A very busy week……………………………………….

As always, first the chronology:

8/5/18 – Sunday – Up early and usual morning routine. Didn’t have to pick up Gary this morning as his wife is giving the sermon. So I went directly to the church then dropped Gary of at his house on my way home. Read the paper and had another cup of coffee and a bagel. Did chores around the house till Kathy got home. Then did a burger and some dogs on the grill for lunch. Kathy went back to bed, I went to my room to do some computer updates. Finished up and out to Gary’s to work on his lawn tractor. Home and did the blog. Had dinner. Julie dropped the grand children off at little after 6PM. Spent the rest of the evening with the kids. Then to bed, TV and computer updates.

8/6/18 – Monday – Up early and usual morning routine. Spent the day with the grand children. Julie came and picked them up around 5:30. Kathy and I had dinner. Then downstairs to chat with the guys on 2 meters. Did computer work. Upstairs to bed. Kathy was already in bed. Did some computer updates, watched TV and sleep.

8/7/18 – Tuesday – Up late and usual morning routine. Kathy was up early and out to watch the grand children. Spent the day playing radio and backing up computers. Stopped to have burgers and dogs for lunch. Kathy came home and we went to the Chinese restaurant for dinner. Home and downstairs to chat with the guys on the radio. Then outside to help Kathy with weed killer and watering rhubarb. Bed, Big Bang, computer updates and sleep.

8/8/18 – Wednesday – Up early. Kathy got up to go watch the grand kids and woke me up. I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up, usual morning routine and chores around the house. Cleaned up and out for hair cut. Stuck around till Kathy showed up with the grand kids. Chloe and Shelby were getting their hair cut. Then I took Carter and Shelby to Dairy Queen and Kathy took Chloe to Subway for lunch. Kathy and Chloe came over to Dairy Queen for dessert. Then home. Was dead tired so took a nap. Then up and out to pick up Gary then over to pick up Mike and to Bob Evan’s for dinner. Back home and had dessert. To bed, computer updates, Big Bang and sleep.

8/9/18 – Thursday – Up at usual time and morning routine. Kathy was off to spend more time with Mike, Julie and the grand children. I went down to upload my latest HAM log entries to the online logs. In the process I discovered a problem with dropped comments. Got a call from Gary to come help him remove a module from his tractor. Came home and sprayed weed killer on the driveway and behind the HVAC outside unit. Back downstairs to continue working on recovering the comments for my HAM log. Stopped for lunch and had a burger and dog on the grill. Back downstairs to work on HAM log. Finished a little after 5PM. Upstairs for dinner. Back downstairs and uploaded HAM log entries. Chatted with the guys on 2 meters. Made the W4CN net at 8:30. Changed the HVAC filter and to bed. Computer updates, Big Bang and sleep.

8/10/18 – Friday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Did some chores and cleaned up. Spent most of the day on the radio. Verified all my log file upload data was processed correctly. After dinner went to pick up Gary and go to the HAM club meeting. Home, dessert, bed, computer updates, some TV and sleep.

8/11/18 – Saturday – Up at usual time and usual morning routine. Did some chores around the house, got cleaned up. Prepared lunch for Kathy and me. Kathy went off to shop and drop things off at Goodwill. I did radio most of the day. Modified the preamble for the W4CN and retirees net and printed a copy to read from this week and next. I have the Thursday evening net this week and the Wednesday morning net next week. Kathy went to have dinner with Mike, Julie and the grand kids. I made some soup. Finished up in my room and upstairs. Bed, snacks, computer upgrades, Big Bang and sleep.

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Now the specifics:

Kathy was looking after the grand children Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  The girl that normally watches them had to go back to her paying job in a preschool facility and the grand kids don’t go back to school till this week.  Kathy also wanted to have them stay over one night this summer so Miss Procrastinator decided to do that this week.  Julie brought them over Sunday night and they slept over.  We kept them here at the house Monday and Julie came back to pick them up Monday evening.  Then Wednesday they came back over so Chloe and Shelby could get their hair cut at the Blue Moon before they go back to school.  So that is the scoop on that.

Our friend Mike is getting back to his normal health.  He was still not allowed to drive this week so Gary made arrangements for me to pick him up then we went over and picked up Mike on Wednesday evening to go out for dinner.  Mike seemed to appreciate the chance to get out and his spirits seemed to improve.

Gary had been working on rebuilding an old water cooled lawn tractor.  I’m not sure what part he’s had in it but this has been going on for at least a year or so.  Anyway, I guess he has gotten serious about it recently so I’ve been helping him out when I can.  It first started with a request to come help put the new carburetor on it.  So I did that and after a couple shots of starting fluid it ran.  However, it started running away in terms of speed so I had to go back and found the linkage to the governor was not connected correctly.  Fixed that and it ran OK.  Still needed adjustment for speed between idle and top end.  Anyway, he called me the last time to announce it wouldn’t start now.  I have no idea what he did but I did some trouble shooting and there was no spark.  Traced the problem back to the ignition module.  Now this is on an old John Deere so I’m sure this is going to be a several hundred dollar item.  I just can’t wait till he develops the next problem.

I must be getting old.  As I said in the chronology, I went to upload my HAM logs to the online systems and discovered I was missing a lot of comment records.  Let me explain a little here.  When I make a contact on certain HAM bands, I log that contact via a linux system that has a HAM log program running.  Then I need to upload that data to three different online systems to confirm and get confirmation that the contact was made.  That is where I ran into trouble.  Well it seems the problem occurred twice when I merged logs from contests into my logging program.  That’s what wiped out the comments on the log entries.  I had backup files but for the life of me I could not come up with a way to recover the information.  So, I ended up printing off the backup information and typing that back into my logging program.  Sad, very sad. lol

Went to the HAM club meeting Friday night.  The President of the club wasn’t there so the Vice President was running the meeting.  It was very poorly run.  But I ended up volunteering to be the net control for one of the Thursday night sessions and the guy that runs the Wednesday morning net is going to be out of town on the 22nd so I guess I’m doing that one as well.  Really getting involved.

Last but not least I got called for Jury duty.  I got a list of dates there might be trials and I have to call in the night before.  I must serve for 6 months and there are 5 trail dates listed.  So far two of them have been cancelled.

Well that is more than enough for this week.  Hope everyone is doing well.  Have a great week and I’ll blog at your again next week.