Pandemic Journal, Day 740

We saw Vietgone tonight at City Lights Theatre. We’d originally planned on going to a matinée, but our schedule changed and tonight’s performance was the only one we’d be able to make. I didn’t know it was Opening Night until the Executive Artistic Director welcomed us just before the show began (I wondered why so many people were dressed up!).

I liked it – it’s funny, irreverent, and touching. There were a couple of moments where it was hard to hear one of the actors rapping because the background music was too loud, but enough came through to drive the story – and this was Opening Night, so there’s time for them to adjust the sound balance before the play closes in a month.

Go see it!

Pandemic Journal, Day 739

I went back to working on the home automation migration today – and made a little progress, despite my best efforts.

I’ve installed Home Assistant and Insteon-MQTT in Docker containers on my Raspberry Pi. Once I have everything operational, that’ll be great – it’s easy to update the software to a more recent version without messing up my configuration. But right now, it’s a pain because it’s not easy to see the actual code that’s running in the container.

Today, I wanted to check to see if the code that I was running had the most recent fixes applied – so I copied it into my configuration directory, which is shared with the actual computer so I can use an editor to look at it.

I didn’t want to keep the extra copy of the code around, so I issued the Unix delete-everything command: rm -rf *. Unfortunately, I was in the wrong directory, and I deleted my entire configuration. Which I hadn’t backed up.

Most of the files in the directory were created by the software, but there was one file that I had had to edit by hand to include information about all of my devices. I wasn’t looking forward to doing that, but I saw no alternative.

I opened my other text editor – it already had one window open, and I was delighted to see that the configuration file was there – so I saved it where it WILL be backed up, then got back to work and got another few automations converted.

Progress!

Pandemic Journal, Day 738

I was Toastmaster of the Day at the Silver Tongued Cats today. During last week’s meeting, our President asked me what I’d like as a theme for today; since it’s our first meeting of Spring, I chose “Spring Cleaning” and put it out of my mind.

Until last night, when I had to assemble and email the agenda, and I suddenly realized I didn’t have anything in mind to say about the topic. And it was late enough that I didn’t want to do any more preparation, so I went to bed.

But not to sleep, at least not well – I kept thinking of things I could talk about if only I had some information. And I didn’t want to get out of bed and do any searching. So I tossed and turned and eventually fell asleep.

This morning, I raced over to the computer as soon as I got up so I could do my research. Did you know that 78% of Americans plan to do spring cleaning this year, up 10% from last year? The American Cleaning Institute does! And Fantastic Cleaning told me that there’s an official Spring Cleaning Week in the UK and that 2-5% of the UK population are compulsive hoarders. They also talked about the Chinese custom of cleaning for the Lunar New Year, and that you’re not supposed to sweep for the first few days of the year to avoid sweeping away good luck.

The meeting went smoothly; I had things to talk about, and we had excellent speakers and evaluators (none of whom talked about cleaning, though our Table Topics Master did ask about various aspects of cleaning). Next time, if I pick a topic out of the air, I think I’ll do a little research before going to bed the night before the meeting!

Cartoon Vectors by Vecteezy

Pandemic Journal, Day 737

When I spend money on insurance, I hope I won’t actually get that money back. Ideally, I’ll never talk to anyone at the insurer – I’ll just send them checks and never have to fight my way through their claims process.

Once in a long while, though, I’ve had an insurance company offer a service that improves my life (and reduces the odds of me having to make a claim). IBM’s Major Medical used to encourage (and pay for) some preventative care, for example.

Last November, our homeowners’ insurer, State Farm, made me an offer I didn’t want to refuse – they offered free electrical system monitoring through Ting to reduce the chances of an electrical fire. The device was free, and they’d pay for three years of monitoring – and if there was a problem, they’d even pay up to $1000 to correct it.

I jumped on the offer – a lot of other people must have done so, too, because I didn’t get the Ting device until today. I plugged it in and it’s “learning” our electrical environment. In the two hours it’s been installed, it’s learned that the line voltage in the house has been as low as 121.5 volts and as high as 123.5. I hope its other learnings are as uninteresting.

This afternoon, we took a walk with the South Bay Striders in South San Jose. The walk started at a park we’ve never visited before – Shady Oaks Park, which is on the Coyote Creek Trail. We did the 5k version of the walk, which was basically an out-and-back from Shady Oaks to the edge of Hellyer County Park. It wasn’t the most interesting walk we’ve done – the 10k version adds the Hellyer Velodrome and some equestrian areas, as well as a walk around Cottonwood Lake. But there were a few wildflowers to be seen, and it was quiet and peaceful for the most part.

Pandemic Journal, Day 736

I didn’t work on home automation at all today; instead, I spent the afternoon at the dentist’s office.

When I went there for a cleaning last week, the dentist noticed that the implant I’d had done last year was a little loose, so she had me come in today to get it fixed. She thought that she’d have to tighten the screw, which shouldn’t be necessary but happens occasionally. That wasn’t the problem, though – the crown had “de-bonded” and has to be replaced.

So she removed it and did a new scan of my mouth; then she put in a “healing cap” to cover the hole until the new crown arrives. Fortunately, the crown is still under warranty!

We did manage to take a walk this morning on the Los Gatos Trail in Campbell and enjoyed seeing the birds.

And it’s a good thing we walked early, because today’s high was well over 80 degrees – spring has sprung!