New floodlight, podcasts, geocaching (posted from home)
(this post covers 29-31 December)
-----------------------------------------------
Sunday, 31 December-
Today we went to Chambersburg to visit our Maine buddy, Red Retriever. For the last two winters she has been living in Chambersburg for the winter. When we last visited her in Maine last October we introduced her to geocaching so it was natural we’d do some geocaching today. We first had an excellent burger at the new Fuddrucker’s, then hit the “See Our What??” cache west of town. This one took us to a mini-golf course and deer enclosure behind a restaurant. We walked the perimeter trail and enjoyed seeing the deer (including a big albino buck) and two talkative turkeys. Then we celebrated with an ice cream cone at the restaurant. Light rain started as we left the restaurant so we abandoned plans to hit “Hamilton Hideway”. We instead hit “John Brown’s House” in town which I knew was a short walk. This one is interesting because it uses two little ‘birdhouses’ for the adventure. The birdhouses are locked with combination locks and the combination is provided in the instructions on geocaching.com. The first contains the GPS coordinates to the second but we already know from the instructions that it’s somewhere around the old jail so we did this one without using the GPS. The third geocache of the day was “Dam if you do, Dam if you don’t” at the now-removed Siloam Dam. It was a micro-cache, meaning that there was nothing in it but a tiny little folded-up log page. We even had to bring our own pencil for that one. But it was still fun to try to guess the hiding place.
On the way home Labashi and I listened to podcasts to while away the time. We listened to an “Old Time Radio” podcast of radio programs in 1947 and 1948. These included George Jessel, Dave Garroway, and Hugh Downs in their heyday. The best part was a story from a series called “The Unexpected”. This episode was an old-time-adventure story about a guy who goes hunting in Brazil and runs into his exact duplicate—right down to the same scars--- and sees him eaten by pirhana. He later is mistaken for the dead man and unexpectedly gets a large sum of money. But the unexpected twist is he’s arrested by the FBI for treason; his double was an agent of the Nazis and was hiding in Brazil. This one was particularly hilarious because each time the words “the Unexpected” were said (and there were many), there was a pause, and then a deeply echoing voice yelling ‘the un-ex-PECT-ed” in a very dramatic fashion. I’ve got to hear more of these.
We also sampled a podcast of “The Wildebeat”, which is about hiking and wilderness topics, this one about nutrition.
That evening we watched five more episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” (episodes 6-10 of Season 2). Oh, yeah--- our buddy Red Retriever is a diehard fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” so that gave us something to chat about. Cool!
And though it was New Year’s Eve, we went to bed early—about 1130—and just barely heard any New Year’s noise. About 0130 I was startled awake by a loud BANG in the house. Labashi was completely out of it and didn’t stir. Fortunately that turned out to be a suction-cup-attached mirror which had fallen down in the bathtub and it wasn’t long (once by heartbeat returned to normal) till I returned to zee-land.
---------------------------------------------
Saturday, 30 December –
Yesterday I received my latest ‘Rider’ magazine and read an article about two-wheel drive Ural motorcycles. I’ve always been interested in these and this reminded me I’ve wanted to drop in and talk to the owner of the local Ural dealership in Red Lion. While his web site says he’s open on Saturdays 1000-1400 I thought it a 50-50 proposition he’d be on holiday this weekend. But who cares? One of my favorite Starbucks is along the way and it was a nice, sunny, warmer-than-normal day for a motorcycle ride.
Sure enough the Ural shop was closed but I did indeed enjoy reading the Times and sipping a mocha-affogato at Starbucks.
That evening we watched the first five episodes of “Grey’s Anayomy”—Season Two. Well done, Shonda!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 29 December –
This morning I updated the blog and scanned my daily news sources. Lately I’ve taken to scanning CNN, Google News US, Google News Canada, France24, York Daily Record, York Dispatch, and National Park Service Morning Report sometime during the day. I like to check these daily when we’re home but when we’re on the road we go for days without any news. When I connect to the web to upload my blog updates and pick up our email, I quickly scan CNN and Google news but that’s about it. And the interesting thing is I don’t miss the news while on the road. Once we’re back home I tend to get back into the news-scan habit.
Today I rode the motorcycle into York and bought a motion-detector floodlight to replace the wireless motion detector setup we had returned to Lowe’s earlier in the week. I thought that setup was innovative in that it used a wireless, battery-operated detector which could be placed anywhere. We mounted it on a tree and pointed it toward the house and storage barn. The detector communicates up to 100 feet (by radio frequency) to two socket-units which screw into a regular floodlight fixture’s bulb sockets. Then you screw the floodlight bulbs into the other side of the socket-unit. This setup worked fine for a week or so but one day I noticed one of the lights had a delay in turning on. They had both been popping on whenever motion was detected (after dark) but now one would turn on before the other. The more significant problem, though, was the slow-to-turn-on unit would not always turn off when it was supposed to. At first I just removed the bad socket-unit and thought I’d turn it on for another. Then I realized Lowe’s wouldn’t want to do that from a paperwork perspective—they’d want the entire set. So I removed the set and boxed them up with the manual and receipt and Labashi was kind enough to take it back on one of her trips to town. This afternoon I spent quite a while at Lowe’s checking out the various hard-wired motion detector units and found one to replace our existing floodlight unit. This one was only a little more than half the cost of the wireless setup ($30 vs $50) and has two motion sensors, giving it a 240-degree field of view.
Back home I took down the old floodlight and saw I had a problem. The old one was not mounted on a box. The wires just go in a hole in the siding. That in itself is no big deal but we had just recently dry-walled the inside. Fortunately, we had used drywall screws and had not yet done the taping and mudding; all I had to do was take down the drywall panel. Installation was a snap from there. The new motion detector is an improvement over the old one in that it’s wider-than-normal view ‘looks’ along the side of the building and catches a small area that was in a blind spot for the other one. It also matches the characteristics of the coach-light motion sensor out front. Now both lights have the same after-motion light delays and also allow us to use the lights normally, i.e., we can turn them on from inside the house by simply turning the always-on light switch off and then back on within a second.
I also spent a half-hour finishing off the trenching at the southwest corner of the house and for a short distance along the front of the house. Fortunately, these trenched areas are not visible from the road due to landscaping.
That evening we finished Season One of “Grey’s Anatomy” and viewed the extra features. So, McDreamy neglected to mention his secret, eh? We particularly enjoyed meeting creator Shonda Rhimes and learning about ‘Shondaland’.
(this post covers 29-31 December)
-----------------------------------------------
Sunday, 31 December-
Today we went to Chambersburg to visit our Maine buddy, Red Retriever. For the last two winters she has been living in Chambersburg for the winter. When we last visited her in Maine last October we introduced her to geocaching so it was natural we’d do some geocaching today. We first had an excellent burger at the new Fuddrucker’s, then hit the “See Our What??” cache west of town. This one took us to a mini-golf course and deer enclosure behind a restaurant. We walked the perimeter trail and enjoyed seeing the deer (including a big albino buck) and two talkative turkeys. Then we celebrated with an ice cream cone at the restaurant. Light rain started as we left the restaurant so we abandoned plans to hit “Hamilton Hideway”. We instead hit “John Brown’s House” in town which I knew was a short walk. This one is interesting because it uses two little ‘birdhouses’ for the adventure. The birdhouses are locked with combination locks and the combination is provided in the instructions on geocaching.com. The first contains the GPS coordinates to the second but we already know from the instructions that it’s somewhere around the old jail so we did this one without using the GPS. The third geocache of the day was “Dam if you do, Dam if you don’t” at the now-removed Siloam Dam. It was a micro-cache, meaning that there was nothing in it but a tiny little folded-up log page. We even had to bring our own pencil for that one. But it was still fun to try to guess the hiding place.
On the way home Labashi and I listened to podcasts to while away the time. We listened to an “Old Time Radio” podcast of radio programs in 1947 and 1948. These included George Jessel, Dave Garroway, and Hugh Downs in their heyday. The best part was a story from a series called “The Unexpected”. This episode was an old-time-adventure story about a guy who goes hunting in Brazil and runs into his exact duplicate—right down to the same scars--- and sees him eaten by pirhana. He later is mistaken for the dead man and unexpectedly gets a large sum of money. But the unexpected twist is he’s arrested by the FBI for treason; his double was an agent of the Nazis and was hiding in Brazil. This one was particularly hilarious because each time the words “the Unexpected” were said (and there were many), there was a pause, and then a deeply echoing voice yelling ‘the un-ex-PECT-ed” in a very dramatic fashion. I’ve got to hear more of these.
We also sampled a podcast of “The Wildebeat”, which is about hiking and wilderness topics, this one about nutrition.
That evening we watched five more episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” (episodes 6-10 of Season 2). Oh, yeah--- our buddy Red Retriever is a diehard fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” so that gave us something to chat about. Cool!
And though it was New Year’s Eve, we went to bed early—about 1130—and just barely heard any New Year’s noise. About 0130 I was startled awake by a loud BANG in the house. Labashi was completely out of it and didn’t stir. Fortunately that turned out to be a suction-cup-attached mirror which had fallen down in the bathtub and it wasn’t long (once by heartbeat returned to normal) till I returned to zee-land.
---------------------------------------------
Saturday, 30 December –
Yesterday I received my latest ‘Rider’ magazine and read an article about two-wheel drive Ural motorcycles. I’ve always been interested in these and this reminded me I’ve wanted to drop in and talk to the owner of the local Ural dealership in Red Lion. While his web site says he’s open on Saturdays 1000-1400 I thought it a 50-50 proposition he’d be on holiday this weekend. But who cares? One of my favorite Starbucks is along the way and it was a nice, sunny, warmer-than-normal day for a motorcycle ride.
Sure enough the Ural shop was closed but I did indeed enjoy reading the Times and sipping a mocha-affogato at Starbucks.
That evening we watched the first five episodes of “Grey’s Anayomy”—Season Two. Well done, Shonda!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 29 December –
This morning I updated the blog and scanned my daily news sources. Lately I’ve taken to scanning CNN, Google News US, Google News Canada, France24, York Daily Record, York Dispatch, and National Park Service Morning Report sometime during the day. I like to check these daily when we’re home but when we’re on the road we go for days without any news. When I connect to the web to upload my blog updates and pick up our email, I quickly scan CNN and Google news but that’s about it. And the interesting thing is I don’t miss the news while on the road. Once we’re back home I tend to get back into the news-scan habit.
Today I rode the motorcycle into York and bought a motion-detector floodlight to replace the wireless motion detector setup we had returned to Lowe’s earlier in the week. I thought that setup was innovative in that it used a wireless, battery-operated detector which could be placed anywhere. We mounted it on a tree and pointed it toward the house and storage barn. The detector communicates up to 100 feet (by radio frequency) to two socket-units which screw into a regular floodlight fixture’s bulb sockets. Then you screw the floodlight bulbs into the other side of the socket-unit. This setup worked fine for a week or so but one day I noticed one of the lights had a delay in turning on. They had both been popping on whenever motion was detected (after dark) but now one would turn on before the other. The more significant problem, though, was the slow-to-turn-on unit would not always turn off when it was supposed to. At first I just removed the bad socket-unit and thought I’d turn it on for another. Then I realized Lowe’s wouldn’t want to do that from a paperwork perspective—they’d want the entire set. So I removed the set and boxed them up with the manual and receipt and Labashi was kind enough to take it back on one of her trips to town. This afternoon I spent quite a while at Lowe’s checking out the various hard-wired motion detector units and found one to replace our existing floodlight unit. This one was only a little more than half the cost of the wireless setup ($30 vs $50) and has two motion sensors, giving it a 240-degree field of view.
Back home I took down the old floodlight and saw I had a problem. The old one was not mounted on a box. The wires just go in a hole in the siding. That in itself is no big deal but we had just recently dry-walled the inside. Fortunately, we had used drywall screws and had not yet done the taping and mudding; all I had to do was take down the drywall panel. Installation was a snap from there. The new motion detector is an improvement over the old one in that it’s wider-than-normal view ‘looks’ along the side of the building and catches a small area that was in a blind spot for the other one. It also matches the characteristics of the coach-light motion sensor out front. Now both lights have the same after-motion light delays and also allow us to use the lights normally, i.e., we can turn them on from inside the house by simply turning the always-on light switch off and then back on within a second.
I also spent a half-hour finishing off the trenching at the southwest corner of the house and for a short distance along the front of the house. Fortunately, these trenched areas are not visible from the road due to landscaping.
That evening we finished Season One of “Grey’s Anatomy” and viewed the extra features. So, McDreamy neglected to mention his secret, eh? We particularly enjoyed meeting creator Shonda Rhimes and learning about ‘Shondaland’.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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