Other than that, little to report, our building manager and I finally managed to get the floodlights out back replaced with HE LEDs, that's the shot you see on the right. One had not been working for a long time, and a few months ago another bit the dust. As we had had some changes of staff in the building, getting these fixed (a job for the building manager) had not happened - and, of course, the manager not being here at night, he didn't know which lights were not working. But that is finally all sorted now, and some of the folks whose cars live out back are really happy. This being a seniors building, there are some folks with impairments, and getting in and out of their cars at night in the pitch dark is not easy. Because all of the technology has changed, Housing Authority maintenance staff had to go get retrained and get new licenses, that's how OSHA likes it, the Fed, after all, part finances this residence, and that means Federal rules.
The weather is up and down - it was warming up a bit, but nights are still around freezing. Brrr. There was even some snow, but during the day that melted, I do hope it stays that way, but one never knows. Hard to believe we used to have tons of snow in New York, every winter, and I am complaining about a few flakes.. But this morning early, coming back from the supermarket across the road, I caught this cold but sunny vista outside my building, absolutely gorgeous day. Yesterday, I needed to do some work on my car (the license plate holder at the front had become unstuck, twice), I waited half the day for the sun to come out, and once I was out there with my tools the sun went away, so I was working in the cold after all. Of course, half an hour after I finished the sun came back, go figure.
So if, like me, you have older computers that run well, you may want to make sure you have active Windows licenses for them, so you can replace them with a newer system, and activate your operating system in a new configuration for free. Unfortunately, I don't have a system that will run Windows 11, so I can't test that, I am going to have to buy a new (or "renewed") notebook to get my hands on "11". One of the important security aspects is that you should have two similar systems, with your entire load duplicated, including the software. I always had a second laptop, which I used to record broadcast TV, using an ATSC dongle, but as time progressed I duplicated all of my software, as well as my files, and the second, older, laptop, has older files that I've erased from my main system (and therefore a larger hard disk). It is nice security - if my main laptop breaks down, I have a full, usable, load on the older machine. This is because I back up all my changed files, every day, to an external hard disk, which I then (I do this using clever scripts) transfer to the "backup" machine, first thing in the morning. Should there be a terminal mishap, I can jump onto the backup machine, and then see about fixing or replacing the broken unit. For good measure, both machines get backed up to a network drive every day - keeping those backups current is done in minutes, more or less automatically. Overdoing it? Nah, if you've ever lost a complete load, as I have, you know why you do it, and doing incrementals, every day, takes very little time.
I am at a loss to explain why the backup of my HP 2560p notebook runs, suddenly, so fast. I have a USB3.0 Express Card I've been using (the 2560 only has USB 2.0 ports), but it now pretty much looks that card never ran at the promised 5GB/sec, and I can't work out why it was running at 2.0 speeds. There are two differences - I've replaced the hard disk with a large (4TB) SSD, but I did that a couple of months ago, so that could not have had this result, which only happened last week. The other change is that I've recently started backing up (to a Unitek USB 3.0 drive caddy with a 3GB 3.5 inch 7200 rpm hard disk, pic to the right) from the Windows Administrator login, rather tan my user login - previously, the 1.4 terabyte backup would take some 10 hours, now, it takes less than two. The Administrator login kicks the Express Card USB ports into high gear? News to me, can't think why, but it seems to be the case. Never knew, and I never used the Administrator login, until I recently realized that would be the easiest way to run a recovery from a recovery DVD with the backup on an external disk - because the Administrator login will log into Microsoft as it finishes restoring, and update anything that needs updating - providing you're using Ethernet, as WiFi would only work if you're restoring using the same router and network you used during the backup. Confusing.
I posted the bedroom, left, as I love the view when the sun streams in, early afternoon, especially with the black sheets when I turn up the duvet. Not spectacular, just a bit dreamy...
Not a lot of snow - I made sure I was stocked up, cleaned maybe an inch or so off my SUV, so it is usable, went to the store (which melted whatever was left on the roof), and filled up the fridge, one of those winter-you-never-know exercises. Since then, no more snow, but it did not melt, it is cold, and it just got colder - it's 6pm, and the temperature is down to 21 (Fahrenheit, or -6 in Centipedes). So far, my heat pumps cope admirably, working hard, as they take their air from outside, but as I turn the one in my bedroom off at night, it'll be interesting to find out how the new heat pump in the living room fares, especially since I just replaced the activated carbon filter that came with the unit with a new one, which is a bit thicker and more rigid, but easier to get. I do have baseboard heaters, but am kind of hoping I won't need to use them. We'll see... Yes, the heat pumps crank a lot more when the outside air is cold, but they still seem to extract plenty of energy from that frigid air - so far (it is 19 degrees outside, or so my car tells me) they are both still cycling, which I find surprising. My older whole house heat pumps in Virginia, two 50K units, could not cope with temperatures below freezing, and would switch to their electric heat coils, which was an expensive exercise. Thankfully, I had a woodstove, and five acres of trees, two chain saws, and a fireman neighbour who taught me to fell large oak trees without killing myself....
Much to my chagrin the flag I put up in front of our building to replace one that had faded, didn't last that long, so I replaced it, again. I guess the 4x5 foot size flaps ferociously in the wind, and it tore its edge within a year, so I had to replace it. I guess the previous one was smaller, 3x4, but I like this size better on our tallish pole. I've bought a hopefully sturdier one, we shall see, this time I got a spare, as well.
I am not sure why I keep being busy - many of my mornings are partly taken up by laundry (in the building laundry room), which I kind of divvy up across the week, but other than that, the odd bit of shopping doesn't take that much time. Today, I went to the car wash, hit the supermarket, and then the hardware store - with some kitchen stuff in between, that took care of my morning. Because I have one of those small worktop dishwashers, I normally don't leave while it is running, it gets its water from a faucet, and drains in the sink, and I just don't like the risk that something floods (not that it ever has..). Once it's done, I open the unit and the dishes can dry while I head for the shops.
Rain had been forecast, but then when I stuck my nose out the door this morning I saw lots of sun, Seattle's climate has truly changed - it doesn't rain half as much as it used to. The sun was streaming into the lobby by 8AM, as I made my way to the supermarket over the road, and between the low sun, the fall colours, and the colour scheme, it was pretty enough for a picture, the lobby can be kind of homey. No frost, not cold, seasonal, I guess, as I write this, in the afternoon, the car reports 43 degrees Fahrenheit.
The contraption to the left is a wireless battery driven weather station, this to replace one I've had for six or seven years, which does not work all that well any more. The most important aspect was the outdoor sensor, which lives in my SUV, which is parked in the street, and does not always report in properly. So I found this one on Amazon, which isn't just cheap and cheerful, its outdoor sensor has a huge range, which means I know what the temperature in my car is, and even more importantly, that the car is still outside. Works well, especially if you consider it only cost $14, and doesn't just receive when close to a window, it reads the outdoor sensor wherever I put it in the apartment. Not as colourful and fancy as the old one, but it's better, and runs on batteries, rather than external power (hence the B/W LCD, I assume).
In the interim, the colder weather is playing havoc with the homeless, unusually, I found a vagrant in our community room yesterday, who wouldn't leave. It's always a problem, as you don't necessarily know whether someone you don't know is a new tenant, or a visitor, or a new carer, but in this case, none of the above. She became quite belligerent when I asked who she was, what she was doing here, and told her she had to leave when she wouldn't answer my questions, and that meant we had to get Seattle police to remove her. After all that, she managed to get back in the building, was removed again, and spent a couple of hours harassing tenants on the ground floor, screaming, knocking on windows, etc. Eventually, she gave up, it's been a couple of years since we last had an intruder in the building.
Last but not least, with the two new SSDs running smoothly in the HP Notebooks, I moved the used 2TB ADATA SSD that is now spare to my Toshiba Satellite - it took two tries to back that up, and "liberate" the Intel SSD, but it worked. I didn't even know if it would recognize a large disk, but it did, so I have a spare laptop, should I need one - unlikely, but it's working.
I am still amazed that my older HP2560 laptop is running like a bat out of hell, now that I finally have that huge (4TB) SSD working in it, I spent weeks trying to figure out how to clone the load I had in there. After the clone, I reconfigured the Windows 8.1 I have running in it, fine tuned things a bit, and between all that and the faster CPU I installed in it last year the thing seems to run faster than the newer, faster, more advanced HP2570 I have - the 2560 doesn't even have USB3. What with the massive hard disk, I can use this for storage and recording - once I finish the backup I am running, I will reinstall the recording software (I've got the media package running again, with a newer broadcast TV receiver), and then should be able to rebuild my broadcast off-air library. Super. I just need to finish the massive (1.8 terabyte) backup...
I have replaced my secondary router as well - it was a T-Mobile branded ASUS WiFi router, which worked well, but it would occasionally "drop" both WiFi channels, for no obvious reasons. Additionally, it was "special" T-Mobile technology, and there was never a firmware update. It was intended to provide Ethernet connectivity from T-Mobile cellphones, but those now all have Hotspot capability, something you have to pay extra for, and so the ASUS functionality was no longer used. I recently decided to look for a cheap replacement, and found a "Victure" (no, me neither) high speed WiFi router with gigabit ports that ended up to be just what the doctor ordered, at a "massive" $33.06, tax included. I got it to support the dual LAN trunking my new NAS array is capable of, and the WiFi ports are pretty amazing, at 300/300 megabits per second, at least that's what my laptops come in at, that's a first for me. I managed to get it to log in without accessing some obscure Chinese (as in, .cn) website, so I am quite happy. Amazing, how many of these products, my ZyXEL NAS drive, my Linksys router, and this Victure contraption, al insist on contacting their manufacturers wen you first activate them, and presumably report your data to them. I hate that, none of their business, and I usually spend a bit of time bypassing that data collection capability, not always easily - Victure in China took the cake, in reporting the router's master login and password directly to its manufacturer in Shenzen, or it would not even activate...
The Housing Authority finally fixed my bathroom ceiling - it was all a bit squirelly, there was a fire in the roof space above the apartment above me, but in order to fully rebuild that, they had to replace the bath upstairs, and the drain for that could only be installed through my bathroom ceiling. Then, it took two months for a painter to come and fix the resultant hole, and re-paint. But it got done, and the painter unexpectedly paid me a compliment about the good and tidy shape my apartment is in, which was sort of unusual. I must admit I managed not to clutter the place up, having been used to living in two and three bedroom homes I realized early on I had to make sure not to bring too much stuff, to keep the place manageable. And I guess the painter inadvertently confirmed I have been successful. Many of my neighbours, here in this seniors building, ended up retiring here, but not getting rid of much of the stuff they'd really never need again - like everybody seems to have a sofa, even though they rarely sit on them (besides, slouching is really bad for the back..) Anyway, it's done and dusted, and the apartment is airtight again. They do come and fix stuff, so complain I really can't. That's the second floor elevator landing, BTW, the light was just particularly pretty this morning, "the '60s view".
Now living in my own apartment, with a dedicated latest 4G LTE dual-band Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) Hotspot, but this time combined with a dedicated Linksys router providing a 5GB dual band WiFi bridge, has really helped with speed and reliability. A classic - I had the Linksys router for a while, but never knew what its WiFi bridging capabilities were. No more USB (other than for charging)....
While I had owned a number of NAS drives, they were always two-disk arrays, which are fast, reliable (though not fault tolerant) and were affordable. The larger arrays were simply too expensive, and I've always "made do" by backing up my computers separately, as well as storing their data on a network drive. At this point in time, however, backing up the amount of data I have amassed just takes too much time, so when I came across a NAS solution that is both larger and cheaper I decided to "go that way". My new four drive array, which I can partly populate with 3 TB drives I already have, will end up with four 3TB drives, with a functional fault tolerant load of just over 8 TB (stripe + parity, for the cognoscenti). That's brilliant, I'll be able to store all of my data on the new device, and only have to separately back up two laptops, once a week or so, with AIS Backup keeping incremental images on the NAS array all by itself. Once all that is done and working properly, I can probably sell the original ZyXEL 2-bay drive. Bought in 2017, that cost me just under $500, and has done very well, though once I moved out of my Lynnwood digs, in early 2019, I no longer managed the LAN. It ended up in storage until recently, only ever saw a couple of years of service, and its disk drives have now moved to the four bay array I just bought.
True, there wasn't much to write about, the past couple of months, but at the same time there is so much I don't write about in principle, like neighbours, stuff, I don't like to get negative, get personal, or go off on people, and what with the continuing COVID scare I am still not going to the gym, or out in general, the risk is still significant. Couple days ago I got an invitation from the Seattle Visitng Nurse Association to come get my third (Pfizer) booster, so I went and did that, thankfully with fewer side effects than the previous (Moderna) two. And in the interim, summer is taking a back seat, the heat is down, and the temperatures are falling, though it is still plenty sunny and I get my afternoon walks in "as normal". I've had some heating going for the past couple of days, but that may well be a consequence of the chills that come with the COVID booster...
The heat has finally gotten here, the Pacific Northwest is broiling to the point that the Housing Authority has authorized to keep the Community Room's A/C on, and is providing bottled water. As far as my apartment is concerned, my heat pumps keep it all very manageable. Temperatures are up to the point subsidized portable A/C units are available to folks with low incomes, something that indicates global warming is catching up with the general population, this is an area where traditionally few people had A/C, but that is changing rapidly. I got lucky, I suppose - I'd had air conditioning on the East Coast as far back as when I lived in New York City, but when I applied for a subsidized apartment here in Seattle, the first thing I did, even before the application had been approved, was invest in a couple of reconditioned portable heat pumps, more or less "just in case" - buying them in winter meant I got them cheap. I knew that once I had a lease and needed to buy furniture and things and move and my rent would almost double, I would not be able to afford A/C units, as well. I rarely run both of my (14,000 BTU) units at the same time, but we've reached that stage now, at least until next week. The picture here is one of the testers I took with my reprogrammed Nikon, but for illustration, one of the heat pumps is left in the picture, that's the one I crank up to keep the place cool at night, when I turn the one in the bedroom off, too close to my bed to sleep.
I hadn't used my Nikon in quite a while, and when I finally did I really couldn't get the focus right, I'd had problems with my external flash before. Part of the problem was that I just didn't use it enough to get the controls straight, until today, when I got annoyed to the point I took some time to figure out where I went wrong. There are rather a lot of settings, and my former prowess seems to have stayed the other side of age 70. Anyway, long story short, I finally managed to take a new picture of my bedroom, with the sun streaming in, but with the flash working right, as you can see on the left here. I wanted a well lit shot with light streaming in the window but the black sheets properly lit, and I guess I finally managed to get the camera to behave, I hadn't noticed the screw-on battery compartment was a bit on the loose side. New rechargeable flash batteries seem to have helped too, because the wide angle setting of my main lens is 17mm, I have to bounce the flash to "fill" the shot properly. Finally worked that out, today. On "auto", too *smile*.
While I am (for COVID reasons) still not going to the gym, I walk as much as I can, meaning I try and get a solid half hour walk in around my neighbourhood, every day. That's the medical recommendation - half an hour of brisk walking, and I wear a heart monitor when I exercise, so I have a statistical overview of my efforts, and just maintaining a spreadsheet keeps me on my toes. I have lost well over 15 lbs since giving up alcohol, by the way, something I hadn't even anticipated. The HRM (heart rate monitor, pic top left), however, didn't always work, and I found that the mobile phone I normally carry interferes with the phone that I have the monitoring app installed on, so I now just carry the monitoring app, and I get perfect readings. It is known that multiple devices with Bluetooth and WiFi will interfere with each other, so that solution was easy.
It is time for some more maintenance - swapping my heat pumps, which helps clear out any debris that might have gotten into the hoses, and because one of the heat pumps is noisier than the other, I am better off with that sitting in the bedroom (where I don't run a heat pump at night). Mustn't forget to replace the A/C filters next month, those cut-to-size filters I get at Amazon, wich have a "sticky" layer on one surface, are a godsend. The initial heat wave over, it's best to do some of this stuff now, before summer hits for real, probably in a few days' time. For those of you who are thinking about getting portable air conditioners, get dual hose heat pumps, because the single hose variety will suck air you've just cooled or heated out of the room, and use it to power the heat exchanger. I mean, it works, but that is hardly efficient - my heat pumps are dual hose, so any air the compressor needs it gets from outside. I had a single hose unit, a few years ago, and decided it wasn't terribly efficient, so I sold it, and replaced it with a dual hose unit, which heats as well as cools, and gets its exchange air from outside. It is a little more expensive, but it works very well. Interestingly, summers are getting hotter in the Pacific Northwest, and one charity, which provides energy subsidies to those less well off, has now begun to provide free portable A/C units to the poor, those that qualify for energy support already.
What with Summer arriving, I've done the necessary car maintenance, or rather, had the various mechanics do it, the last job was topping up (myself) the refrigerant in the A/C in my trusty old Dodge, in the pic top left. It was more a quick check the A/C was OK, it did not need a lot of refrigerant, literally a top up, so I can be pleased with the maintenance I had done previously. The A/C, additionally, comes on whenever I use the defroster, which means it runs in winter, occasionally, especially in cold and rainy weather, it isn't just "hot weather apparatus". But it's fine, checked the oil and other fluids, tires, I needed to top up the oil a few weeks ago, after the oil change, once it had run it wanted another half quart, I added some 10W40 High Mileage oil, always a good idea in an old V-8 in summer, it normally wants 5W30, next will be the air filter, and that will be it. It is doing well for an old car, fingers crossed, I could not afford to replace it.
The reason I have two mobile phones is simply that I believe in spares, one of these not only has my old East Coast number, but receives my emails, duplicating what comes in on the laptop. The other is my "home phone", I use that for my local calls, and there are some duplicate apps that are important to me, like banking and VOIP. That way, if one of my handsets fails, I don't lose the stuff I need, which is mostly both on a laptop and the primary handset. The phone I carry on my hip has navigation and my health app, which I use to monitor heart rate and other health functions. Not all apps agree with each other, so having all you need on one handset is generally asking for trouble.
While I had intended to move the 4 terabyte SSD to the older HP laptop, necessary it isn't, and when I tried to format the "big" SSD all I ended up with was a repeated access failure. So I eventually gave up - the 2560 with Windows 8.1 Pro now has a 2TB hybrid drive - part SSD, part conventional - while the 2570 with Windows 10 Pro has a 2TB SSD. Both run fine, for as long as I have patience booting, they both have a significant load of data on them, and I need to give them the time to get running propperly, with all of the Intel drivers loaded and running. Cutting corners is not in the program, nor is it really necessary, I have an Intel "Rapid Storage" app that autostarts and helps check drive runtime parameters.
I spent the better part of a week fixing all sorts of technical things. My Windows broadcast recorder stopped working, twice - it runs under Windows 8.1, on a dedicated HP laptop, but the Electronic Program Guide I use, together with something called Schedules Direct, wouldn't work for a week, and I could not figure out what was wrong. Then, after I reinstalled the app, it came back up, only to die again a couple of days ago. This is all shareware, so there is little support online, but I followed what instructions I had, and this morning everything appears back to normal, "normal" meaning I am able to copy the recorded TV programming to the external disk I have hanging off my other HP laptop. ready for playback, which I usually do in the evenings.
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