Not a good week, not much got done………………………………

As always, first the chronology:

3/1/20 – Sunday – Up a little early and the usual morning routine. Downstairs to do the blog and some administrative things. Got the desk cleaned off in the process. Upstairs for lunch. Cleaned up and out to the Morton building to put another coat of paint on the bracket I made for Mike. Then in and played Mastermind with my grandson awhile. Then downstairs to play with my newly acquired Software Defined Receiver. Back upstairs and made arrangements to have dinner at Olive Garden with the family. Home, chores, bed, computer updates, TV and sleep.

3/2/20 – Monday – Up a little early again this morning and usual morning routine. Kathy got a call that Carter was home sick. So she was off to watch him for the day. I did some chores around the house and worked on computers most of the day. Took a break for a light lunch. Kathy came home and I helped her unload her car as she went shopping while she was watching Carter. Then dinner. Chatted with the guys on 2 meters. Cleaned things up a bit then bed, computer stuff, TV and sleep.

3/3/20 – Tuesday – Up late today and cleaned up. Julie brought Carter over for us to keep him today. I felt worse this morning than I have yet. Made an appointment with the doctor for tomorrow. Did very little around the house. Chatted with Mike on 2 meters. Did computer updates, bed, Big Bang and sleep.

3/4/20 – Wednesday – Up early and out to the doctor’s. Had a very bad night last night. Running a temperature. Doctor said I have bronchitis and gave me an antibiotic. Spent most of the day in bed trying to recover. Downstairs to chat with the guys on 2 meters. Upstairs to bed, Big Bang, computer work and sleep.

3/5/20 – Thursday – Up at the usual time. Kathy went up to Mike and Julie’s to pick up Carter and bring him to the house for the day. I managed to help a little with the laundry. Not much else got done. Chatted with the guys on 2 meters, did some computer updates. Bed, Big Bang and sleep.

3/6/20 – Friday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Felt a little better so helped Kathy with cleaning the bathrooms. Then lunch. Nap, downstairs and worked on my Raspberry Pi. Up for dinner. Chores, Bed, TV, Computer updates and sleep.

3/7/20 – Saturday – Didn’t sleep well again last night. Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Didn’t do much. Still don’t feel well. Chores in the morning. Nap this afternoon. This evening Kathy helped me do the blog entry for our Texas trip last October. Bed, TV and sleep.

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Now the particulars:

My daughter came over Sunday to have Kathy help her color her hair.  Carter came along so I spent time with him.  We played Mastermind and after a couple rounds with coaching he was able to solve the puzzle with ease.

Needless to say, you can tell by the look on his face he was very pleased.  I was a little proud myself.

Carter was sick on Monday and Kathy went up to watch him for the day.  I stayed home and did some chores around the house and played with computers.  Carter was still not feeling well Tuesday so Julie brought him over for us to watch him.  Julie took him to the doctor’s after she got off work and of course he tested positive for Strep.  Needless to say he stayed home from school most of the week.  He was finally temperature stable on Thursday so he did make it to school on Friday.

I started really feeling like shit on Tuesday.  That’s when the more medically competent people in the family said I had to go to the doctor’s.  Got an appointment for Wednesday at 9AM.  I really felt like shit when I got up Wednesday.  Had a hard time getting ready.   I got exhausted after every little thing I did and had to lay down for awhile at some points.  Thank God Kathy was available to take me to the doctor’s. Got to the doctor’s and he diagnosed me as having acute bronchitis and prescribed a heavy dose of antibiotics.  I also developed a case of gastrointestinal problems Wednesday as well.  Took Imodium to fix that.  Have not felt really good the rest of this week.  I force myself to get moving on Friday to help Kathy clean the bathrooms.  I think I helped and hope I wasn’t more of a problem for her.  The bottom line consensus is that the weather change coming back from Florida probably gave me some congestion which I didn’t attend to appropriately and the congestion settled in my chest causing the bronchitis.  I’m half way through the antibiotics and just hope this clears up soon. As usual, I just need to look in the mirror to see who is to blame for me not feeling good.

This week I acquired two new toys.  I bought a RTL-SDR receiver and a Raspberry Pi.  No, I didn’t spell that wrong, it’s Pi, not pie.  I bought the receiver on a whim.  I just wanted to see what they are all about.  The one I bought is about the size of  a small cigar and plugs into the USB port on a computer and with the appropriate software will receive any signal from 500Kc to a little above 1 Gigahertz.  Other than trying it out for $20 I haven’t thought of anything exciting to do with it.  A friend of mine is using one to receive weather pictures from the NOAA satellite.

I told Kathy I was buying a Raspberry Pi for $85 and she thought I was insane.  No pie was worth that.  then I explained it was actually a computer.

Here is a picture of it.  The board is only around 35 to 40 dollars depending on where you buy it.  I got a starter kit that included the case, a fan, heat sinks, power supply and a preprogrammed micro SD card.  The processor is a 64-bit quad core Cortex-A72 processor that runs at well over a Gig.  In layman’s terms it’s as powerful as a home computer that was top of the line a couple years ago.  A couple guys in England developed it as a learning tool to encourage young people to get more involved with hardware and software development.  It is widely used for HAM radio applications.  My interest is using it in my garage door project.  The Arduino was just too small and had too many constraints.  So now you understand all there is to know about the Raspberry Pi. If you have any questions just ask and I’ll be glad to answer them.  I won’t hold my breath on that however.

Last night I got off my lazy ass and with Kathy’s help finished the blog entry for our trip to Texas in October last year.  I apologize to those people that are on my news feed as I forgot to put the “read more” line in the code before I posted it.  Anyway, again we can’t thank Lynn enough for her hospitality.  It was a great trip and Kathy got several buck list items accomplished.

That’s it for now.  This turned out much longer than I planned.  Hope this finds everyone well.  Have a great week and hope you remembered to turn you clock ahead.

Bye for now.