Thursday, October 28, 2010

The condo on the southeast corner of Queen and Pape is coming along. This pic is from a couple weeks ago:



I finished the flagstone around the car at the start of October. I didn't leave much room to actually park the car, there's only about eight inches on each side of the wheels. I'm making a 6-point turn every time I park (I always reverse in). I want to put little curbs (3"x5"x8' ties), which will leave even less room. At some point next spring I think I will re-layout the passenger side, but make it 16" wide (it's about 24" now). It will depend on how good I get at backing in over the winter.

Hockey started up again, and I managed to pull a back muscle on the last shift of the game a couple weeks ago. Last week was a bye and I skipped tonight's game, but I'll be back next week.

We finally lost a game on Sunday Ultimate last week. We were down 6-1, then came back to tie it at 11-11, but eventually lost 14-12. We dropped too many passes that we normally catch.

We lost the championship on Tuesday (a few days after I pulled my back). We had two full lines of guys. The other line had a 10-minute point, and then a 15-minute point, which used up most of the clock (we have the field for 55 minutes, but by the time people warm up, we play for about 45 minutes). We ended up losing 8-6. Craig and I were only on the field for maybe 10 minutes. I much prefer having fewer players (in fact no subs for outdoors), but then it's more work for Trishia as captain to find subs for the games that someone can't make it. I can't wait until indoors starts, because we'll be playing speed point and get much more exercise.

I did more research on home automation. I think I'm going to buy an Arduino. The first application will be an outdoor thermometer, ideally hooked up to my iPhone. This will mean setting up the communication between the external thermometer to the Arduino, hooking that up to the LAN, and then writing an iPhone app to display the temperature. If that all works, then I can move to more complicated stuff like running the furnace. Eventualy it would be cool if I can connect the thermostat to my alarm clock, so that the house warms up depending on what time I'm waking up the next day. Anyways that's my little winter project.

Well I should go start dinner. We're having asparagus stuffed chicken with white wine shallot sauce, with new potatoes. Mmmm good.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

I had plans to set the flagstone today but it's drizzling right now so I'm waiting for the afternoon. It's easier to level out the limestone screening when it's dry.

So the next home automation that I'm looking at is hooking up the thermostat, so that it can be controlled remotely. I surfed briefly and there's a lot more options today than there were a couple years ago. There's three components: temperature sensor, electromechanical controller, and a console. The options I looked at all include a fancy console, which I prefer that they didn't. I already have a remote console (also called an iPhone), so all I really need is the temperature sensor(s), and the controller (which ideally can be separate devices, communicating over the LAN). Anyways I'm going to search a bit more to see if these exist.

(There's a pretty cool page on a "killer app for IPv6", which I think only Lloyd may find funny).

There was finally some more construction activity on the condo on the southeast corner of Queen and Pape. Looks like they just poured some more cement, but at least the project's not completely stopped.

The little bugs that come around every fall have been back for a week. It makes it a pain to barbecue, which we use about three times a week. We try to just use the front door (for some reason the bugs only fly in from the back door), which for barbecuing means we're carrying our food around the alley to the back to cook, and then back around to the front. It's supposed to go down to 3C overnight this weekend, so maybe that will kill them off. I think though that it needs to drop to freezing to get rid of them.

It was a nice day yesterday so I took the afternoon off and went golfing with Craig at Lakeview. My short game was okay but not great, and I ended up with a 99. I've stopped using my driver (hitting with my hybrid off the tee) and I've been much more consistent in getting to the green. So now my score just depends on my chipping and putting.

A couple rivets had popped out of the bottom of my skates (which hold the blade to the boot), so I left them at the pro shop at the arena last week. Unfortunately the pro shop didn't work on them, so when I showed up on Thursday to pick them up before the game, they were still sitting there, and I missed the game. I'm going to give the arena a call on Monday to complain.

Tonight's Helen's and Nick's 40th birthday party. Helen plays on my Ultimate teams, and her and Nick (and their kids Sarah and Noah) live just up in Riverdale, about a 10 minute walk from us. It should be fun.

Anyways it looks like it may have stopped drizzling outside.