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WEEK 15 2019 

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Saturday 13 April  2019
Saturday - Nice weather again.

I did a bit of weed whacking outside, and some other miscellaneous chores - cleaning up in the garage, putting stuff in storage, and so on.

I had a sprayer with RoundUp for weeds coming up between the pavers, but it turns out that the batteries were dead.  So I stuck them in the charger, and will try again tomorrow or the next day.

The poppies are still blooming, more than ever it seems like, and there are crowds of people going out to visit.  You can also see the poppies, even from a distance, on the north facing slopes of the Angeles, where there aren't giant fields of photo-voltaic panels.

It is beginning to get warm, I may need to get the swamp cooler going soon.  I think it was 100F in May of last year.


Book #14 was Battle Angel Alita, Vol. 1, by Yukito Kushiro.  This was a free Kindle Prime book, and is the original novel (Manga?) that the recent movie was created from.  Meh.  But it was free!

Friday 12 April 2019
Friday - A nice day.

Cleaning up after doing the taxes, lots of shredding of miscellaneous stuff and organizing the office again.  Still a mess, mainly from lack of storage, but better than it was.

I finally installed the GFCI breaker in the master bath.  The circuit breakers in the box outside are completely unmarked.  I used a bisection method  to avoid having to check all 23 of them individually. This was a good thing, since it was the second from the bottom, OTOH it ensured that I turned off every outlet in the house at least once. But there are only a few things that depend on wall power - the stove clock, the alarm clock in the bedroom, the USB switch in the office.  (And the pump in the turtle tank, which has to be primed each time it is turned off/on.)

Anyhow, I then looked at the two outlets near the sink, found the line/load side, and installed the GFCI outlet.  Or rather, called my neighbor the ex-electrician, since I was a bit puzzled about the lack of neutral-ground voltage on the line side after partial re-assembly.  Turns out that for GFCI's you reverse the leads on the load side to get the neutral working properly.  It works fine now.

I bought two GFCI's, in case they were wired separately, so I can bring the other back for a refund.

Thursday 11 April 2019
Thursday - Windy again. About 70F. 

I need to start thinking about prepping the a/c - I think it hit 100F in May last year.

It was a fairly slow day - I was actually pretty tired all day and had no trouble getting to sleep.  I was woken by the sun shining through the windows - usually I'm up long before that.

I looked at the news - Trump's AG is going after the FBI and CIA for their part in the Russia hoax.  Falcon Heavy flew, successfully, with complete re-use of all three boosters, to the Space Station. Radio astronomers imaged a black hole 55 million light years away. 

Wednesday 10 April 2019
Wednesday - Windy. No walks in 25mph winds, that's actually a good way to get "Valley Fever".

Worked on setting up the tax quarterlies.  Also rearranging some funding links and bank stuff for the coming year.

I also did some calculating of my monthly expenses, based on last years expenses. Oooff.  More than I thought, though a lot - half - was essentially expenses at Home Depot and Lowe's.


Replaced a couple of shower heads in the bathrooms, cleaned up in the office, added stuff to the shredding pile.


I need to take a look through the free Kindle Prime reading options.  I looked the other day and didn't see anything that took my fancy, even for free.

Tuesday 9 April  2019
Tuesday - Windy. Winds of 30+mph gusting to 50mph.

gusts to 50mph
A bit "brisk" out.

Well, I went with TurboTax, and submitted the federal and state returns.  It was pretty painless, and the numbers came out close to my hand calculations.  The huge personal deduction that now exists dwarfed any itemization...

It's a very fancy system, and by evening TT was sending me emails to allow me to "track" my refund. Although pricey ($150) for the self-employed it's still much cheaper than the "service" that messed up my return last year.

Tomorrow I'll do the quarterly's for 2019.  Bizarrely they are still required if you take distributions from retirements. Which is probably all retired people.


I bummed some coffee beans off the neighbor.  It's one grocery item I was low on, and the year-and-a-half old, pre-ground Yuban has become rather stale and metallic tasting...

Monday 8 April 2019
Monday - Windy in the afternoon.

While working in the office, I saw through the window the neighbor taking a walk, and joined him for about a mile.  The leg was a bit sore afterwards, but not excruciating. Generally it seems to be on a trend to get better.

Did a bit more work on the taxes, mostly.

Looked at the various online options.  The free tiers would be nice, but I am self employed and had some mutual fund disbursements - and pretty much everyone charges for that kind of stuff.  Which is understandable but silly, it's a sunk cost to them.  TurboTax, H&R Block, and TaxAct seem to be the big three.


I updated the MacBook to the new versions of OSX and, of course, Xcode.  It took hours, but I was using the Linux box in the other office, so all I had to do was come in occasionally and check on the progress.  I'm glad they haven't aged-out the 2012 MacBook yet.

Sunday 7 April 2019
Sunday - Decent weather again.


I didn't do grocery shopping with S.  The leg was bothersome, but somewhat better, best to let it rest.  And I am pretty well stocked up on groceries.


I didn't do a lot around the house, for the same reason.  I did clean up a bit, since things were in disarray from doing taxes.


I have done a couple of passes through the taxes, and the numbers have settled down to getting a few hundred back.  I may use one of the online tax services - TurboTax or H & R Block, just to confirm I haven't done anything too stupid.  They have some "free" tiers, but apparently you need to have a very very simple return to qualify, otherwise you need to upgrade to a paid tier.




Picture of the Week

sunrise
Sunrise, just a couple of days after the (cloudy) solstice.

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