Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 275

Today got off to a good start – I got two notifications from UPS:

  • my new Mac mini had finally departed from Hong Kong (where it had spent three days lazing about)
  • Diane’s new MacBook Air was going to be delivered today

The doorbell rang at 10:30; it was the UPS driver with Diane’s computer, and we spent much of the day migrating the data and apps from her old computer to the new one and cleaning up the small problems that happened along the way (BackBlaze is still confused). It is significantly faster than her old laptop, and, as advertised, silent.

Lunch was another new recipe from the Merc, Soy, Balsamic, and Sriracha Chicken Stir-Fry, which called for blanching the vegetables and meat, something I’d never done before. The preparation was fairly easy, and the results were quite tasty, but while I was cleaning up afterwards, the sink started to back up. Running the garbage disposer didn’t help much – in fact, the water started backing up into the other basin in the sink.

I went online and found instructions on how to clear a blocked disposer, but that wasn’t the problem. I considered trying to take off the trap under the sink to see if I could fix it – and then I had a sudden bout of sanity and called our plumber instead. He asked me to go outside and see if I could find a cleanout (I couldn’t), but I happened to look in the utility sink in the garage and saw that it was nearly filled with dirty water.

Clearly, something is clogged up downstream of the kitchen sink – the plumber will be paying us a visit soon.

But that wasn’t even the most distressing thing that happened today – one of our trivia friends has tested positive for COVID-19, thanks to a co-worker who didn’t follow anything approaching reasonable mask practices, coughed all over the office kitchen, and was carrying the virus. So far, she says she’s feeling OK, and we hope it continues that way.

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 274

Today marked my third visit to the ophthalmologist this year – happily, this was a planned visit for a refraction, not an emergency trip. He didn’t even dilate my eyes, which made for a much more pleasant experience for the rest of the day. My prescription changed more than usual in the past year – even the astigmatism correction changed – but I didn’t want to wait around for the optician, so I’ll have to go back or try somewhere else. I hear good things about Costco Optical, but I’m not sure I want to be in a Costco for the next few months!

This afternoon, we walked to Starbucks for our annual December mochas; I ordered in advance on the app, of course, but we had to wait ten minutes after the “promised” time to receive the drinks. They weren’t terribly impressive, nor very hot – I could have gone back to complain, but I didn’t bother. Buying the two mochas brought my Starbucks card down below the $10 level that qualifies me to have the balance refunded, but to do so online requires having the account number and the PIN – I can get the account number from the Starbucks app, but the PIN is on the original card, which is long gone. I’m sure I’ll visit a Starbucks once we start traveling again, so I guess I’ll leave it alone for now.

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 273

We finished watching The Queen’s Gambit this evening – I highly recommend it.

I’ve started exporting my selected and cleaned-up photos from Lightroom back to Apple Photos, and all seemed to go well until I realized that many of the photos had lost their GPS information in the process. After doing some research, I found this post which explained the problem – I had marked the area around our house as “private” in Lightroom; that tells Lightroom to delete the GPS information for any photo in that area when it exports it. Perfect for photos I plan to put on Facebook or my blog, not so good for my own copies!

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 272

A couple of weeks ago, the “Sound Advice” column in the Merc mentioned a sale on a ZVOX Dialogue-Clarifying Sound Bar. This wasn’t the first time the column has touted a ZVOX speaker or headphone, but this was the first time we bit. The dialog in Ted Lasso was sufficiently muddy and accented to be hard to understand with our normal audio system – we actually resorted to subtitles for a couple of episodes – and there have been other programs where we’d have liked clearer voices.

The speaker is intended as a replacement for your existing audio, not an addition; it connects up to the TV through an optical cable, and the instructions tell you to turn off the TV speakers. We haven’t used our TV’s speakers in many years – all of our program sources go through our Denon AVR-2112CI receiver, with the audio coming from the receiver and the video going to the TV, and I didn’t want to lose that option.

It took a little while, but I eventually found the option on the Denon to tell it to send the audio on the HDMI cable to the TV, and then the ZVOX speaker picked up the signal – and indeed, voices are clearer. It seems like the ZVOX punches up the “voice range” (300-3000 Hz) and cuts the bass and treble. It probably does other processing, too – the audio sounds a bit funky, but it’s definitely easier to understand voices.

Switching between the two audio paths was a pain – I had to go into the menu on the receiver, then pick System Setup/HDMI Setup/HDMI Audio Out – many keystrokes required on the remote. Every time.

But then I realized I had a better solution; my home automation solution, Indigo, supports user-written plugins, and someone going by the handle of “Perry the Cynic” had written a plugin to support Denon receivers. And that plugin lets you send arbitrary commands to the receiver. A little more research led me to a document with all of the possible commands, which let me figure out how to tell the receiver to switch the audio output between the TV and the receiver. And I was even able to set things up so that I can tell my Amazon Echo to “turn ZVOX off” (or on) to switch the audio. And I didn’t have to write a single line of code to do it.

Now I want to see if I can get a similar effect to the one produced by the ZVOX by fiddling with the graphic equalizer on the receiver; it would be nice to have one fewer box around.

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 271

Most years, the Shir Hadash Men’s Club has a Latke Dinner and Comedy Film Night; each attendee is asked to bring 8 or so latkes so that people can try different ones. I’ve always taken the easy way out and brought Trader Joe’s latkes – they get eaten, but if we were voting on “best latke”, they’d finish in the middle of the pack.

Tonight, though, we made latkes from scratch, using a recipe from Wise Sons Deli. It was my idea, so I did the grating and frying; Diane put the rest of the recipe together. We were afraid that the latkes wouldn’t be enough of a meal, so we also had the rest of the Fast Tandoori Chicken from Thursday.

It was messy, but tasty. I was happy that the oil didn’t spatter all over when I put the batter in the cast iron pan. And it was a good thing that we had the chicken, too.

Tomorrow will be healthier, but this was fun!