug in the wall.  I figured it wouldn't be very hard to scab the pretty switch Debbie found onto the transmitter inside the plastic electronic doorbell switch enclosure.

It was harder than I expected. :)  When I first wired the new switch into the transmitter, it just continuously transmitted: pushing the switch did nothing and the doorbell rang continuously.  Not good.  So I disconnected the pretty switch and connected it to my multimeter, which has a “beep” mode for detecting closed circuits.  That did something really weird: when first connected to the switch, it made no beep (as you'd expect).  When I pushed the switch, it beeped (again, as you'd expect).  But then when I let go of the switch, it kept beeping – most definitely not what you'd expect.  It acted as though there was some kind of active logic inside a simple SPST, NO switch.  WTF?  That bizzaro behavior prompted me to do a little more careful testing.  With the meter in normal resistance measuring mode, I saw that the switch had 0.15 ohms resistance when pushed, but 63.5 ohms when released – not the behavior I'd expect in a simple switch!  The resistance measured the same with the leads in either polarity, so it was a simple resistance, not a diode.  I finally figured out that the switch had an incandescent lamp in it.  I tested it at 24 VAC, and got a dim glow – perfect for spotting a doorbell in an unlit doorway at night.  There was no indication on the packaging of the existence of that lamp, so it caught me completely by surprise.  Fortunately the lamp was wired across the switch terminals with some barely visible wire; a couple of snips and the lamp was gone.  After that, the switch worked as expected, and now we have a doorbell!

The sunrise this morning looked like it was filtered through dust, or possibly smoke.  An even orange glow covered about 120° of the horizon, quite odd looking.

A few months ago I ran across a blog post raving about the effect that a sulfites filter had on red wines.  I really enjoy Cabernet Sauvignon wines, and the idea of making them taste even better appealed to me.  In a weak moment (probably after drinking some wine!) I bought the Üllo filter (at right) despite the high price.  I've used it now for five bottles of wine, several of which I tasted before and after filtering.  Conclusion?  There's definitely an effect on the taste of the wine, and it's positive.  Some wines are much more affected than others, for reasons completely unknown to me.  I'm going to keep using it, filtering one bottle at a time into a decanter.  The price is higher than I'd expect for something like this, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see another company come out with one that works just as well, but for half the price...

Sunspots...

Sunspots...  Yesterday I read a mention somewhere that there were big sunspots facing the earth.  So I got out my eclipse binoculars and took a look – and sure enough, I could see three gigantic sunspots right near the center of the sun's disk.  The image at right was taken this morning by the SOHO satellite, but it's pretty close to what I could see in the binoculars.  The three big ones were easily seen, and I also saw a hint of the one off to the right.  The smaller one to the left I couldn't see at all.

When I was a wee lad, I built a telescope (a 6" diameter hand-ground Newtonian reflector on an equatorial mount made from galvanized pipe!).   It was a terrible telescope by any reasonable standards today, because it's now possible to buy superb mass-manufactured optics at very low prices.  But for its time (and most especially for its nearly non-existent budget!), it was actually reasonably good.  I had a simple solar viewer for that telescope: just a piece of white cardboard that I could project an image onto from the telescope's eyepiece.  It was really awkward to aim that thing, and I had to view it at an angle because the telescope's tube was in the way – but it did work and I could see sunspots with it, which thrilled me at the time.  I'll note, though, that the direct observation with these cheap (around $35) binoculars beats the pants off that telescope.

A bit of a side-note here...  Building that telescope was an inflection point in my life, for several reasons.  One was very simple: through the telescope construction I met Norman Edmund, the proprietor of Edmund Scientific.  That company was located in Barrington, New Jersey, within bicycle range of the farm I grew up on.  Back in the '60s, it was a pleasant enough ride, about three hours on mostly back roads.  I bought my telescope parts from Edmund Scientific by mail order, but when I had finished grinding the primary mirror I needed to have it silvered and overcoated.  At the time, Edmund offered mirror finishing as a service, and I rode down there to deliver my mirror for silvering and over coating.  While I was there, I looked through the submarine periscope that was mounted in the showroom, and wandered through the aisles of surplus optics, astounded at what was on offer.  While wandering, Mr. Edmund came over and introduced himself, and offered to help me find what I needed.  I left with a bag full of lenses, prisms, and first-surface mirrors that he didn't charge me for – treasures to me.  Years (and many visits) later, I ended up working there part-time.  That exposure to all sorts of technology was another inflection point for me.  The main takeaway, in the end, was the sense that I could build anything if I set my mind to it.  Cost needn't be an impediment, as almost any kind of technology was available at low cost if you knew how to do it.  My start in electronics was exactly like that: I scrounged scrap TVs from TV repair shops, and stripped them for parts.  Using those parts, I built all kinds of things, including ham radio receivers and transmitters.  It was really rare that I needed to actually purchase a part – I could find (or make) nearly everything I needed from those old scrap TVs...

Paradise ponders: orange caterpillars, finished project, shocking breakfast, delicious tomatoes, and beautiful morning edition...

Paradise ponders: orange caterpillars, finished project, shocking breakfast, surprise visitors, delicious dinner, and beautiful morning edition...  Yesterday afternoon, while walking from our barn to our house, I spotted this caterpillar walking across our pavement – moving at a good clip, too!  It's roughly the size of my thumb, quite large for a caterpillar.  Thanks to the wonders of Google's image search, I was quickly able to identify it: it's the caterpillar of the Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio rutulus).  More particularly, it's the caterpillar just prior to pupation – about to hibernate while it transforms into the adult butterfly.  Prior to this life-cycle stage, the caterpillar is green.  The Western Tiger Swallowtail is a fairly common butterfly here, and we recognized its photos immediately – but we had no idea it's caterpillar looked like that!

I was walking back from the barn because I had just finished the stairs for Michelle H.   I'm really pleased with how they turned out, and so is she (though so far she's only seen the photo).  Michelle will be over in the next few days to do some staining and polyurethane finishing, and then I'll go over and help her install them.  Hopefully they'll fit properly!

Yesterday afternoon Debbie started our dinner, but it was going to take over an hour and I was hungry.  I looked around for a snack and saw (a) a lovely ripe tomato, grown by Michelle H., sitting on our counter, and (b) some leftover fresh mozzarella cheese.  Ah ha!  A few minutes later, I had the dish at right – a little olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, and that tomato and cheese.  Debbie had already eaten her share of the cheese, so I hogged this whole thing down myself.  Delicious, it was!

Shortly after I finished that, a couple we didn't know drove into our front yard.  I was up on our balcony, so we talked for a moment and I found out they lived nearby, loved our barn, and wanted to know who had built it.  That led to a delightful four hours of conversation (after a tour of our place) during which we got to know Ben and Laura.  They live about a quarter mile southwest of us, on the fields just above the east side of the Little Bear River.  Ben is a firefighter, a civilian employee of Hill Air Force Base, near Ogden (about an hour's drive).  Laura is an entomologist, working for the Utah State University in Logan, specializing in agricultural pests.  They moved here the year after we did, and still don't really know very many of the local folks.  We made a start on fixing that yesterday. :)

That lovely visit delayed our dinner by a few hours, and made me very glad I'd had that snack!  Not long after Ben and Laura left, our kitchen was full of the enticing aroma of baking cod.  Debbie had purchased two pounds of fresh cod from Macey's, and it needed to be eaten.  She coated the fillets with egg and a spice mix, baked them until they practically fell apart, and then we feasted on that cod and some perfectly cooked white rice.  Cod fixed that way is a favorite of both of us, and last night it was particularly good.  But oh, man, were we ever stuffed!

Before sunrise this morning we headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, hoping to spot some moose like we did about a week ago.  No luck with the moose this morning, though we did see quite a few deer, two kingfishers, and a chipmunk zipping across the road.  After our drive we headed up to Angie's for some breakfast.  The special was a bone-in ham steak and eggs, so I ordered that.  Debbie ordered the “Florentine Eggs Benedict”, a concoction that is meatless, but has hollandaise sauce and avocados.  When our waitress delivered the meal, I was shocked into speechlessness by the sheer heft of that ham steak.  I hope you can get a sense of the scale of that thing from the photo - it was about 3/8" thick and about a square foot in extent.  I stuffed it in until I could stuff no more, and I didn't even eat half of it.  I never even touched the homemade rye toast that I love.  Debbie was even less successful in the consumption department than I was: she could only eat half of her relatively tiny little dish.  We walked out with about two pounds of food in boxes, after we stuffed ourselves to the bursting point.  Our dogs will be forever grateful to Angie's for doing that, as they got to eat all of the (lavishly) buttered toast and ham.  Debbie's Florentine Eggs Benedict she's going to try reheating, but I won't be surprised if it ends up as a dog treat, too.  :)

Paradise ponders: white dust, finished stairs, and WiFi meshes edition...

Paradise ponders: white dust, finished stairs, and WiFi meshes edition...  Yesterday I did the final glue-up on the stairs I'm building for Michelle H.  They're now finished except for a couple of blocks I need to fabricate to attach the stairs to her wall.  I'll be headed over to her house on Tuesday or Wednesday to put them in.  The first photo below shows the bottom of the stairs, and the bazillion clamps I put on for gluing two 2x4s along the bottom of all the lap joints.  I did this just to keep down the bowing that will naturally occur over time.  The second photo just shows the other side, which will be the top of the stairs (the photo shows the stairs assembly sitting on its back, just for convenience while gluing).  I'm very pleased with how this all came out, and I'm especially pleased with how well simple lap joints (created on the router table) worked out.

Yesterday afternoon I headed down to the cat room with a pile of new LED bulbs.  We had three (of 12 total) bulbs burn out, and several were the wrong color (“warm white”, yellowish and dim to our eyes, instead of “daylight”), so I was on a mission to make them all uniform and bright.  While replacing the three bulbs on the first fixture, I noticed that the inside of the fixture's glass appeared to be dirty.  I ran my finger along it and discovered that there was nearly a quarter-inch thick layer of bright white fluffy dust.  This layer was absorbing perhaps half the light produced by the fixture!  So I took down the glass from all four fixtures, cleaned it carefully, replaced all the bulbs, and put everything back together.  Success – the room is much brighter now.  I think at least half the brightness problem was that funny dust, and it was thick enough that I think it may have caused some of the bulbs to overheat (and fail) as well.  That cat room has no windows open to the outside, and has a great air cleaner – so I'm wondering just what the heck that dust is.  Something the cats themselves produce, like dander?  I'm not at all sure, but one thing I know: we have to clean those things a couple times a year, or this will just happen again...

This morning my first job was to install another WiFi access point, this time out near the cedar shed that holds my pump.  There are two devices inside the shed that connect to my WiFi network: the irrigation supervisor computer (that I built and programmed) and the irrigation controller (a commercial device that turns all the zone valves on and off).  Both of these devices were having WiFi challenges, as the signal strength there wasn't very good.  A big part of the problem is the two (metal) fuel tanks that happen to be directly between those devices and the access points they could connect to.  The solution was pretty straightforward: I purchased another access point (the white thing with antennas in the photo at right) and mounted it where it had an unobstructed line-of-sight to both the devices inside the cedar shed and the potential access points it could uplink to.  There was just such a place just 8 feet or so from the cedar shed, and very convenient to mount onto, so that's where it went (and that's what the photo shows).  The new access point, when I powered it up, automatically found the other access point that it had the best signal to – and to my surprise, that turned out to be the access point inside my office, in our barn about 200' away!  The kitchen access point is much closer (about 80'), but apparently the house's external wall attenuates the WiFi signal much more than my barn's exterior wall does.  Just as with the rest of the Unifi access points I installed a few months ago, bringing this one up was quite painless.  It's such a different experience from consumer WiFi routers – incrementally extending the “strong signal region” of my WiFi network is now easy and predictable.  We've gotten quite used to having strong WiFi anywhere in our house, barn, or in our yard – so different than the “stand in exactly this spot and turn your iPad 45 degrees” sort of mess we used to have...

Stairway to ... something or other...

Stairway to ... something or other...  The stairs project for Michelle H. is coming along nicely.  At this point I have just one glue-up left to go (to attach the shortest stair to the other three).  As you can see from the photos below, having a nice clamp collection is really important for projects like this.  After that last glue-up it's just a bit of sanding, making a couple mounting braces, and we're done!

Paradise ponders: stairs and sunken gardens edition...

Paradise ponders: stairs and sunken gardens edition...  Our friend Michelle H. has recently refinished a garage into a usable family room.  There was a challenge in that job: the floor of the new family room is 31" lower than the floor of the main house.  To handle that, her son-in-law built a set of stairs for her – but those stairs were somewhat less than perfect.  They're way too tall (each stair is 10 1/2" high), and the top and bottom stairs are at different heights.  A few days ago her son tripped and fell down them (he's shaken, but fine), so she finally decided to take me up on an offer I made her long ago: to build her a new set of stairs.

So yesterday I ran up to Home Depot and picked up the materials.  They still carry the oak stairs I mentioned yesterday, so with those, a couple of 2x12s, a 2x10, and a few hardware bits, I went to work.  The first photos below shows the pieces I sawed up (2x12s sawed on all four sides) for the risers that hold the steps up.  After that I did lots of routing to make sturdy glue joints, giving my router table a real workout.  This project would have been a lot harder without that table!  The second photo shows the first glue-up, for the tallest step.  The last photo shows the second glue-up, for the next lower step.  Once that dries, I'll be gluing those two steps together, and then gluing up the next lower step.  It's fun to be doing some woodworking again!

Our sprinkler project ran into a problem yesterday.  Mark, our contractor, discovered that we have wooden joists holding up the sun room floor – and that the lovely grade he'd just finished putting in caused the soil level to rise unacceptably close to those joists.  This puts us at risk for various kinds of deterioration issues, most especially with wetness (including from snow piled against the house).  We need to lower the soil a foot or so in the area immediately surrounding the sun room (the main house's floor level is 18" higher, so it's not an issue).  He came up with an idea for accomplishing that, and both Debbie and I really liked it.  He's going to dig out the area between the sun room's foundation and about 4' out, down to a point about 12" deeper than the surrounding soil, making a sunken garden perfect for flowers.  Then he's going to install a short retaining wall around that sunken garden, made with natural rock.  That work will start today, but it will take several working days to complete (including the challenge of getting the roughly four tons of rock delivered here).  It's always something, isn't it?

I have not fallen off the face of the earth...

I have not fallen off the face of the earth...  I missed two days of blogging somehow – didn't even realize I'd done so until I looked at my email this morning and discovered several messages wondering if everything is ok.  All is fine!  I've just been feeling a little poorly (from a bad cold) and been busy puttering about.  My big accomplishment yesterday was cleaning up the cedar shed pump house, removing all the detritus of construction and collecting the tools that I've been using out there.  The irrigation supervisor computer has now been up solidly for 3 days, and every test of the system has been successful.  One test, late yesterday, was particularly noteworthy: the pressure at my system's inlet (from Paradise Irrigation) had dropped to just 12 psi.  That's not enough to even make the sprinklers pop up.  But ... when I ran a test on the system, the pump kicked on, boosted the pressure up to 50 psi (as designed).  The inlet pressure dropped to about 10 psi, but obviously there was enough water flowing to let the booster pump work.  This low-inlet-pressure situation happens quite often, and it is precisely why I put the booster pump in.  And it works!  Woo hoo!

Today I have a fun little project: building a set of stairs for our friend Michelle.  Her son-in-law made a valiant attempt to build her a set, but the result was ... less than wonderful.  She's had a couple of people fall while using the stairs, and this scares her.  Hence my fun little project!  I'm going to make use of a product that Home Depot sells: oak stair steps made by gluing up small pieces and veneering.  I've used these for shelves on several occasions, and the result is quite nice!

Perceptions...

Perceptions...  A few months ago I bought a new MacBook Pro to replace my aging (2014) MacBook Pro.  Aside from the gimmicky (and, to me at least, confusing) touch bar, I really like the new machine.  I especially liked the added SSD disk space (I got the terabyte version) and RAM (I maxed it out).  My old 2014 box has been sitting on a shelf (literally), unused since the day I got the new machine.  I kept it nearby in case something screwed up on the transfer I did to move all my stuff to the new machine ... but nothing went wrong; it “just worked.”

So today I picked up the old machine, dusted it off (it was awful!), and brought it into the house to see if it might be convenient to have for use there.  I've been “iPad-only” in the house these past few months, and that definitely puts some restrictions on what I can do.  I plugged it in, let it charge for a bit, then booted it up.  Everything still works fine, as expected.  What I didn't expect, though, was that I'd perceive it as slow!

Now my 2017 MacBook Pro really is a faster machine by the specs, but not all that much.  The speed improvement wasn't big enough to catch my attention as I started using the new machine.  But ... in going back to the old machine, I'm noticing all sorts of places where there's just a tad more time being taken to do something.  A couple operations are much slower – for instance, opening my morning reading list (with 46 tabs) takes roughly twice as long on the old box.  Isn't it odd that I didn't particularly notice the speed-up, but did notice the (same) slowdown?

A new widget at right...

A new widget at right...  You may have noticed the new “Irrigation System” widget at right.  I put that up this morning after some experimentation with different ways I could accomplish this.  The two basic approaches I considered were (a) setting up a cloud-based server, pushing the data from the irrigation supervisor up to that, and pulling it down to the blog, or (b) configuring my routers to allow external TCP connections (carefully controlled) and then pulling it straight onto the blog from there.  The first approach is the safer (from hackers) approach, but requires quite a bit of setup and ongoing administration.  The second approach is theoretically less safe, but much simpler to setup and has no ongoing administration.  After some research I opted for (b), and once I decided on the approach I had it all working in just a couple hours.

For the geekier types, here's what I did:

• I configured our Xfinity gigabit cable router to allow inbound connections to a specific port at our public IP address.  These inbound connections are NATted (not PATted, as the cable router isn't capable of that) to an IP address (the target address) assigned to the Mikrotik router in my house.
• I configured the Mikrotik router to PAT from the target address and port to the address and port of the web server on the Raspberry Pi that hosts my irrigation supervisor.
• I set up an account on the free Dynamic DNS provider DuckDNS, and installed a simple script (provided by them) on my Mac Mini server.  This script runs (via cron) every five minutes, and it updates the mapping between my domain name and my external IP address.  Xfinity can change my public IP address anytime they feel like it, and it seems to actually change on the order of weekly (though I've never tried to actually track it).
• I configured a new URL redirect record at my domain name provider (Namecheap), who also hosts my public DNS records.  This allows me to refer to a subdomain of a primary domain that I own, instead of DuckDNS's primary domain.  It's also convenient, as the redirect takes care of the funny port number, and I don't have to type it in.  I'm lazy, what can I say?

This all would have been simple and fast had I not run into a stupid problem with cron on the Mac Mini.  That held me up for an hour while I researched the problem – which, as usual, turned out to be entirely of my own making.

Anyhoo, it's all working now!

Sprinkler update...

Sprinkler update...  I haven't said much over the past few days, but our sprinkler contractor has been here working steadily away.  It's clear at this point that the job was vastly larger than he had estimated (larger in the sense that more labor is required).  Much of this has to do with his inexperience with big jobs – most of his jobs, he tells me, have under 30 sprinklers.  His previous biggest job had 94.  We have 211 sprinklers in our system, plus three drip irrigation lines.  Added to that is the complexity of our yard's sectioning and shape: five distinct pieces, each of an irregular shape.  Nothing easy about our yard!  He's also never worked with anyone who was willing to “buy up” quality and maintainability (that is, I'm happy to spend a big more to get better parts, or to make the things likely to break easier to fix).  Generally on the bigger systems, people are more interested in saving money.  I'm more concerned about being able to keep all this running by myself, especially as I get older and less capable.  On top of all that, while he's got a really good eye for level and grades, he grossly underestimated how much topsoil we'd need to bring in to fix the issues in our yard.  We've had almost 500 cubic yards of topsoil delivered so far, and I'd guess we're going to need another 200 to 300 before we're done – so 700 to 800 cubic yards of topsoil in all.  That's a lot of dirt!

As I write this, a skid-steer is hard at work in our front yard, finishing the tear-out of the old landscaping along the front of the house and fixing the (relatively minor) grade problems there.  That will be finished today, and then the skid-steer will go to work moving some gravel and (lots of) dirt to the remaining low spots in the rest of the yard.  We're expecting 10 loads of dirt today and tomorrow, and that's the next work to be done.  I'm told that on Saturday the sod will start going in the front yard portions close to the house, and the entire back yard.  If that really happens, there will be some serious celebrations in our household!

Paradise ponders: Trout & Berry Days edition...

Paradise ponders: Trout & Berry Days edition...  As planned, we attended the Trout & Berry Days dinner last night.  We got there 15 minutes before they were scheduled to start serving, and two things became apparent very quickly: there were way more people here this year than there were a year ago, and the hard-working volunteer crew were behind schedule.  We had to wait in line quite a while before we got to the smiling trout-fryers and servers.  Ordinarily that's the sort of thing I would absolutely hate – but this was actually enjoyable.  First, I was in a small group of relatives (Debbie and my brother Scott), friends, and new friends.  Scott brought along a friend (Glen L.) from Newton who was lots of fun to talk with, and our friend Bruce N. brought one of his son's (Nate) whom we'd never met before.  There was much interesting conversation and lots of laughs.  The only downer was that Debbie ran out of “standing steam” and had to go sit by herself while the rest of us kept her place in the line.  Even that wasn't so bad, though: very quickly she had local acquaintances all around her.

The photo above right shows about half the seating as we left – and there was still a long line to get served!  Depending on who you talk with, last year they served between 900 and 1,100 meals.  This year it looks to me like they easily doubled that, and maybe substantially more.

As in prior years, we each got a plate with a grilled trout, baked potato, fresh sweet corn, a salad, a bottle of water, and all the trimmings.  We also got a ticket good for one berry dessert; mine was blackberries on custard, in a graham cracker shell, with whipped cream.  Adding to the fun for me was the fact that about half the cooks and servers are people we know; we were often greeted by name and a big happy smile.  All of the food – but most especially the trout – was delicious.  We sat completely surrounded by our little circle of relatives and friends, with our conversations continuing as we stuffed all that culinary gloriosity into our faces.  In addition, every few minutes someone who knew us would stop by to say hi, and sometimes to introduce us to a family member we didn't already know.

Usually large gatherings like this make me very uncomfortable, and would completely wear me out – that's my introversion showing.  That didn't happen last night, which more than anything is evidence of much I feel myself as part of this community, and not an outsider (which is normally how I feel in any gathering).

Debbie and I love living near this small town full of people so compatible with us.  We know (and like!) more people here than in the sum of all the places we've ever lived before.  We know all of our neighbors, and are quite friendly we many of them.  We all help each other on darned near a daily basis.  If we ever needed some kind of substantial help (whether financial, skills, or labor) there's no doubt in our minds that we'd be swarmed with volunteers to provide it.  We do our best to reciprocate, but if we were keeping a ledger we'd be deep in debt to the community at this point.  In addition we know quite a few people from the town (a half mile or so south of us).  I struggle to put it into words, but the bottom line is that our experience living here is profoundly different than our experiences living in California – and all of that difference is in favor of Paradise.  We are daily thankful that we made the decision to leave California when we retired...

Mom would have been 82 today, were she still alive...

Mom would have been 82 today, were she still alive...  I stopped outside my barn for a bit this morning, looking up at the U.S. flag she made from some old picket fencing – and at the sunflowers growing around my barn (at right), which she would have loved.  She would also have loved the goldfinches (both Lesser's and American) that swarm all over these as soon as I'm more than 10 feet away.

I miss you, mom...

Irrigation supervisor is installed...

Irrigation supervisor is installed ... and working!  I got done with the installation late yesterday afternoon, and had time to do one quick test just before we took off to the Paradise Trout & Berry Days dinner.  I had to fix a couple of trivial software issues first (such as waiting 20 seconds for the pump to spin up, instead of 10), but then it just came up and ran.  I also noticed a couple of additional software issues, mainly involving startup and logging, and this morning I fixed those.  It's now calibrated (the pressure sensors) and completely functional in all my tests so far.  Hooray!

The photos below show the three parts I've been working on for the past couple of days.  At left is the Raspberry Pi computer board.  From left to right, the major parts are the temperature-humidity-barometer, the pump motor control relay, the pressure sensor interface, the Raspberry Pi computer itself, and a level converter I built to interface a 24 VAC output from the irrigation clock to the Raspberry Pi.  That entire assembly will soon have a wooden dust cover.  The middle photo shows the pressure gauge assembly, and immediately below it the newly installed electronic pressure sensors.  Finally, at right is the pump speed controller (with its cover off) showing the newly installed wires (the grey ones coming in from the bottom) for the control relay.

Have I mentioned that it's all working?  :)  Below is a screenshot of the web site the Raspberry Pi puts up, accessible only from our LAN (not over the Internet). 

Paradise ponders: friends, bugs, and a community get-together edition...

Paradise ponders: friends, bugs, and a community get-together edition...  Yesterday and part of today our friend Aleck L. dropped in for a short visit.  We met him at Red Iguana, which he'd never been too before.  He seemed to rather like his appetizer (the nachos in the foreground), the mole sampler (the smaller dish near him), and his entree (not shown).  We did some wildlife spotting with him yesterday evening, and this morning had a fun conversation just sitting in our kitchen.  Yesterday afternoon I got to show him my pump house project and then we walked over to visit for a bit with two of our neighbors (Tim D. and Heath C.).  He also got to see and pet a mule (Heath's Gunner) for the first time.

When we went to the post office yesterday, Aleck with us, Debbie spotted the beautiful praying mantis at left.  When I tried to get a slightly closer photo, it looked mad and scooted away :).

Before we met Aleck yesterday, and after he left today, I've been working on a really big milestone for me: installing the irrigation supervisory computer in the pump house.  I've so far completed 4 of the 7 wiring steps required, along with 2 of the 4 plumbing steps.  I'm so close!  Unless something goes horribly wrong, I should have the installation completed later this afternoon.  Then I have some calibration and checkout to do, and then – I can turn it on.  Woo hoo!

This evening we're headed to the Paradise Trout & Berry Days dinner.  We're meeting our friends Bruce and June N. there, along with my brother Scott and a friend of his from Newton.  We expect to see lots of local folks we already know, and most likely even more we'd never met before.  Of course we're starving ourselves in anticipation of a delicious meal!

Eclipse...

Eclipse...  APOD has a beautiful photo of Monday's eclipse at totality, at right (click to embiggen, or get the full resolution image).  This shows quite nicely what we saw through our binoculars at totality.  It doesn't show how (relatively) bright those orange prominences were – they stood out very clearly.  I could make out the two you see on the right side here; Debbie was able to make out the one on the left as well.

Below are a couple of animations made from images taken by the GOES16 satellite during the eclipse (and more where these came from).  In them you can very clearly see the moon's shadow as it scoots across the U.S. from west to east.

Watching these and pondering upon them leads to a couple obvious questions.  Why is the moon's shadow so darned fuzzy?  And why is the darkest part only (about) 80 miles wide, when the moon itself is over 2,100 miles wide?  Some information that will help you understand: here, here, and here...