Taughannock 10-25-26
06:14 Tuesday, 27 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 37.76°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 3.87mphWords: 873
Mitzi and I went to Taughannock on Sunday to hike the gorge. It's almost a form of mental health therapy. I've been preoccupied by HVAC issues, and it was making me unhappy.
I took along the little OM System PEN and the 12-50mm kit zoom from the original E-M5, thinking I might see a bug and it has a nifty close-focus setting.
It was a good walk. Chilly, in the low 40s in the shade of the gorge. Few people. And so I spent some time mindfully practicing gratitude that we live in a place like this, where this is available to us after a short drive.
I called the HVAC company yesterday to discuss their quote, but the call went to voicemail and they didn't call me back. We've also reached out to some other companies for quotes. On a whim, I asked Siri what the cost breakdown should be on residential HVAC new construction installations. With some qualifications, it suggested that an average install should be roughly 60% equipment, 30% labor and 10% "other."
Our quote has the labor at twice the equipment cost.
In somewhat better news, it turns out that if military retirees with Tricare for Life prescription drug coverage enroll in a Medicare Part D program, they can then take advantage of the Bridge program for $50 GLP-1 medications, if they are otherwise medically eligible, and I am.
The bottom-tier plan in my region is about $40 a month, so $480 for the year, versus $400-$500 a month for Zepbound via Lilly's discount program. Didn't need to "do the math." It's a no-brainer. Theoretically, since I have "creditable coverage" now, I could enroll for this year, but the enrollment form wants you to specify the circumstances for enrolling in the 2026 plan year, and none of the choices match my circumstances. Rather than try to figure out that mess, I just enrolled for 2027 with no difficulty.
Mitzi's leaving tomorrow for a few days in DC. Her son-in-law has an art exhibition that's opening and she wants to be there for him. I'm staying here to look after the house(s). If we're lucky, we may get the roofing started this week.
That means I can take over the table again, so I'll probably run down to the storage unit and pick up the box that I packed up the new IIe in and bring it up here to play with. I bought a new peripheral card I want to check out.
In the meantime, I've been playing with an Apple IIc and a IIc Plus off and on. The IIc Plus has a MegaFlash internal drive in it, which gives me up to eight 32MB internal HD images. As configured at purchase, it boots into A2Desktop, which is a GUI for 8-bit Apples. It's a pretty competent file manager with some neat features, but I'm accustomed to just working from ProDOS BASIC (an OS command layer for the Applesoft BASIC environment). You can't seem to specify the drive image to boot without disabling the drives that precede your desired image in the drive list. So I basically just slicked the drive image, installed what I wanted, and then re-installed A2Desktop on a higher image.
I bought a UniDisk 5.25" drive from eBay and it arrived the other day. I chose one that was inexpensive. It was filthy, untested, and it included an interesting bonus. The Apple II was so popular in schools, Apple had some difficulty making schools transition to Macs. So they made an Apple II on a card that could be inserted in the Processor Direct Slot in a Macintosh LC (low cost). To use it with a 5.25" floppy drive and a joystick, Apple created a cable that shipped with the card. Today that cable goes for around $150 for an original.
Now, I don't have a Mac LC, nor do I have a IIe card, which often sell for more than an LC itself, but if I ever do, I've already got the cable. Winning!
"Winning?"
Moving on...
The UniDisk 5.25" was necessary because my IIc external 5.25" drive is in storage somewhere, and I couldn't retrieve it. Those go for a lot more money than the more pedestrian UniDisk, though they're mechanically and electronically identical.
The drive cleaned up very nicely and it works perfectly, I didn't even have to adjust the drive speed. The reliability of these 5.25" disk drives is pretty remarkable. It allows me to use 5.25" floppies with the IIc Plus (built-in 3.5" drive), and it makes it much more convenient to manage 5.25" floppies with two drives on the regular IIc.
I played some Star Fleet 1 on the IIc Plus over the weekend. Gameplay is a bit faster, but it's a turn-based game, so speed doesn't really matter and most of your time is spent figuring out what you want to do rather than waiting on the computer. But the text-based photon torpedo animations run a bit quicker, likewise navigation and transit between sectors.
And that's probably enough about all that.
More HVAC fun and games today.
But the beat goes on...
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