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Good Morning Blue
Sun and 21 this morning. 20s all day is the forecast.
Granny has everything ready for tomorrow. We always look forward to a great meal that means eating too much, even though I try not too.
No news from the train store except I will be going there Friday morn to help for awhile, should be home by nap time though...
S.J.
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Morning all. Raining and raining. Warmed up though. Temps to drop later as rain ends. Being lazy today.
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Good morning all, it took a while to get today's forecast since the Weather Channel app wanted to update, then it wouldn't run. It took a while, but it's now working. No surprises, temps are going to be about normal for the rest of the week. Plenty of sunshine, no rain.
Went shopping early this morning. Walmart has arrows all over their floors, I'm guessing that's to keep everyone going all one-way. We're not at all interested, we stay as far away from any store from now until at least sometime next week. I cringe at the thought of standing in line for hours to get in the store, then an hour or so in line again to check out. Not to mention parking about a half-mile away. The news is showing some people that have been camping out at stores since last week..... Man, get a life.... ![35 35](https://bigbluetrains.com/images/smilies/extra/35.gif) I'm not putting anyone down, but is it worth one week of your life and missing Thanksgiving with your family, really worth saving $50 on a TV set, or getting the latest toy? Cabela's is offering the first 600 people in line, free merchandise worth around $9,000 total. That comes to an average of around $15 per person. Some will get more, most will get less, but I'll bet there's already a bunch waiting in line there. We're not rich my any stretch of the imagination, and I look for bargains anywhere I can, but I do value my time a bit more than a few others, but I guess it's the thrill of the chase that keeps them going. All the best to those who are waiting in line, me, I'm looking forward to a hot turkey dinner.
Don (ezdays) Day
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Just ate diner (cheesy hamburger helper like stuff), turkey is prepped and stuffing is in process(regular and cornbread stuffing) tomorrow will have a mincemeat pie and corn with lima beans as well.
Cold snowy and some icy spots here and there. Went to three stores to find sage rub as sage powder does not work well.
Have been busy trying to keep up with the plumbing at parents house fixed toilet but now kitchen faucet is leaking around the ball valve thingy may just need some new washers.
Other stuff (hobbies) are kinda on the shelf for the moment. Truck is fixed but now mom's car now has a service engine soon light and has a bit of shake when driving and sisters car oil light is on been on her case about keeping oil changed regularly.
Some collector club cars are starting to show up.
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Well yesterday I had to get a new blood glucose meter as strips for my old one (Bayer Contour) are no longer covered. So now I have an Accu-Chek Aviva. I don't particularly like it. Not like I had a choice. It's all the insurance would cover. It doesn't rest in my hand very well and it's hard to get a single strip out of the container. I usually end up with two or three. The meter came with just the meter and the pouch, nothing else. That little bit cost thirty bucks. It didn't include a lancet either. I'm using the one from my old meter. The meter isn't covered by the insurance. However the lancets tips and the strips are. Cost me just three bucks on the copay for a total of thirty-three bucks.
No progress on Oliver's adventure today. I did however keep myself busy by tearing down two non-op apple disk drives and using the good parts to build one good disk drive. I then tested it on my mothers old IIe. It works great! In the process I found out that the Apple program I have that tells you how much memory your computer has is a fake. I ran it on my mothers old computer and it said that computer has 128k RAM. That's impossible as the add-on memory card was out of it. It has 64k RAM. I cross checked it on my //e, first with the RAM card in:128k RAM, then with the RAM card out: 128k RAM. I listed the program and traced through it and found that the part that computes the amount of RAM had been circumvented by a subroutine that reports a static number (512 which is then divided by 4 to list 128) instead of the actual number. I have another utility that accurately counts up the RAM but it's in my ProDOS utilities. I have to scan and list all the assignments for slots 1-7 and the aux slot. The amount of RAM is listed at the bottom of the list.
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Did a little work on my //e today. It has three drive cards in it. Slots 5, 6 and 7. Slot 7 is my master boot drive, slot 6 I use for my two primary program drives and slot 5 runs two data drives. There's only one slight problem. The drive cables connected to these cards push against the card next to them and this causes the cards to lean. The card in the middle stands up near straight whilst the cards to either side lean outward kinda like a paper fan. This puts pressure on the on the contacts on the card slots and it also pushes the card in slot 5 over against a CP/M co-processor in slot 4. That co-processor tends to run on the hot side and I don't want the drive card near it. I thought about tape but that's temporary and can be messy. If I have to pull a card out for any reason it means removing the tape and having to redo it all. Nope. Too messy. Then I thought about all these old insulin syringes I have. Yeah. That's the ticket. My redneck mind went to work and before long I had a piece of a syringe tube that had three notches in it. One notch for each card. Now the cards stand up straight. You can see the result below. The card with the red light on it is the co-processor I mentioned.
Remember the fake memory reporting program I mentioned? I decided to have a little fun with it and changed the static number. I now shows that my computer has 1024k (1mb) of RAM.
My family's Thanksgiving is at my sisters place tomorrow. I won't be there. For one it's hard for me to get up there. For two it's darn near impossible for me to get up the steps with any degree of safety. So I'll remain here tomorrow and enjoy what's brought back.
Well it's time for me to go. I'll see y'all tomorrow. Y'all have a fantastic Thanksgiving!
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Good Thanksgiving morning. Hope all have a great day. Thanks for the Hobo Camp buddies. From up north, down south in LA, out west, Canada and over the pond. Enjoy. Cold here but sunny.
TCA 05-58541 American Legion NRA Retired Mayor of Rolesville NC
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Good morning, a rather cool Thanksgiving morning here. It's almost 8:30 and we're still in the mid-40's. Not bad compared to a lot of folks in other parts of the country. I hope anyone who is traveling gets to where they're going safely. We watched "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" last night. A funny movie, but it is a reminder of how snow can affect many people trying to get to somewhere else. As I remember, snow is nice to see this time of the year, but it's no fun when you are traveling by....Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving Day all.
Don (ezdays) Day
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Good morning. It's 33° with 89% humidity. The high will be 52° and feel like 59°.
Got up this morning at 5am and came into the office/computer room and turned the heater on low and went back to bed for a while. It was 28° then. The low tonight will be the same and Friday night will be 32°. The lows for the weekend and coming week will be above 40° with a little rain here and there. Well enough about the weather.
I should be able to get some work done on Oliver's train adventure. The walkway through the old style passenger car has it's share of dangers for him and I'm going to put some dangerous elements into some of the seating compartments. If I don't enjoy my Thanksgiving he could have a really bad time in a couple of those compartments.
I'm going to be keeping an eye on my little redneck contraption that keeps the drive cards in my //e standing straight. It works well enough when the system is cold. I hope it'll continue to stay in place when things heat up a bit.
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Greetings, gang.
Thanksgiving morning dawned clear and cold with an overnight low of 16. Right now it's 23 with an anticipated high of 28.
When wife is ready we will be leaving for our son's mother-in-law's house for the traditional dinner. There should be about 18-20 people. Could be a fun day.
All stay safe.
Tom
Life is simple - Eat, Drink, Play with trains
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Good morning all. Happy thanksgiving.
Cold but no snow today.
Kodak all in one printer giving me fits with win 8, downloaded updated driver but still get the occasional false error, rebooting the printer seems to fix the problem. I am thinking it may be a USB communication problem.
Not much planned for the day.
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OK, I have two of the seating compartments of the old passenger car programed so far. In the first compartment (#7) there's a chance Oliver could get robbed, attacked or killed. Or all three! It depends on the variables and where he searches. In the second compartment (#6) he might find what was taken from him in #7. Of course there's also the chance he could get killed or kicked out of the compartment! As I said, it's a bunch of criminals on the train. I also programmed the food service area. Oliver will be all right provided he doesn't find the troll that's in one of the cabinets. If that happens he won't be in any condition to tell the tale. Looks like there's some action going on here. Still got nine more compartments to program.
My niece came over and told me that I will be going to my sisters place for Thanksgiving dinner! They will make sure that I get there.
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Running Bear Wrote:Well yesterday I had to get a new blood glucose meter as strips for my old one (Bayer Contour) are no longer covered. So now I have an Accu-Chek Aviva. I don't particularly like it. Not like I had a choice. It's all the insurance would cover. It doesn't rest in my hand very well and it's hard to get a single strip out of the container.
RB, just FYI, Consumer Report Magazine rates the Accu-check Aviva higher than the Bayer Contour for accuracy and repeatability. It may be worth the extra fooling around. I don't know about Medicaid, but Medicare picks up the tab for all supplies, meters, lancets and strips.
Don (ezdays) Day
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ezdays Wrote:RB, just FYI, Consumer Report Magazine rates the Accu-check Aviva higher than the Bayer Contour for accuracy and repeatability. It may be worth the extra fooling around. I don't know about Medicaid, but Medicare picks up the tab for all supplies, meters, lancets and strips. Yeah, I got the Accuchek Aviva. Not like I had a choice. Medicaid covers the lancets and strips. They don't cover the meter. That came out of my pocket. The meter was $29.93. Copay on the strips and lancets came to $5 ($3 and $2) for total $34.93 plus tax. I don't know about the accuracy claim. I took five test readings and it gave me five different readings within fifty points.
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Got up to my sisters place after all. It was a group effort. Her home is in no way ADA compliant. My sister brought her car down into my nieces driveway. Using my walker I had to get from my fathers place to my nieces driveway. That meant hopping the steps in front of my fathers place. They're low so that wasn't too hard. Then it was up the driveway to my sisters car. An easy ride up the hill to her house. Then by walker from the car to her front steps. Now this meant sitting the bottom step and pushing myself up backward to the top step then using the porch rail to pull myself upright. Then over to the door where there's another two steps. I literally had to get down on all fours for that to get into the house. Once inside I found a comfortable seat at the table and stayed there until it was time to leave. Getting back to my fathers place was easier because there was only one step to go up, not eight. Boy! What an upper body workout! One of my nephews friends asked me how strong my left leg was now. I simply told him not to get where I could kick him. How strong are my arms getting? I can lift two Apple IIe computers at once, one gripped in either hand. They have steel frames and they are quite heavy.
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