Another Path
Current Wx: Temp: 75.04°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 7.85mphWords: 374
Took along the little E-PM1 on my walk this morning, this was edited in Photos.
Building a new house occupies a lot of my attention. Including in the wee hours of the morning when I should be sleeping.
Saw the doc the other day. I really like her, I was outlining some courses of action and she said, "This isn't the navy, Mr. Rogers. We don't have to plan for every contingency."
Habits of thought.
We talked about our dreams. I mentioned I dream about the navy a lot, she said she dreams about the army a lot. When she was in med school, she dreamed about being recalled to active duty, and I said, "Oh, no!"
"No," she said, "they were happy dreams because I hated med school."
Anyway, she's smart, funny and going to get me on the tirzepatide GLP-1.
Took the sleep test Thursday night. Probably failed it. Who can sleep with all that crap hanging off of them?
Saw the ophthalmologist yesterday. One eye is a candidate for cataract surgery, the other eye is less so. Wanted to know what my complaint was, and I told him about night driving and glare. Seems at least some of my problem is my "map dot dystrophy" in my left eye, and cataract surgery won't fix that. He said I should be using eye drops at least four times a day, maybe more frequently. Apparently I have "dry eyes." (Which is why they water so much?)
At least the new glasses help a bit. We're going to meet again in six weeks, see how I'm doing with eye drops.
They started landing floor trusses yesterday, then got rained out. Nothing going on today, more rain, though it's intermittent.
Got some more data on the HVAC design. Where we're going to put all this ductwork is a mystery to me. If you ever look at those photos from the interior of the International Space Station, you see a lot of duct lines. Same thing. Put humans in a sealed box without ventilation and bad things happen.
At some point it stops being exciting and interesting and becomes a source of stress and anxiety.
I am past that point.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailFramed
Current Wx: Temp: 79.59°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 7.11mphWords: 240
Much progress yesterday and today. Builder Brad and Builder Bob were on-site with Bob's daughter and grandson, and Brad's right-hand-man Derrick to frame up the interior walls of the walk-out basement.
It looks different IRL than it does on paper. That long wall of doors for one thing. But it's a basement, it's not the main living space, so we'll get over it.
Met with Energy Vanguard yesterday to discuss details of the HVAC design. If there's one piece of advice I'd give to anyone building a custom home today, figure out how you want to heat and cool your house, and design the house around that system. I'm pretty confident we'll make this work, but there are a lot of ducts and pipes competing for the same space in the trusses.
I had my follow-up with the doc today. She's agreed to prescribe tirzepatide under the Medicare bridge program. That process is rather needlessly complicated, but it has begun. I also brought home a sleep study kit to learn if I have sleep apnea. I don't think so, but maybe? She said my hemoglobin was high, which can be a sign of sleep apnea. We shall see.
Weather permitting, tomorrow the crew will be back to set the floor trusses, and after that the sub-flooring. Then Brad can begin stacking ICF blocks for the main floor.
The beat, and the building, goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailBack to the Future
08:49 Wednesday, 5 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 68.99°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 6.26mph
Words: 643
Kanasfest, the annual get-together of Apple II enthusiasts, was a couple of weeks ago, so I've been seeing various reports here and there. Somehow, somewhere, I learned of a new product for the Apple IIc, the MegaFlash for Apple //c. The idea is to have four mass-storage devices, virtual hard drives, stored internally. It also offers some modifications to the Apple IIc ROM that correct a couple of bugs in Applesoft, a 400K RAM disk, and a routine that intercepts Applesoft floating point routines and performs them in the onboard Raspberry Pi Pico, in effect a sort of math-coprocessor.
Naturally, I ordered one.
It came in a while ago, and I've been preoccupied with house and health, so I didn't try to install it. Yesterday I decided I needed a break from house stuff and broke out my IIc to install it.
To make a long story short, it works! It has a wifi interface and you can connect it to your local wifi network, and it'll get the date and time from a network time server, then it provides that to ProDOS as if you had a clock card installed. It boots into a program called Apple II DeskTop, which is a GUI interface to ProDOS. I played around with it for a bit, and while it's definitely slow, it's usable.
I had some issues with my internal disk drive and to rule out any problems with the machine itself, I reverted back to the stock configuration and verified the drive worked fine and the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) disk interface was working. It may have been an issue with the BMOW Floppy Emu mods I installed, so I removed those as well.
In reinstalling the MegaFlash, I bent one of the pins on the riser socket for the cpu and broke the pin when trying to straighten it. Bummer.
Well, the huge advantage with this device is that you can have an enormous amount of software available internally. Which makes working with the IIc in confined quarters, like I have here, much easier and more entertaining. The Applesoft floating point acceleration is a nice bonus since I like playing around with BASIC and graphing programs.
When I ordered the MegaFlash for the IIc, they didn't have one for the IIc Plus in stock. When I checked yesterday, they did, so I ordered one of those as well. I also emailed Joe to see if he could throw another riser socket in the package, and he replied promptly and said it would be no problem.
So I'll be installing both boards when the IIc Plus version arrives. I'll probably mostly use the IIc Plus, since it runs at 4MHz and everything, except games, is a lot snappier.
I'm really looking forward to getting this house done, so I can get my two Apple //e computers set up. I've got another IIc in storage. I hadn't intended to buy another IIc, I thought I was buying an external disk drive for the IIc, but it came with the computer too! Unfortunately, the seller didn't package it well and the external drive did a number on the keyboard, breaking a number of keys and the drive door latch. I've since replaced all the keys but the space bar, since that seems to be unobtainium. The issue with the space bar is the stabilizer wire, and the two little clips that hold it in place.
It dawned on me the other day that those plastic clips are also present on all the other stabilized keys, like the Shift key, which isn't unobtainium. The challenge is those clips are glued to the bottom of the key cap, so I'll have to carefully razor-knife them off, then glue them to the space bar.
Anyway, keepin' me off the streets!
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailLooking Up
08:12 Wednesday, 5 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 65.91°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 5.79mphWords: 590
I've been deleting images from Photos trying to recover some disk space. That inevitably brings to mind various cameras I've owned and enjoyed. For reasons that are unclear to me, I've always just enjoyed the jpeg renderings from the 12MP Panasonic CMOS sensor Olympus used in several cameras, including the early Pens, the E-620, the E-30 and the E-5.
I had a number of those bodies, and sold all of them. Later, just because I liked that sensor and jpeg engine combination, I bought a used E-PM1 with a broken image stabilizer. I took it out yesterday and played around with it a bit. This image was taken with it this morning before my walk. I debated bringing along with me, deciding not to and thinking I'd probably regret it.
I did. Saw what I think would have been a very nice shot, shook my head and kept moving.
It's an unremarkable photo in most ways. If you pixel-peeped you'd see noise, and it really isn't a good example of what I like about that sensor, but I wanted to post a pic today, so this is it.
We're making progress on the house. Max the electrician came by yesterday and we discussed all the issues regarding bringing utility power to the house. It's probably going to be about $10K-$15K, which bites, but we really don't have a more affordable option. We talked about laying the conduit for the garage at the same time so we can do all the digging at one time. We'll put conduit in for the fiber at the same time as well, so all the have to do is pull it through conduit where it'll be at least 2' below grade and we're less likely to stick a shovel through it at some time in the future.
Energy Vanguard has completed their design for the HVAC system. We'll have a meeting to discuss it, and then I'll have to start shopping it around to get a quote or two.
We ordered windows on Monday. We couldn't get a price on the front door because it's not in stock at the local warehouse, but a comparable one is north of $8K, for a door! It is an 8-foot door, so there's that, but still.
Brad is working on the basement interior framing for the load-bearing walls. Once those are up we can set the floor trusses and get the subfloor down so he can start setting blocks for the main floor.
Mitzi and I were in the basement yesterday afternoon and noticed something that Brad had mentioned. The ICF is white and it reflects the heat inside the basement, kind of turning it into an oven. It's going to be a bit warm today, although not hot by any means. Working in that basement makes it feel otherwise.
Tomorrow I go see the doc to go over my bloodwork and talk about next steps. I'll be picking up a home sleep study kit to see if I have sleep apnea. I don't think I do, but we'll see.
Friday I have my first appointment to begin the process of removing my cataracts. I feel like I'm starting a "service life extension program," something the Navy used to do with its carriers. Hopefully get on a GLP-1 and drop 40-50 pounds, get my vision cleared up. Start working out on the regular.
If I take care of myself, I might live long enough to enjoy this place!
✍️ Reply by emailBreathing
14:43 Sunday, 2 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 69.35°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 16.28mph
Words: 512
Slowly beginning to get back in the groove after the departure of our guests. I was exhausted Friday and Saturday, and didn't sleep well last night, but today I've been able to make some progress on getting things back in order around here.
Loren offers a keen bit of insight on Apple's Upgrade program. Pay attention, or pay someone else!
I ordered a new Magic Mouse yesterday when my wrist started aching as I was using the track pad. Maybe varying the way I interact with the machine will reduce the risk of repetitive stress injury. (I should probably also practice more keyboard shortcuts.)
Michael offers some worthwhile relationship advice in case there are any single people reading the marmot. Intentionally oriented toward the younger demographic.
Another Mike offers a link to a story about modernity's layers of technical debt and problems begetting problems. Have to get to the root causes, and they are deep.
The slab got poured on Friday. Brad met with a friend to go over the plans and come up with a plan for framing the load-bearing walls so we can set the floor trusses.
I woke up at about 2:00 am, thinking about the plumbing the ducting and worrying how they might be competing for the same space. I really think anyone considering building a custom home needs to decide how they want to do their HVAC first. Ducts tend to be larger than pipes, which is why a hydronic system is often a big advantage. Hydronic piping is smaller than drain piping, and it's flexible, so it's relatively easy to route.
We'll figure it out, but it does cause a certain amount of anxiety and consternation.
The low-voltage lighting order is in and paid for, but we hadn't picked out the DC ceiling fans yet. So we did that yesterday. It was then that I realized that the only time you really care about how a ceiling fan looks is when you're buying it.
Because after that, it's mostly invisible. Which just means, don't obsess over how the damn things look!
I spent some time this morning getting Captain's Log caught up with email. I wasn't able to really do much in the way of recording things when our guests were here. As I got the latest emails recorded, I noticed I hadn't been keeping up with tagging entries so I did that too.
And that exercise also exposed a number of little utilities I'd purchased, but looking at them in the email, I couldn't tell you what they did. So I went back and found the web sites and included links and descriptions in the text of the entry. More about that later.
Maybe.
Hulu is streaming The Devil Wears Prada 2, Mitzi watched it the other night and I caught most of it. Gorgeous photography, and I thought the story was entertaining.
Hulu also has a two-part National Geographic documentary about Troy, which was fascinating.
Well, enough about all that.
The beat that can be counted is not the beat...
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