Hooray, everyone is gone from the house! I can go back to having a normal life that doesn't surround trying to keep small children entertained 24x7.

Two shooting events in two weeks. Last week I was at the DMM match (or PRS or some other 3 letter thing, I don't know what they all mean) at Woody's teamed up with Wyatt and yesterday we did a sporting clays event for customers at work. No pictures at Woodys other than one I took of our gear sitting on the line before a stage, but one of the guys at the clays event took a pic of the team captains right before we started picking teams.

I didn't want to be a captain, but everyone said I looked official enough for the job. My boss is the guy on the left, he shot a 45 out of 50. I got a 29, which I think was the worst out of all the captains. My team came in 2nd though, that's something.

The in-laws went off to the beach house and the woman and I went down for the weekend to join them. I rode the bike down separately so I could arrive later and leave earlier, but also so I could enjoy the ride out. It was damn hot, but not so hot that I wished I hadn't done it.

Topsail Island was totally wiped out by a hurricane in the past so everything was rebuilt and it looks like it was rebuilt all by the same builder. Dozens and dozens of large beach duplexes designed for the rental market, all the same just stamped out along the beach. They're not too bad really, but clearly not geared toward full time residences.

The only really good thing of the weekend was this find at the local grocery store. It's an alcoholic root beer that tastes sorta like my root beer with Captain Morgans mixed in. It even works over ice, just like real root beer. I'm hoping we can find some locally.

I've been sending dad out to various car dealerships looking at trucks on my behalf while I'm stuck at work. He's found a few good ones, but nothing that's exactly right yet. The woman is too busy to look at anything for another few weeks so it's probably good that we've not found the right thing yet. She's going back to the beach house on Thursday evening until they all come back to our house on Saturday.

All 6 in-laws are in town and staying at the house. Can't watch my own TV, can't eat in my own kitchen, can't even use the damn internet because they've all got tablets and are doing Facebook shit 24/7. They'll be gone to the beach for a week starting tomorrow, so that's a good thing.

I'm sitting on the patio at just before 8pm and it's still in the 80s. Even on nice days it would be pleasant to have the temp drop down into, oh I dunno, the 60s at night? The fact that the citronella torch that's keeping the bugs away is really close to me isn't helping the whole "staying cool" thing.

My parents had two bar stool style chairs that didn't seem to match anything in anyone's house. I guess they were in the kitchen in Pioneer and I never noticed them. Anyway, they didn't want them and we thought they might work as stools at our kitchen counter. Unfortunately they were also too tall. So, not matching and too tall... easier to fix the height than the color. I marked down on the legs as far as I could and then busted out the handy skill saw, and viola, we have chairs that work.

I cut the second one down and installed new felt pads on the feet to protect the floors. If we end up liking them I guess I can strip and stain them an appropriate shade of wood.

Yesterday was the woman's first horse show with the new hip. She was only jumping 2', vs the 3'3" or 3'6" she was doing back in CA so the jumps looked tiny, but at least she's back on the horse. Literally. The horse, Vic, is 23 years old too so old horse and old rider, but only one of them is a cyborg. She did OK on the jumping, but they did some strange scoring across all the riders (60 of them) so she didn't ribbon for the jumping rounds. She did get a few 2nd, 3rd and 4th place on her equitation rounds so she was happy with that since it shows she's at least got proper riding form again.

I think should have got an award for "most people at the show". My parents came to watch, as did Eric and Renee, the neighbours next door Beth and Michael, Cat, Amy who owns Vic, and some other chick I didn't know that must have been from the barn. That's a big cheering section for a schooling show.

After the horse show I had dad follow me up to Wake Forest where a guy wanted to check out the 4runner. I had it posted for sale on the shooters forum and got a little interest, and this guy was the last of them. I had it up on craigslist for 1 day and got 5 real responses but the forum guy was first and after his dad (who is a mechanic) spent about an hour checking it over we ended up making a deal. I bought it for $5500, tuned it up, put tires on it, two O2 sensors and a starter in and over the course of 3 years and just over 30k miles and then sold it for $4600. That's not bad, I don't usually lose so little money on cars. I've always done well on the 4x4s though, tend to buy them right and hang on to them longer.

Here is is all shined up in the driveway before the ride up. I didn't have time to pull my radio gear and antennas out so I bribed my dad into doing it Friday while I was at work. I let him keep the scan gauge thingy that originally was in the Jeep. I'm sure there is something newer to get and dad has been bugging me about taking mine for a long time. He was happy, I was happy.

Now that the 4runner is gone, the arduous task of finding it's replacement must begin. If the 4runner had been an automatic then keeping it and using a trailer would have made sense. Getting the woman to drive a stick was not possible so if I wanted her to ever be able to drive to get her own goat chow, shavings, etc, etc then we would need something with an automatic. I also want something that can tow easier. If she really does get those goats and donkeys or whatever then we have to have an enclosed trailer we can haul them in. She won't leave them behind if we have to evacuate for a hurricane and you can't realistically put them in a car or the back of the 4runner. The truck with a camper shell and animal trailer will make a fine bug-out vehicle, especially with my stash of extra fuel (3x 14gal cans plus 2x 6gal cans will extend the range of a truck very well).

I was mumbling about not wanting to spend money on a truck though, and the woman said that perhaps we should make it a joint vehicle and buy it with household savings instead of my money. It would me giving up our vacation this year so I've got to think about it. Honestly there is enough stuff to do around here that I don't think I'll miss going anywhere over water this fall.

Chris has some 4 conductor 10 gauge wire left over from some cell tower project he said I can have. That will make awesome wire to run from the solar panels down to the basement, two strands of 10 gauge per side is apparently like 8 gauge, so I shouldn't see any voltage drop. Go efficiency go!

We made a Costco run today and I got more of my usual stuff and rotated granola bars and Gatorade up from the preps. Last time I got some of the Kirkland Gatorade because it was half the price of the real stuff. Today was the first time I had actually rotated any of it up to drink and it's... well, at least 50% as good as the real thing so I'll call it good enough and we'll get more of it next time.

Update on the 4runner. The guy who bought it just posted on the forum about his "new" truck. It's really really weird to see someone else bragging about how awesome your used car is.

Why is this chicken sitting on me???

Running the two pi boards and the wifi router was just too much for the panel to keep up with and we ran the battery down in 5 days. Not bad really considering in an emergency we wouldn't run the stuff 24/4, and I would need to have the backup server on at all. Still, it would be nice to have enough panel capacity to keep up so I could take this stuff off-grid permanently. Before I get a 2nd panel though I really need to read the voltage drop from the panel (so getting back on the roof to take a reading there vs the basement) to see if I need to run heavier gauge wires. I'm afraid the answer will be yes.

My previously untested in production relay setup worked. When the voltage dropped far enough the charge controller shut down the attached load, which in this case is just the relays themselves, which in turn disconnected all of the main load. I knew it would work in theory, just hadn't drained the battery enough to test it.

Drove down to Columbia again for my monthly meeting. I drive past Rockingham all the time but never do the .5 mile detour to actually see the front of it but this time I did just to take pictures for the woman. It's no longer used by NASCAR and it looks closed and quasi-abandoned but apparently it's got a lot of history associated with it.

Some times the south just serves up the stereotype jokes all by itself.

I forgot to mention anything about Friday. Just to get out and see something of the state we drove up to Mt. Airy which is supposed to be Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show. It's also home to this "must eat" pork chop sandwich according to the "Our State" magazine the woman gets for her waiting room. We did go to Snappy Lunch around 11:30 so we got in with only a 5 minute wait (vs. the people waiting an hour or more by the time we left). It was cheap, I'll give them that, but it wasn't that good. I got it with the slaw and chilli and it was pretty bland. Not as greasy as I expected, but also lacking in any sort of flavor.

The other reason to head that way was to check out a few wineries. We're still trying to find NC wines that don't suck, and we did find a few on this trip... but they're still lacking compared to CA wines of course. They've got the right flavors for the most part but they don't know how to make a red with any body. We spoke to one of the vintners for about 30 minutes about all sorts of random stuff and one thing he said was that they can't age them long enough to get real body. CA wines can age for 3-4 years in the barrel, but he's got to pull his after a year and get it bottled or he'll run out of wine to sell. Basically people are buying everything he makes so he can't let it sit long enough unless he wants to stop selling wine for a year or more. Good problem to have, hopefully he'll get enough land and grapes to where he can start letting some of it sit for a while and not have nothing to sell.

The upgrade madness continues, flash had to update today which isn't a shock and usually doesn't cause issues, but now my phone wants to go to 8.4. Looks like it's just apple music crap, so yet another update I don't care about that's likely to screw up my phone. Pass.

While we were in Mayberry, Ellen was in Mexico swimming with jellyfish (not a breast implant which a bunch of people suggested it looked like).

Lots of fireworks action last night, and Holly Springs is doing their event tonight so I suspect we'll have another evening of explosions. Considering how anti-freedom the country is leaning it's surprising they don't cancel this holiday.

I picked up one of these for my fuel project. They're huge, but if I can figure out how to mount them so that the gravity feed will let me fill the 4runner it will be very easy to rotate these cans vs. the little ones. Just drive up, gas up the 4runner then take the empty back to the station for a refill. They're going to be heavy once full, so that's going to take some figuring.

Went to sporting clays with Dawson on Thursday down at Drakes Landing. Really nice clays course, although you do have to use a golf cart to get around as it's really spread out. Lots of 'normal' clays stages like they would have at the range in CA, and then lots of water stages with long shots over water. That's better training for hunting and the ones going in/out of heavy brush are fun.

I smoked him, 50 to 34, and although 50 out of 100 isn't exactly awesome it's better than he did and that's all that matters when you're dealing with people from the office.

Saturday I went with Chris and his friend Rex to Woody's and I got to test out the new GAP10. I hadn't bore sighted it or anything, the scope was just mounted up there with the right eye relief but nothing else. I opened the gun up, looked through the barrel and lined it up with the 100 yard target, then dialed the scope to match and closed it up. The first shot was 3/4" low and left which is pretty damn amazing for an eyeball bore sight. Laser bore sighters, who needs 'em???

After getting the turrets reset to zero at 100 yards, I tried 200, 400 and 500 yards with minimal drama. I didn't have any dope for this rifle but it's just a 308 so I used the bolt gun dope and it was close enough to get me onto steel at 200 and 400, and only required minor tweaking for 500.

We went to the pistol pit after and ran some drills against steel for a bit, then cleared out when it started raining. The rain didn't last long, but it was a good stopping point since we were all running low on handgun ammo since no one had actually planned to shoot pistols. I had my EDC and a bunch of mags left over from the last match still in my range bag, and Rex had "a couple of extra Glocks in the truck"... doesn't everyone? Chris used a borrowed G19 and I let him use some of my mags and it all worked out OK.

Using one of these widgets I got the router running off the solar battery. Phil at el were trying to get me to build my own because the step down regulators look pretty easy to build, but my issue is that those only supply voltages 2.5V lower than the source. My source goes from 14v down to 12v so there is no way the simple circuit would actually supply 12v as required by the router, switch and modem. This $9 widget from amazon puts out 12v with almost any input voltage, and I tested it from 4v up to 15v and it put out a nice steady 12v. Exactly what I needed so I went for it. Ordered another one to power the switch next. The pi board that I'm typing this on is just running on the USB port I already installed on the solar control panel.

Sigh, I let VMware player update and now it's corrupted my VM image for my thumbnail generator VM. I really should know better than the update things, nothing good comes from updates.

Ha, OK, I had an old copy of the VM on my mac so I'm back in business. Hey look, fusion wants to auto-update... yea, fuck you VMware, no.