Another Frustrating Day, but not as much as yesterday

As expected, no internet in the Hole again, and since everyone who knows who to pay the bill to is on vacation, not likely to be up till next week.

To the Break room and logged in to see new instructions for updating the TV. Did not work, so I took out the USB drive, erased everything, confirmed it was formatted for Fat32, put the binary file on it without renaming it, and tried again. The program manager had said it would take 10 minutes, but it only took 30 seconds. All I could tell is it performed a factory reset, and the build number was different, but the file date was older than what the TV came in with. My bug report asking if it was the right build was not answered. 

Watched the England-Colombia game on Fox while I waited. The Hole gets a good signal for HD channels 2-x, 9-x and 54-x.

So around noon Boss and NP drove the the Hole and helped move the 50-inch TV to hole 2. It's light, but wider than the doors.

I started running it through as much of the smoke test as I could without having all my equipment, and by 5 was 80% done. No work tomorrow or Thursday, Friday if the wifi is back up in the Hole I'll bring the TV back there and finish, otherwise I'll get the gamepad and USB keyboard from the Hole and get another 15% done. The final 5% needs equipment which can't leave the Hole.

Lunch was Saffron Road chicken pat thai, overcooked because they have a different model of microwave in Hole 2 which looks less powerful than the one in the break room, but isn't. Strawberries and a plum for dessert. Also tried a root beer which is usually out of stock the other place.

5 pm back to the Hole to lock up my laptop. Then home by way of Hole 2 to avoid the Shoreline Amphitheater traffic mess. From there on traffic was light.

Home, Spot met me at the door, perched in the window. I had seen Spook eating at the kitchen food tower earlier.

Last night I took the food and water out of the guest room, vacuumed, put the cat toys back into the piano room and livingroom, and closed the door. Or maybe I closed the door this morning. Anyhow, Spook has been using the office litterbox and the kitchen food & water so no need for the backup. Spot mostly hides when I'm not home, and when I am home he splays out on the floor near me.

Since the sink was mostly empty I cleaned and refilled the water fountain. It had a lot of algae in it. I may go back to a different design, this one has a removable aux tank, and that's part of the problem, maybe. I need to look in the shed to see if I saved one.

In other news, the sourdough starter had tripled overnight, so when I got home I stirred it down and poured it into a clean mason jar, covered with Glad wrap held in place by the jar lid ring, and put it in the fridge for storage.

Took the onions out of the fridge and re-fried them, got them a little crisper, but they look like hell, probably needed to be cooked at  higher temp for less time. But it will still make good chopped liver sandwich toppings.

Dinner was half a Digiorno Zen pizza (one with everything). Mint chocolate chip ice cream with cherries. Watched some FIFA follow-up. And the first 1/4 of The Bachelorette, where the guy she should not have given a rose to last time is in full "it's all about me" meltdown. And she had her first 1-on-1 date with a nondescript guy who turns out the be The Salt of the Earth™. She did the amazing thing of flying in three of his best buddies for their lunch pub date.

Also watched an episode of Penn & Teller FU, and saw some great magic acts.

Plans for tomorrow:
Catch up on Tivo
Watch fireworks on TV. I can hear the Great America ones from here, and maybe even see a little of them
There will be clandestine illegal fireworks from the Hindus across the street. Individual Hindus, not the official temple.
Maybe see a movie.

Quiet except for the loud bangs

Stayed in bed till 1 pm, tablet in hand, falling down the rabbit hole known as The Internet. Found a new chat site, talked to people in Asia and Europe until the free trial ran out. Solved a LinkedIn mystery - I had been getting legit email from the site telling me I had numerous connection invitations, but when I logged in there were none. Turns out people who know me found a very old profile which uses my standard email address, but for the last several years I am hireme at howeird dot come as far as the job sites go. Had to reset the password for the old profile in order to nuke it. People should still be able to find me by name.

Finally up and unplugged the car, and checked Old Glory - as expected it had wrapped itself around the mast, but I keep a garden pole nearby to flip it out of furled status. It stayed unfurled the rest of the day.

Lunch was a tiny bit of duck fat on rye, toped with chopped liver topped with semi-carbonized onions. The remaining 4 mochi for dessert.

Watched the rest of The Bachelorette, FFed past about half of it, which was way too much of Chris The Asshat spewing verbal vomit about how it was all about him, and why was everyone attacking him? He has been voted Most Likely To Return With An AR-15. Some of the other guys were seriously scared he would go Postal. I cheered out loud when she sent him home. After the end of the day, he got so upset when that day's 1-on-1 date came back with a rose that he walked a few blocks to the hotel she was in, knocked on her door and insisted on talking to her.

It's kind of sad, because he had gotten the first 1-on-1 of the show, and it was a very successful date. I was on his side then, and I am pretty sure that she was too, which is why she didn't need to spend any more time alone with him. He took that to mean she wasn't interested.

The rose ceremony sent home the other remaining asshat, plus one guy who didn't have much of a personality. Her day with the stunt man went really well, once she recovered from the disastrous group date of the day before.

You can see how bored I am.

Also watched another Penn & Teller FU, this time it was magicians who had fooled them before. All the acts were great, but now that they do bios of each one before their stage show, I FF a lot. Like The Voice and America's Got Gonads, I want to see the performance untainted by background. Tell me later that he is the autistic son of Afgan refugees whose faith in Jesus Alou cured his affliction and gave him a .367 batting average.

Deleted the last two days of news. It will all be fires and fireworks and fireworks fire warnings and the weather, presented by 3rd stringers.

Dinner was my last three turkey dogs on wheat with Dijon and sauerkraut, mixed veggies and a pickle. A bag of cantaloupe slices and some strawberries for dessert. The cantaloupe is mostly ripe now. So was one of the peaches, so I had that as a snack. And some lox as a snack too.

Nothing delivered, nothing on order so I remedied that by ordering a HUGE pet water fountain and a pack of filters to replace algae central, coated vitamin C 1000mg, and meat stick treats.

At 8:30, way too early because it is still light out, there was a major professional fireworks display close by, which was mostly hidden behind the only tall tree in the mobile home park, but reflected in the glass wall of the Google Cloud building. Spook not only wasn't afraid of the loud bangs, she jumped onto the porch window sill to watch. Spot yelled a lot, but he always yells a lot. He came right up to the screen door to yell at me when I went out onto the porch to see what I could of the show.

Before they built the Hindu-magnet condos across the street, I could see the fireworks at Great America from my carport. Now I can hear but not see them. They started at 9:30, I think.

In gardening news, the Bee Balm which my sister suggested is blooming.




The row behind it is milkweed.

Indoors, started a fresh planting of cat greens. Loaded the huge pan and a cookie sheet into the dishwasher along with the gunked up mason jar and assorted flatware.

Plans for tomorrow:
Lowe's, buy a new flag, if they are on sale
Take down the faded flag
Maybe fly the Coast & Geodetic Survey flag for a while. It was swag from when I worked in the NOAA warehouse on Lake Union for the summer of 1970. Or was it 71? Anyhow, that flag was replaced by the then-new NOAA flag, so my boss let me take one home. And I also got a tiny union jack, probably because it was too small for the vessels we supported.
See a movie?