In CA we used to get these things from PG&E telling us how inefficient we were being with power and how we were always using so much more than comparable sized homes, yada, yada, which I assumed was 100% bullshit since we're pretty light on the power use compared to most people and had the super efficient HVAC system. We just got his report from Duke energy and lo and behold we actually use less than most people. CFLs/LEDs everywhere, thermostat set at 65F in the winter and 78F in the summer, only 2 people in the house, etc. With our monster fridge and old HVAC I'm kinda shocked we're below the level of the efficient house as well but I guess not trying to keep your house at 68F in the summer and 74F in the winter like the Jonses is paying off.

Burst of energy this morning. While the woman was at the barn doing horse stuff, I raked up the pine needles, mowed the lawn, blew the driveway and split some (very little) and stacked that wood I had laying around since last month. It's still not dry obviously due to all the rain and being exposed so it was brutal splitting even a few pieces. I might have to tarp the pile or something to get it to dry. We've gotten just over 3" of rain in the last two days from all the thunderstorms rolling by. The pond is happy.

The woman saw a "poultry swing" and wanted one for the birds, but they're $30 and just imported shitty plastic. I figured I could make something better for cheaper so for $6.40 worth of materials I made this. Chickens are ignoring it other than to eat the oats the woman put on it so they wouldn't be afraid of it, but I can't see why they would even want to swing.

DDNS is pretty cool, I just get IP update info from ssh otherwise I wouldn't even notice AT&T flipping IPs around on me randomly.

Friday was my first fight club, and it was fairly brutal. No preamble, no traditional class warm up, just bow in and then start fighting 3 minute rounds against whoever else was there. I lasted 3 rounds before I started to get too fatigued to fight, and then I was just a punching bag with arms. Had to step off the mat and recover. Just like the test, my endurance and heat resistance failed me.

I also sorta screwed up my foot a bit which isn't helping me any. I tried to round kick a guy in the gut and he shifted and I caught his hip bone. My shin guard had twisted a bit and I ended up hitting his hip with my bare foot. Ouch.

Sunday was the NC Bike Safe ride. Basically a bunch of motorcycle cops get together with students and follow them around on a ride for an hour, then give tips on how to ride better, then do another ride. There were 5 students and 7 bike cops, so we had 1:1 instruction the whole time which was pretty cool. We ended up at Jordan Lake in the afternoon which was a nice stop vs. just resting in the shade at a gas station.

Broke down and went to a tire store yesterday to see about the slow leak in one of the Prius tires. Turns out it was the worst case, sidewall puncture. They didn't have the same tires in stock that I had on the car, so I went cheap and just replaced the one bad tire and now have mismatched tires. They've only got 15k miles on them, not even close to needing to be replaced so swapping more tires just to match did not make sense. The piece of metal was pretty unimpressive:

My night time thrashing around seems to be getting worse. The woman is actually keeping notes on when I wake up, what I do, etc so you know it's moved beyond just a "once in a while". She's got 4 entries for this month alone. Last night I decided to do something about it... I slept on the floor. Gotta say, that 1.75 thermarest seems comfy when camping, but just tossed down on the rug in the bedroom... not so comfy.

Video of me last night at the match. There is a huge IDPA match coming up this weekend so they setup stages and ran the rules like an IDPA match so people could practice. Notice all the fault lines everywhere on the ground making you take really funky shots around stuff and the mandatory reloads. In the first clip, at 22 seconds in you can see my gun not fire and my hands drop about 1/2" or so. That's not good, I'm developing bad habits that need to be corrected. Don't try to anticipate the recoil, dammit.

I couldn't figure out how to make the clips smaller so I emailed them to my dad and pulled the reduced size clips out of my sent items folder, then trimmed them using preview. Now that I see there is an export function I could have just done that but iPhoto is choking on the clips for some reason.

I still have about 1000 rounds of that crappy Russian ammo to burn though. At least it's good practice, it's not like I had to stop and think what to do when the gun went *click*.

Yesterday was a day of two foodie tales. One, was us on the east coast at another Chickenwire NC event, this time at the baker's house from La Farm Bakery. The second, going on sorta at the same time was Ellen on the west coast at Giada. Both high end foods, but the presentation was just a little different...

The rest of the Chickenwire pics are here. I did pull this one off their Facebook page, it shows how many people it takes to cook a meal like this (and brew the beer and figure out the wine and the custom cocktails, etc).

Going to be an off day. My 10am is a no-show, my 11am cancelled and my 1pm cancelled. Other than some slides for Tuesday and a bunch of rescheduling it looks like my day will be quiet.

New Ethernet terminated, and now I'm running directly connected to the 'core' from the office rather than using wifi or a EoP adaptor. Latency is now sub millisecond as you would expect. If only I had a fast connection OUT so that it actually made a difference. :(

Final piece of the solar project is complete. I finished running the wire from the basement to the radios. The ceiling joists run the wrong way so I can't run the wire up in the ceiling itself here so I had to use a conduit on the wall. Looks like an 80s office building but it's just inside my room so it doesn't really matter. It's good enough and the wife approves so we'll keep it.

Note that 3rd picture, the radios are on, but the power supply is off. :)

Last thing will be to terminate the Ethernet cable I ran along with the 12v power. Well second to last, the woman said that if I actually hang my posters/art/whatever on the walls of the room it will make it look less stark and draw the eye away from the fugly conduit. I guess I can do that. I have some posters somewhere... my artwork is all already up around the house. No way she's going to trick me into taking it downstairs... although two of my pieces are already in the downstairs living room where she doesn't have to see them. Admittedly they don't go with the rest of the house anyway, but abstract paintings are just as valid as pony paintings. I think anyway.

Put some effort into the solar setup over the last week, now we've got a full control panel driving relays triggered from the charge controller. Now if the battery gets too drained the controller turns off the relay lines which disconnects all the load. Awesome. :) I think I'm going to order more batteries now. The one panel is OK for the moment, but having more reserve capacity will be nice.

We had a surprise guest this week, Mike LaFeve, one of my friends from high school who I've not seen since 1992 or so was driving from NYC down to Alabama for some training thing and he stopped by for dinner and to crash for the night. He's got 21 years in the USAF so he's retirement eligible now and basically set for the rest of his life. He's had to put up with the military for his whole career and move around (which has been annoying for his wife and kids) a bunch but now he's going to get to go wherever he wants and doesn't have to worry about money or medical. That's pretty amazing, something most of us will never experience.

We had my parents over when Mike was here (just accidentally, with the mother in law in town we're doing a lot of dinners) and then Friday we had my parents and the neighbours over for pasta. We made the sweet corn ravioli we learned to make in class last month and it turned out pretty well first a first attempt. I cut some of the ravioli round with the usual cutter, but then did some square with a knife. The square shapes waste way less dough so I'll be doing that from now on even if it doesn't look as good.

Uncooked pasta ready for boiling:

The other news of the week is that my GAP-10 came in. I'm not sure exactly why I ordered this thing, sorta forgotten what it's purpose was supposed to be in the 10-11 months since I ordered. Looks pretty good, and the new christmas tree retical on the scope is nifty. Hopefully I can get it dialed in and use it in the next rifle match in July.

Vet came today, and we had to put little Nugget down. Her leg wasn't going to heal and her lungs were starting to fill with fluid because she couldn't move around enough on her one leg. These damn creatures are so fragile!

Ah, what a better way to spend a relaxing Sunday morning than up on the roof cleaning the gutters? I already had the big ladder out from yesterday so it was just a matter of going up there with and knocking it out before it got too hot out. Cleaning from the top using a stick and broom is way faster than cleaning from the bottom and having to move the ladder constantly.

Yesterday was productive as well, with my solar project making a major step forward. I got some metal at home depot and cut/bent/drilled/painted up appropriately angled mounting brackets, mounted the panel, ran wire down to the basement and got the charge controller going and the battery connected. I'm now charging the battery via solar! I don't have anything connected to it yet, that's the next step.

I found a cigarette lighter style socket in my junk pile, and a fuse holder so I soldered up an actual accessory outlet and put the inverter to it and poof, we have AC power. Ironic that the only thing I could find to plug in was a lamp, it it's a CFL so it didn't draw very much but at least it worked.

Had to do something about the charge controller just sitting there. Couple pieces of drop from the barn project and my last few deck screws and viola, we have a mounting platform.

The chickens are getting brave, the woman has several of them that will sit on her lap now even without the promise of food.

Holy crap! I'm firing up the radio tonight to try to get on the 9pm prep net and all my antennas were disconnected during the last lightning storm. While cabling everything back up I couldn't recall if the big GAP antenna actually does 2m so I checked their web page for the stats and what do I see as one of the sample images? My antenna! They used my pic for their web site. Sweet.

The Krav level 1 test was Saturday, from 1pm to 5pm and it was the most physically gruelling thing I've ever done. Ever. I was over-heated (it was almost 90F and humid), dazed, confused, vomited once (only a little) and am generally still sore and cut up, but I made it. There were lots of people taking pictures, but so far only this one goofy one has shown up. This is everyone after the level 1 and level 2 tests that were going on that day and the instructors and 'disturbers'.

Now that I'm level 2 I can join the fight club and actually start sparing for real now. I need to get the gear to even go to a level 2 class, so this week if I manage to get to class it will still be level 1 stuff.

The woman was worried about the coop not being vented enough, and the fact that the birds kept roosting on the top of the door and ledge, so we made some mods on Sunday. Dad came by and we quickly cut some flaps in the big door and I stapled some plastic netting along the top of the whole coop to keep them from trying to fly out. We think that's how Nugget got hurt in the first place.

The woman says she never sees cops around and I say they're everywhere. I've started taking pictures of all that I see, and she's amazed. I guess she doesn't see all the police action in the area because it's mostly just traffic stops. We don't live in Detroit so other than illegals with expired tags and kids drinking there isn't a lot of action on the mean streets of Holly Springs.