College National Championship

Monday

I had a good time at the Men's Fellowship last night at church.  We had homemade hamburgers and then split up into teams and played Sports Trivia.  We came in third after losing a good sized lead that we had at the halfway point.  The best part was my Son and Grandson came and were part of my team.

Today is the day I have been waiting for, this evening Alabama and Clemson meet for the College Football National Championship.  Two undefeated teams that match up pretty equally.  It should be a great game.

I spent the day on the phone and on the computer.  We have been procrastinating on finding a new dentist and today was the day.  I had narrowed the choice down to 2 dentists.  One a single dentist and one with two dentists.  The online reviews for the two female dentists were very good, over 1200 five star reviews I only saw one four star review.  So I gave them a call and left a message.  They called back a short time later and I was a bit surprised that we could not get an appointment until July.  But we are signed up.  They took quite a bit of information.  Then emailed me the information to set up our online accounts.  Then I downloaded forms to request the release of our records from our NY dentist.  We filled those out, signed them, scanned them and emailed them.  Then I had to contact my surgeon to get an RX for antibiotics to take just before my appointment.

I also ordered our RX refills online and this evening received info that all the RXs were filled and ready to pickup, so we will do that tomorrow.

Late this afternoon I got a text from our friends who bought our NY house 3 years ago.  A letter had shown up again.  I asked Darren to open it and it was from a program Bonnie had joined years ago to save money for the kids college.  They have been unable to contact us and were notifying us that the money would be turned over to the state in February.  Darren scanned the letter, we filled it out, signed it, scanned it and then emailed it.  Hopefully the $16 will be sent soon.  Yep lots of work for $16.

Time for the big game.  Not looking so good at half-time.  Well Clemson came to play tonight and Alabama never hit their stride.  Clemson lived up to their reputation and we did not.  Good game Clemson.  Congratulations on your National Championship.  44-16

Tuesday

So this week I made a short list of things that I needed to do.  Yesterday was the dentist-check.  Today was I needed to deal with a coming of age issue.  Seems that when you turn 70 1/2 the IRS requires you to start taking Minimum Required Distributions from your IRA accounts.  I guess they do not want to wait until you die to get their hands on the taxes they will charge on the money you have in your IRA.  So they even tell you how much.  By the end of this year I have to take the amount that was in my account at the end of 2018, divide it by 27.4 and thats the amount I have to withdraw.  The one good thing is that it can go directly to a charity and then no taxes are due.  So I spent a while on the phone setting all that up.  Now I am waiting on the paper work to sign and set it all in motion.

Then Bonnie and I made a trip to CVS to pick up RXs and a few supplies.  Then on to a nursing home to pick up an application for our GD.

While we were out UPS delivered the Ubiquiti network equipment I had ordered.  I have always been interested in networking, so I am setting up a small home network.  The first step was the access point  I set up a few weeks ago.  Now I am adding a couple managed switches, a security gateway, and what is called a cloud key that serves as a controller and video recorder or DVR, also one camera to start with.  So I unpacked all of that and then late in the evening I decided to plug in some of the equipment, that led to hooking some of it up, everything was working.  So one more step, change some network settings.  That crashed the connection to the internet.  The lights turned off like they were supposed to but Alexa could not connect and turn them back on since we were still up.  So another hour and I got that fixed.  Leaving well enough alone I quit for the night.

But I had to relax a little before I could sleep to that was about 2:00am.

Wednesday

My task today was to call and schedule our semi annual heating and air conditioning check up.  But before I got around to calling Conditioned Air Solutions, they called me and scheduled me for tomorrow.

So today I waited until the afternoon to hook up the rest of the equipment.  That went well.  Then I changed the setting to switch over to using the new network.  A few bumps but the network pretty much worked just not like I wanted it.  Plus the TVs quit working.  My son came over and in an hour or so we had everything but the TVs working properly.  Then we called it a night.  I did some research on the internet and was pretty sure that I had some sort of ip problem.  Enough for today.

Thursday

I tried a few things to get the TVs working in the morning but so far no luck, still think its ip related.  The Wireless Access Points seem to be connecting but I can't get the uVerse services to start.
Robby came over after work while the girls were at their horseback lessons.  Turns out we had created the problem ourselves.  I had read where we need to reduce the range of ip addresses that the DHCP server could assign.  Turns out we reduced it too much.  So we increased that pool and the uVerse services started up and we have TV and the DVR all working nicely.  About a 30 minute fix, and it was an ip issue like I thought.  So I have learned a lot but still have a lot to learn.

Also Conditioned Air Solutions was here.  The tech was Adam and he was here about 3.5 hours.  He checked the systems over and found a few things that he changed.  He also pointed out two things that probably needed replaced.  One was a capacitor and one was a contractor.  One on each of our units.  He had the parts onboard his truck so I had him change them.  More expensive than if I did it but its done now and it was easier than doing it in the extreme cold or heat.  He also found the circuit breaker for the emergency heat strips tripped.  Looks like the breaker was marginal.  We have 3 5KW heat strips which draw about 61 amps.  We have a 60 amp breaker.  So he removed one 5KW strip from the circuit so we are down to 40 amps.  Hopefully no more tripped breakers.

Its cold tonight already down to 30 so time will tell.  Tomorrow I should be able to start straightening up the wiring mess in the den,

I ordered a shelve and it should come tomorrow.  The new camera I set up is also interesting.  It catches all the traffic on the street, I am surprised how many cars come down the street turn around and leave.  Thats it for tonight.

Friday

Down in the low 20s overnight but the house was nice and comfortable this morning, I guess the cleaning and tune up are doing a good job.

Bonnie started to take down all the decorations today and finished all but the tree I think.

Once UPS came I was able to start on my project for today.  First task was to put the $22 shelve together.

Now to get all the network equipment and the hubs for the Smart home systems moved on to them,

A work in progress and the network still works.

Still a lot to move.  This was at the end of the day.  Its kind of sorted out but all the wiring for the power supplies is still a big mess.  But its come a long way.

Once it's done it will slide back into the corner.

Both of us have not been feeling 100% since yesterday.  Bonnie called it a day and went to bed with a stomach ache early, I am feeling a little bit better.

Saturday

Still not feeling great today so this will be short.  We did have deer in the front yard last night.  I counted at least 9.  Here is a short clip.

Today we had rain almost all day and it was steady but not too hard.  I continued to work on the network but did not make much progress.  I ended up watching a couple basketball games.  Duke won and Alabama lost, both at the buzzer.  My son and Grand Dog Millie were over for a while and we had a nice visit.  Then I pretty much took it easy the rest of the day.  We did mange to take down the Christmas Tree and Bonnie made Potato soup for supper.

Well thats a wrap for this week.

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"Some people try to turn back their odometers, not me, I want people 
to know why I look this way, and some of the roads weren't paved"