Plants on the ceiling

Did you know you can buy prescription eyeglasses online now for about 1/4 of the normal price, and you no longer need a current prescription?    When I discovered this, I went a little overboard and bought 4 pair, figuring I might like at least one pair:

My old gasses were 8 years hold (bottom pair), so I did get a new prescription.   I got all 4 of these for $300 total, from $30 –> $100 each, one fixed, one bifocal, and 2 progressives of different strengths.   There are several good online stores you can use, I got these at http://eyebuydirect.com .

Care to guess why is Helen so happy in this photo?

Partly because she is holding Dog, which always brings a smile to her face, but also because we were about to get a visit from Aya:

We did much hiking with Aya, here to the Capital:

And here to one of the local peaks:

We treated Aya to several of our fun Utah treats, including prickly pear cactus in the foot:

And here Dog is instructing here on how to extract a stuck ring from her finger using the dental floss: 

We had a fun visit with a couple who Aya has worked with, who happened to live nearby:

We had a birthday party for one of Helen’s co-workers:

We sent her home with a big Ikea bag full of leftovers:

And Bantik enjoyed a party of his own, as some of the guests brought dogs:

Cat enjoyed the dog visit a little less, but he mostly held his own:

On the hobby front, I’ve been having fun doing more Home Automation videos:

• Cat tracking: http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/track-cat.html
• 7 watt PC:   http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-7-watt-pc.html
• Free TV: http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/free-tv.html
• Monitoring Power: http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/monitoring-power.html
• Monitoring Solar: http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/monitoring-solar.html

On the home renovation front, I swapped our round bed for the more traditionally shaped, and much easier to make and more comfortable, bed that was in our guest room:

Finally, I’ve discovered the joy of making plant shadows on our ceiling with 3 watt, $10 gooseneck LED lights from IKEA:

Bruce

Dead bush, smart watch, and tiny computer

^{Any guesses on this mystery photo?}

^{Hint1:  It is not the doggy’s recently removed testacies.   We replaced his post-surgery plastic head cone after a few days with a variety of diapers to keep him from chewing on his stiches:}

^{Hint 2:  It is also not the big white bear’s testicles.   Doggy verified this:}

^{The bear seemed to enjoy the doggies explorations a little too much:}

^{Hint 3:  It is not insect related  … I needed an excuse for an insect photo.  We have been enjoying a plethora of fall stink bugs:}

^{Hint 4: It IS related to this:}

^{If you are thinking the above is the impression a sea gull makes when if flies into pink play dough, your thinking is flawed.  Play dough does not have hair.}

^{Hint 5:  It is also related to this:}

^{Give up?   These are close ups of various body parts of this guy:}

^{The first photo was from his paw, which he uses in his auto-defense mode whenever doggy comes to play, even when he is sleeping:}

^{The other 2 close-ups are from his hear and nose.}

^{Three of the evergreen bushes didn’t like the patio I put in this summer.   So I deleted them.}

^{I’ve been having a lot of fun with a new toy, a Moto 360 smart watch.   I interfaced it to the house, so I can now easily talk to and monitor house actions:}

^{I also re-connected to the MisterHouse users group and created some how-to web pages and videos.  The video in the first one shows some examples on what I can do with the watch:}

• ^{http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/voice-control-with-smart-watch.html}
• ^{http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/solar-heated-hot-tub.html}
• ^{http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/tracking-phone-location.html}

^{The other toy I got was a small, but powerful, computer:}

^{Intel calls it a NUC, for Next Unit of Computing.   This one has a Haswell I5 quad CPU, 8 gig of ram, 240 gig storage (SSD), and only uses 7 watts of power!   I put Linux on it and use it for MisterHouse, monitoring and controlling it remotely, so it needs no keyboard or display:}

^{The Annoyed Chinese Tea Master from last month took some computer classes and became a Peaceful Chinese Computer Master,  employed to monitor the new computer.  The monster spider that annoyed him last month dried up and did the Humpty Dumpty thing:}

^{I’ve been teaching Doggy how to hike on the nearby trails:} 

^{We have had some beautiful Fall hikes:}

^{This is the top of one of our local peaks.}  

^{When he gets near the top, he goes into sprint mode … gives me a good workout!}

^Bruce

 

Annoyed Chinese Tea Master

This month’s mystery photo comes from something you have seen before. 

This, on the other hand, you have not seen before:

No, it is not an lost Eskimo or one of the many decomposed Kennys from South Park.  The cat, probably like most of your, has no idea what a dead Kenny is:

This is a variant of they above not-Eskimo guy.   No two of these are alike.   This one is a like a flying-bug:

A hint.   This guy can smell them from across the yard:

And one last example.  This is a not a cheese-filled-laughing-alien-head.

You can earn the answers to the above mysteries by plodding through this month’s remaining, less mysterious, photos.

We had a fantastical visit from Z&T.   Zach and I took the doggies to the top of one of the 10k foot peaks we can see from our back yard, Gobblers Knob.

All 3 of the 4 leggers did great, running to the top without assistance:

If you had a bionic eye, you could see our house from here, in the corner of one of those pixels on the right.  Without bionics, you can see the Great Salt Lake, as it is a little bit bigger:

We forgot to bring any dog food.   If they were 10x bigger, this could have gotten ugly:

We took a different route down.  The little paws were not impressed with bushwhacking:

Near the end of our 8 mile, 3500’ hike, the short haired ones ordered a Lyft:

But the crazy long haired guy ran all the way down.   He earned a bath when he got home.  That brackish bath water was likely toxic.

Zach drove out with the dogs, Tiffany flew in 2 days later.   This is her landing:

There was much rejoicing. 

They caught the last good week for the pool:

Bontik taught Mac and Cheese how to float on the boat:

And Zack balled around:

We attended the premier showing of a film and print project that Abbey and company just finished:

A much more relaxed Abbey and Colin dropped by for dinner a few days later:

Zach showed off the bazillion lights he has his Honda Fit outFited with:

Remember that 20’ cedar tree I transplanted last year?  Not un-expectedly, it turned brown: 

So I enlisted Zach to help delete and replace it with a sibling:

Odds are still low, but we got a few more roots this time:

Z&T helped me finally convince Helen we should neuter 1 year old Bontik, who recently started to hump and mark,   To avoid him ripping out his stiches, he gets to wear this cone collar for 1-2 weeks:

Some more Z&T adventure photos auto-collected by the AI knows as Google here:

  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceWinter/posts/dcv6d28xiDU

  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceWinter/posts/7KUtEP36wMf

  https://plus.google.com/+BruceWinter/posts/GKirwt3kdMa

Those last 3 mystery photos were from a bag of Kettle corn we bought at a farmers market.  Tiffany an I picked them out as we ate them.  They last a lot longer when you examine each kernel before eating.

That first photo is a fang from a Caroline Wolf Spider:

This was the biggest one I’ve seen!   Found him in the bottom of our pool.   I think he came to visit Zach:

Zach did surprisingly well.  This is his spider imitation:

His imitation has a few too many appendages, but the beard is not too far off:

I tried to simulate a 8’ spider attack using a bonsai tree:

But instead it looks like a 3” spider next to a bonsai tree:

So I switched to a Chinese Tea Master:

And that came out as an Annoyed Chinese Tea Master:

Bruce