Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Past

A couple of classmates have passed away and it reminds me of how fragile life is. I watch Dick Van Dyke aproach 100 and Betty White almost made it and my Mom was close when she passed. I have lost friends, classmates and relatives who were considerably younger than I. If they did not pass away due to age, then it was primarily disease. I don’t remember anyone offhand having an accident, however one good friend caused his own death. I wish I had know that he was suffering, but it was not obvious. I later learned that he was on medicine and it had been recently changed.

I look back at all the places I have lived, all the jobs I have held and all of the people I have met and it boggles the mind. I also have passed the milestone of living in one location,one house for one third of my life. Here in America the average time a person stays in a house is about 12 to 13 years.

I would like to say that life here is less stressful than on the mainland, however I think that the stresses are different. I ache more and tire more easily. I am not as active with hobbies as I once was. Camping, gold prospecting and Ham Radio have been set aside. Even traveling on vacations is a distant memory. That last item is not quite so bad as I have realively good weather here and always something going on, even if it is work.

My tractor and mower need constant attention and I’m sure that planned maintenance would solve quite a bit, however I have so many projects in procss that I just can’t find the time. Mowing the farm, taking care of another farm, websites, solar projects and the calls fom neighbors asking for help take up most of my free time. I can’t blame all my lack of accomplishments on those tasks as there are lots of TV shows and other time wasters.

I still have no added the third battery to my solar install. I am still trying to get my second transfer switch mailed to me. The unit was shipped and arrived in town via FedEx and was headed to the local Post Office for delivery to them as part of a last-mile delivery. Photos show it being left on an outdoor chair somewhere. A call to FedEx would not get me the address on the package or a message to the driver to see if he remembers wher the package was left, but it was not the Post Office building. Now I have given the company my physical address so a package company like FedEx can just drop it to my farm but the shipper said that address was not valid. I have since giventhe yet another address where the package could be left. Otherwise I’ll just get my money back and pay more to have my home warehouse supply place oder me.

At 11am the other day my Internet went out while I was away, so I know it was nothing I did. I reset the modem and router and when that did not fix things. I moved the modem closer to there the cable comes into the house. I had a very long wire and was able to remove part of it incase it was the issue. It was not. The cable company tested the line and dispatched a tech out for the next morning. They scheduled hime to be here between 10am and 11am. In an amazing act, he was driving down my driveway at 10am sharp! What should have taken perhap an hour stretched on. He replaced a filter at house but still could not get the signal corerctly. Luckily I had cut the grass in all areas where he might have to walk or drive and we ended up walking to the neighboring property where I had to climb a pole. It turns out that the instalelrs years ago put a filter there and at the house. When he removed that the signal was in spec.

However the next day I fould that my signal was intermittant. I had a bad connector on my router (my own cable was bad) and I was finally able to fix that tonight. I also had some of the wifi signals interfering with each other and spent hours getting them set properly.

Then there is the solar inverter. When most the mainland went on to Daylight Savings Time, my inverter also changed time. It should not have. I am set for GMT-10 and NO DST. However there is a bug. The controller company is having to modify their code as a number of us have the same issue. I believe that if my equipment was not connected t othe Internet, this would not happen as it is checking each hour to see if it is set properly. I assume that is to ensure that no matter when you install the equipment that within 1 hour the time will be set correctly. MYyre for this is to leave the DST setting alone and move the Time Zone setting 1 hour ahead so that the clock will remain set correctly unti lthey can fix things. This is not a big deal however many of us have our systems set to use grid power to top off the batteries during the cheap hours. For that to work properly the time must be correct.

During the 26 hours I was out of internet due to the issues, one neighbor asked me for help with his printer. I tried to troubleshoot remoteley but finally had t odrive there. After many tests I finally had to remove the devices from his computer configuration and reinstrall them. The printer is working fine now.

I have had two website which needed upgrades and adjustments in the past couple of days and I am waiting on some cables I orders to finish wiring and the addition of a third solar battery at my Sisters cottage.

I also am not caught up on my TV shows which often play in the background while I am on the computer.

In the morning I’ll be using Alexa (my Amazon Echo) to listen to the ‘oldies’ on Riviear.FM out of Torquay in the South Devon area. Yes, England still exisits for those who think it doesn’t! Torquay is the ficticious location of Fawlty Towers and the actual location of Agatha Christie’s house where she wrote many of her detective stories.

I used t owrite a bit and had a couple of ideas for stories and a novel or two but time keeps on slipping into the past.