Day 4707

The house was very cold this morning. Luckily we had lots of blankets on the bed. I wish the furnace didn't decide to break on a weekend, but it is what it is. It actually got below freezing last night, so after we got finished taking Dawn on a chilly sunrise walk, our cold house seemed a lot warmer. 

I tried without much success to get the furnace running again. At one point the blower kicked in for a few minutes and warm air was flowing through the vents but it didn't last long. Something is seriously wrong with the fan and it doesn't take long for a circuit breaker to shut the furnace down. I really hope that I can get someone out here to fix this tomorrow morning. I hate being cold.

After breakfast I went walking at the mall. The car started easier this morning, so that was encouraging. I'm still a little nervous that it won't start when I need to go to the airport. The mall is already in full Christmas mode. Christmas trees are everywhere. The house where people bring their kids to see Santa is up. And most of the stores already have Christmas themed window displays. It's almost like Thanksgiving has been completely forgotten.

I walked my 2.5 miles and came home. Dawn was waiting for her Sunday outing, so off we went again for another walk. I kept falling behind on this third walk of the day. I was tired and my feet hurt. It was a nice day for walking though. The temperature rose quickly once the sun came up and it felt like a brisk Fall day. By the time we finished our ice cream cones, I was ready for a nap.

I tried without any success to find a better hotel for my Artemis trip. I finally gave up and confirmed my reservations at the hotel I've been trying to avoid. So far, it appears that the launch will take place on schedule. I still wonder why I am doing this. I don't really like night launches. If I stayed home and the launch was successful, I'd be kicking myself though. I guess I'm still going because I can. Press credentials for this thing were hard to get.

I should have started packing today, but I couldn't get motivated. It will be a busy day tomorrow. I hope the furnace repairs aren't too expensive. Who am I kidding. Of course they will be expensive. On a more positive note, I don't think there is anything left in the house to break. Maybe it will be smooth sailing for a while after this. One can always hope.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

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Day 4116

The furnace wasn't working when I woke up this morning. Damn. This always seems to happen during the very last days of winter when you don't think you are going to need the furnace anymore. I wasn't looking forward to taking the unit apart to clean the flame sensor again. The flame sensor is almost always the problem. Before I went to all that trouble I gave the tried and true method for fixing anything electrical a try. I unplugged the furnace, waited thirty seconds, and then plugged it in again. I also reset the thermostat for good measure. Amazingly, this worked. The furnace fired up and roared into life. The flame sensor probably is dirty, but with any luck I won't need to deal with it until next Fall.

I managed to find a nice little smoked ham today. I don't know why I thought there was going to be a run on Easter hams. When I went to the smokehouse, I was the only person in the store. There were even several small hams to choose from. I was surprised. Did Covid change something? In previous years I've had a terrible time finding a good smoked ham this close to Easter. 

I received a message from the Air Force, or I guess it is the Space Force now, saying that my press credentials have been reinstated for another year. Yay. I'm good to go for 2021. The message seemed to imply that the Air Force wasn't working as closely with NASA anymore. My credentials might only be. good for military launches. That's OK with me. I think the Space Force will be launching a Falcon Heavy later this year. A Falcon Heavy launch is always spectacular because both side boosters return to the Cape to land.

I wasn't expecting much on my walk today. When I woke up this morning I felt like a cripple. My left foot hurt. My right knee felt stiff. My hip felt sore and my shoulder still felt loose. Oddly, walking seemed to help loosen up these aching joints. I certainly didn't set any records today, but I completed five miles in a little more than an hour and a half. That's slow, but it will have to do for now.

I began to familiarize myself with the new star tracker this afternoon. The unit is sturdy and seems to be extremely well made. I don't think it is going to be easy to use unfortunately. A star tracker is basically a small German equatorial mount that holds a camera instead of a telescope. A motor slowly rotates the unit at 15 degrees per hour to counteract the rotation of the earth. You can take a lot longer exposures since the stars aren't moving from the camera's perspective. Like most telescope mounts, you have to assemble and balance the tracker in the field. There are several little adjustment screws that will fall off and get lost if you loosen them too much. You also have to align everything very exactly with Polaris. I know how to do all this in theory, but it's harder to do in the dark. Have I mentioned that I am very clumsy.

My Fitbit isn't tracking my sleep anymore. Maybe it's getting old and needs to be replaced. I always liked the sleep tracking capability. I have no idea whether it is accurate or even produces meaningful results, but I like to look at it in the morning and discover that I slept better than I thought I did. About half the time it does the opposite and shows me that I didn't sleep well at all. I probably don't need a Fitbit to tell me that I'm not sleeping well. My weird dreams tell me all I need to know.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from the Dallas arboretum asking me to review them on Facebook. A few minutes ago I got an e-mail from the smoked meat company where I got the ham, asking for a review on Facebook. The appliance repair company asked for a review after they fixed my washing machine a few weeks ago. Does everybody do this now? Couldn't we just go back to word of mouth? A world addicted to social media feedback is not a good thing.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3723

Talk about irony. The last sentence of last night's blog post read "Life is full of surprises." Two minutes after I added that post to my Facebook timeline, all my Facebook posts disappeared. This was a huge surprise. Facebook had nuked my entire blog, telling me that it was violating their community standards. WTF? I was stunned. With all the crap on Facebook, they picked my simple little blog about rescuing dogs and repairing my roof to ban.

The blog still exists and I still make a new entry every single day. Facebook readers may have to try a little harder to find it though. Some readers have always had the blog sent to their e-mail account every evening. Others find it on Twitter. I'm going to try to get Facebook to reinstate the blog because banning me has got to be a mistake. There is nothing offensive about this blog. I miss the old days when tons of people used to follow the blog directly on Blogger. Blog hopping has fallen out of fashion though. Today you've got to have a podcast.

Losing my Facebook blog readers wasn't the only disaster I had to deal with today. The furnace broke too. The furnace repair guys were out at the house less than a month ago, so the furnace should be working fine. Obviously these guys missed something. I called them to come out again. Hopefully they can quickly find what's wrong with the furnace  quickly. We've still got some cold nights ahead. I didn't even try to fix things myself tonight. I'm tired.

The security light in the back yard has quit working too. I've decide to quit trying to repair this thing and just buy a new fixture. I wanted to buy a sodium vapor lamp like I used to have, but all the stores have quit selling them. Is it against the law to sell incandescent lights anymore? You don't see any in Lowes or Home Depot these days. I ended up up buying another LED light because that was all that was available. These LED fixtures aren't as bright as sodium vapor or metal halide bulbs, but what are you going to do? You can't buy if nobody is selling.

About the only good thing that happened today was that I finally figured out how to enable WiFi Calling on my phone. The reason the feature wasn't working was that the phone company still thought I had an iPhone 5. Older iPhones aren't cmpatible with WiFi calling. As soon as they reconfigured my service for an iPhone SE, everything worked as it should. I wonder why nobody at the AT&T retail stores knew about this? I've spent hours following false leads and blind alleys.

I tried to fill out the accountant's tax questionnaire so I could get my materials to him. I ended up with more questions than answers. I couldn't even figure out my return from last year. I guess I'll do what I always do: dump everything in a big manilla envelope and hand it to the accountant.

I hope my Facebook readers are able to find this post. If you do wind up reading this somehow, leave a comment on the blog and let me know you're still here. The blog isn't going away. I hope you aren't either.

Orion is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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