Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 148

When we lived in South Florida, Eckerd Drugs was our go-to drugstore. They were convenient, friendly, well-stocked, and not too expensive, at least not for sundries, which is mostly what we bought there. One of the things we bought there, and brought with us to California nearly 36 years ago, was a pumice stone.

I’ve always been amused by the old-fashioned look of the box and the claim: “when soap fails…pumice prevails”.

Sadly, both Eckart Drugs and Requa Mfg. Co. have vanished, but the pumice stone still works as well as ever.t all

I spent most of this afternoon working on the alarm interface to the Raspberry Pi; I found problems with my wiring and fixed them, but that didn’t solve my problem. In fact, things got worse – the Raspberry Pi is no longer able to talk to the AD2PI at all. So I decided to take the Raspberry Pi out of its case so I could make absolutely sure that I was properly mounting the AD2PI to the Pi.

One end of the Pi released from the mounting pins very easily; the other end didn’t want to move. I kept tugging and nothing happened; I tried flexing the case, but nothing happened. I tried to put the Pi back onto the mounting pins – no dice. I swore – it made me feel better, but did nothing to solve the problem. Even a screwdriver wasn’t helpful.

Finally, I found a posting that suggested using spudgers to get just enough leverage to release the board, and that worked!

When all else fails, spudgers prevail!