Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Aug 3 - a long flicker ...

Early this a.m. as I sat at the pc, there was a longish power flicker and I heard the generator power up.  It didn't last long enough for the transfer switch to flip, so the generator powered down a couple of minutes later, not even enough to get warmed up.  Sandy said that the night before, when I was on the road somewhere, it came on as well but ran for a few minutes, so it must have done its job.

Jason's gang has finished repairing his dock, which had lost some of its flotation, styrofoam worn away with time, particularly on one side where he's had it pulled into Donnie's little cove for the winter.  Yesterday we pulled it into the cove and tipped it up with the aid of two large jacks and a bunch of manpower.  Jason went to Parry Sound and picked up four new floats and they installed those this a.m.  It's now good for at least another 10 years.

I'll have to do something similar with my little dock that's been losing strapping underneath and could certainly use more floatation.  Two people standing on one corner will get their feet wet.  The big dock is still in good shape, thank goodness, because that wouldn't be quite as easy to tip up and fix.

I've got Windows 10 downloading right now on the laptop which is slowing everything down.  It's at 48%, the last that I checked, and that's in about six hours.  Ugh.  I'd hate to cancel it now though.  Unfortunately there's no easy way of decreasing its priority, although I could, I suppose, check for its MAC address and downgrade it's priority with the router ... hmmm.

.......

Due for maintenance, I changed the oil on Sandy's car and replaced the windshield wipers on both.  I'd purchased the latter on the way north and they had been sitting in the barn.  Three were easy, one took some doing as it had a different connector and Advance had given me a replacement. It was difficult to get the existing connector off without breaking the plastic, but eventually I got there. 

One last bit of maintenance that I should do before heading to Hemmingford on Monday is to replace the front brake sensor cable on the X5.  That came with Jeffrey.

W10 finished downloading and I tried installing it on the laptop, no go.  It wanted a product key and the existing one for W8.1 didn't work.  I had downloaded the Pro version of W10 and the valid upgrade is only to Home.  On the desktop, however, I do have W7 Pro running and it's in the process of being upgraded.  I have no idea how long it will take.  It didn't ask for a product key so I'm assuming that the 8.1 issue was version incompatability.

I expect to leave here early today and stop at Stef's, Staples, Home Depot and Bulk Barn before meeting Sandy and Abby at the doggie chiropractor.  Abby has all sorts of things going on now as she seems to have developed a side effect of the anti-inflammatory.  She wasn't hungry at all, even to the extent of ignoring pretzels.   That's absolutely unheard of.  Sandy fed her chicken and rice yesterday, which she gobbled up, after having ignored her own food even with a treat broken up into it.

To combat the allergies / adverse reaction to the anti-inflammatory, we've cut the latter and given her an anti-histamine. As a result she was dragging her butt yesterday, sleeping most of the day.  I got her outside at one point, going next door, but all the usual eagerness was gone.  Just let me sleep, Dad, ok ?!?  Anti-histamines have always knocked the spunk out of her.  There's no non-drowsy for dogs !

Anyway ... some steak for dinner; finished off the season of Dr Who, so I'm now up-to-date, and it's now Tuesday a.m.

Onward ...  

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