87 windows and a bunch of round holes

We've had a busy but mostly fun month doing a variety of house chores.   Lots of window work ... I counted a total of 87 windows!   We replaced 10 of the 38 big (> 3') double pane windows which were fogged due to broken seals.    It took a variety of ladder configurations, but I also got most of the windows cleaned:

Helen did some forest maintenance:

And we got the Utah Buddah's re-employed to watch over things:

Buddah Trough the Looking Glass (one of Helen's round deck hanging crystals):

The Fall weather and leaves have been wonderful:

Helen did a couple of Arts projects.  This one used fabric samples from a couch we never bought:

This one re-constituted a chandelier using crystals that they brought over from Russia:

One of my tasks was to plug these holes in our outdoor wood beams.   Care to guess who makes them?  

Not this guy.   His job is to eat bugs:

Like these guys:

This guy is the author of that perfectly round hole, a carpenter bee.  I learned they can make extravagant tunnels in wood, with the only sign being a perfectly round hole like the above:

They have powerful jaws to chew through wood:

 Another project was to move the treadmill ... after much agitation, I determined this was the only orientation to get it to fit through that door.   That treadmill will be buried in that room:

This box has the last project for this month:

Doggy thought it was a new chew toy:

He was disappointed to learn it was a king sized bed:

We spent 6 hours putting it together: 

It was worth it ... much more comfortable then the round futon bed:

One of my co-workers who works in Ohio discovered the previous owners and pipe organ that used to live in this house now live in an amazing new house they just finished building on Lake Erie ... this time with 2 pipe organs!   This link has some photos, as well as a little history of our house:

   http://blackstoneorgan.org


Lastly, I did another geek video on house voice control.   It starts off with a quick walk-through of the house:

    http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/10/amazon-echo-smartthings-howto.html


Bruce

Alabama, First Post!

Howdy from Alabama!

Our trip from Utah went relatively smoothly.   We packed the as with as many plants as we could and headed out about 3 weeks ago:

The car fuel line got plugged up in the middle of Nebraska, but cleared up after some slow driving:

After 3 days of driving, we arrived and closed on the new house, blew up an inflatable mattress, then crashed:

We spent 5 days sitting on pillows:

The kitchen counter made for a great standing desk:

The empty living room would have made for a great blimp hanger:

Doggy spent a lot of time watching/smelling the backyard forest from the deck:

Our stuff arrived without too much trauma ... only 4 things broke.  That storage room in the back was stuffed full of packing paper:

The piano was the biggest challenge, but they got it done without loss of life or limb:

I've re-worked a bunch of lighting, adding and switching to brighter LED lighting:

The ladder has been touring the house.   We setup our computers where the dinning table usually goes:

The spot lights and multi-colored 'water light' projector we brought from Utah work great on the wall where the 20' pipe organ pipes used to be:

One of my IBM co-workers sent me a link from a Wall Street Journal article he recently read that talked about the original owner of our house.   Dr. Blackstone had built this house in the '70s around an impressive  68 rank, 4 console pipe organ.    

They packed it up when they moved from Birmingham to Ohio 18 years ago to head a cardiac research group at the Cleveland Clinic.   Only just recently have they finished a new house on Lake Erie, again built specifically for the the pipe organ ... actually this time they have TWO pipe organs!    You can see pictures of our house back when it had the organ, as well as pictures of their impressive new house here:   

              http://www.blackstoneorgan.org

Our house is really well built (e.g. wood encased steel beams), but the crawl space was a mess.   I cleaned it up, excavating many buckets of dirt and bags full of other garbage.  The downstairs air unit was original, so I had that replaced.   This is the old one:

We were a little worried after the previous owner told us he had never opened the windows, but we discovered, after some jiggling, they still work fine:

The creek in the backyard normally flows with just a trickle, but last week, for about an hour, it gushed with water  ... under clear blue skies.    Still haven't figured out how that happened:

Boris and Irena just finished a 4 day visit with us:

We succeeded in our goal of finding them a home they both liked, not too far from ours (9 minutes):

Unlike the home they renovated in Utah, this one is in great shape already, and the backyard is lovely:

They have a fun porch to the backyard from their bedroom:

They will close in November and likely move in December.

Last picture is from some sort of Alabama Yeti Monster we found lounging in our kitchen:

Bruce

Meet Max

Last pictures from the Utah house:

We are driving to Alabama this weekend, hoping to land in the new house with stuff by end of next week.

My last 2 geek videos from Utah:

• A voice controled solar heated pool
• A new voice control interface from Amazon

We finally got down to San Francisco for a visit with Max:

Nick and Chloe happened to be there also:

They had fun with a real time photo distortion program ... Max wasn't sure what to think:




Nick did a fun post about their first 4 months with Max;

   http://blog.nickwinter.net/surprises-from-maxs-first-four-months


They rent a really nice loft apartment right across the street from the Giants baseball stadium:

Nick's office.   Max often wakes up around 4 am ... Nick gets lots of work done in the early hours:

We went on a number of hikes, using these really cool baby wrap carriers:

We had a nice lunch at the SF Samovar Tea Lounge next to the Yerba Buena park: 

We helped Nick with one of his side hobby projects, seeing if any useful info can come from a baby EEG brain wave monitor:  

Attaching wet electrodes is the trickiest part ... electrician's tape is not ideal:

Helen helped out here, contacting a company that has a new, easy/quick to put on electrode 'hat'.  We just hosted the founder/CTO of that company on a visit to Salt Lake City (our last house guest) where we each tested it out:

This is from our last pool/tub party, with doggy at his usually guard dog station (you can't get in the tub without him demanding to be lifted to his spot ... its pretty cute):

Speaking of pets ... we found a solution for the cat.   The buyer of our UT house loves cats, so we are going to try leave the cat here.  All he has to do is get along with 3 bulldogs ... should be better than flying 5000 miles to Germany:

Next post from Alabama!

Bruce