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WEEK 36 2018

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Oxnard Weather Underground

Lancaster Weather Underground

Martinez WeatherUnderground

Sixteen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002,

Fifteen Years Ago, This Week, 2003

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Seven Years Ago This Week,
2011

Six Years Ago This Week,
2012

Five Years Ago,
This Week,
2013

Four Years Ago This Week 2014

Three Years Ago This Week, 2015

Two Years Ago This Week, 2016

One Year Ago This Week, 2017

Saturday 8 September 2018

Saturday - Hot and dry again.

One of the dogs couldn't hold it overnight, so I had to wash and dry the dog linens. Ugh.

Not much to say, pretty quiet around here. I don't think I took the car out all week.

Friday 7 September 2018 Friday - Warm, but not intolerable.

Dogs seem content enough. It's cool enough that I don't need to let them in the garage. I think there are some emergency supplies on a shelf in there that they'd be sure to get into...

Not much else going on. Doing some chores around the house and some app stuff.

Thursday 6 September 2018 Thursday - Hot, in the high 90's officially. Actually it was 102F on my front porch in the afternoon. But 11% humidity meant that it was actually a bit cold under the swamp cooler vents.

I talk from time to time about the temperature/humidity/cooling capacity of swamp coolers - here's a chart I found online.

These are "best" values, I probably get 3-5F warmer
temperatures out of my older, ducted, system.

I cleaned up the rest of the yard, removing all the debris that has accumulated there since the 4th. Ladders, blocks, bricks, pieces of timber, line posts, flower pots, you name it. There were even some bags of concrete mix, but at 90lbs each I had to have the neighbor help move them (I would have just left them there, but discovered last time that some dog was actually digging into the bags!).

The wheelbarrow we were using to move concrete bags had a low tire, and I couldn't find the inflation attachment for the big compressor. I used the little portable power pack and it's built in compressor instead. First time I've used it for that - worked like a charm. I've used it as a 110V portable power source a few times now, but still haven't used it to jump a car.

Worked on app stuff, specifically reading about databases on IOS, in the afternoon. This is Patrick Alessi's book, that I bought more or less on a whim a few weeks ago, used for a few dollars.

S came by and dropped off the dogs in the mid-evening, along with food and stuff. There are only three to wrangle now, so it's a bit easier to deal with.

She also brought by a DVD of Kirk graduating from OCS, and I made a few copies for her. There were issues with playback at first, then I realized that the USB 2nd monitor was setting off the built in DRM in OSX, despite this being a DRM-free home-made disk to start with. Unplugging the monitor temporarily fixed that problem.

I tested that the DVD copies work by playing them on the other (Windows 10) laptop. Seemed OK. It's 2018 and Microsoft Windows 10 still uses a 3rd party player. And they wonder why they are losing market share...

Budd was annoyingly clingy the whole time, trying to stay on my lap and demanding attention while I tried to burn the disks. I mentioned this to S who was in the other room doing dog stuff.

"He's warning you about me, saying STRANGER - DANGER", she told me.

He's brave. The other cats just ran and hid, leaving me to my certain death.

No treats for them tonight!

Wednesday 5 September 2018

Wednesday - Warming up, in the mid 90's.

I re-attached the molding, then put the solar screens back up. I still need to make the magnetic attachments for the house windows, but it'll do for now. I need to get some glazer's putty for the molding screw holes as well.

I also pulled some weeds in the yard - tumbleweeds for the most part. They are still young and green, and not as prickly as they will be when dried out. R&S want to leave their dogs here for the coming weekend, so I've been getting things organized out there.

(Yard work: As long as I take some Ibuprofen first, then a hot shower first, then do the work, slowly and carefully, then take another hot shower afterwards, things are OK, if a bit sore...)

While I was working the trash man drove by - they usually don't come until 3pm or so, so I didn't have any cans out. Murphy's law at work I guess. The one day this year when both trash bins are full is the week he come by early and it doesn't get picked up.

Working on the app, trying to get past working on the Settings page, but there is still more to do there...

I was give a little USB fan at Christmas, and have been using it for the last week or so to cool the little USB video dongle. Today it gave out, the RPM's starting to vary and to slow. I thought maybe we were having a brownout, but it was just the fan failing.

I have another, one that goes under a laptop, but can't find the power adapter, although I know I had it in the western office a few weeks before. Bah.

Tuesday 4 September 2018

Tuesday - Warming up.

I put some RustOleum gloss white on the frames and molding, it'll take another 24 hours for that to dry.

I put up a temporary awning, using one of those blue plastic tarps. It will fail even quicker than the canvas if I leave it up, but I don't plan to leave it up for more than a few days.

Monday 3 September 2018

Monday - Labor Day. In the high 90's in Lancaster, with the humidity just dipping into the teens. Ugghh. There were a few clouds, off in the distance, but nothing to rain or even give shade around here.

I did a bit of checking. In the POTW there is only a railroad trestle across the river in the distance, which dates the picture to pre-1962, when the first automotive bridge was built. Until then there was a ferry terminal (visible in the mid distance) and apparently a commuter train across.

The hip joint was killing me.

Standing upright isn't too bad, but standing up, sitting down, bending or even turning over in bed is extraordinarily painful. I can't think of anything I did to strain it, but I must have done something.

I did prime the house window frames and the screen molding from the frames I'd taken down.

Pretty tired all day - it's been a long and not particularly restful weekend. In bed early.

Sunday 2 September 2018

Sunday - Nice. Did some shopping in the morning, cleaned a bit around the house.

R&C came by, with the kids, and I showed them around the property. They were polite, but I think a bit taken aback by the condition of things. It's still pretty rough, I guess.

I really need to finish prime the master bath, then finish paint the place, then do the floor. The only major part is the bathroom finishing, and that's really just a couple of weeks of work. Painting should go quick, and the floors I'm going to have done, not feeling like spending days on my knees.

Help never showed up for the eaves work, and I'd really like to get the place painted on the outside before winter, but I'm not sure that will happen.

I had ordered some hamburger with blue cheese from Albertson's, and donated that for a little BBQ get-together next door with the neighbor. It tasted OK, not as good as I recall. It is also, we discovered, extremely flammable on a outdoor grill...

Picture of the Week

Schooner Forester

My brother send me this, an old picture of the schooner Forester tied up in Martinez. It
looks like the #2 mast has lost it's top hamper over the side.
I personally just remember it as a burned out hulk, pier long gone,
only vaguely recalling the fire in 1975.

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