The End Of An Era . . .

After moving Thursday, working Friday, and doing the Texas Renaissance Festival yesterday, it was really nice to sleep in this morning.




I spent the morning and early afternoon checking out and setting up some of our new toys that came in over the last few days. First up was my new LaCrosse Weather Station that came in Friday.

LaCrosse Weather Station

I set up the color display and the outside temp/humidity sensor Friday night and got it synced up with my WiFi. For some reason I had trouble getting it connected using my phone. It would see the MifFi signal but wouldn’t connect to it. However when I used my Galaxy Tab 4, it connected immediately.

La Crosse Display


You don’t need the WiFi connection, but using it lets the display automagically sync with the NIST Atomic Clock Signal so the time display is always correct. And when you give it your zipcode location, it displays the National Weather Service forecast for your area in a graphical format. And with the LaCrosse View app on your phone you can monitor the weather conditions inside and out at your home location.




Later in the afternoon I went outside to install the windspeed sensor and the rain gauge. I mounted the anemometer on the pole I used to mount my Wilson Cellphone Booster on.

Petticoat Junction Site

You can see it here mounted to the ladder on the rear of the rig.

.The only kind of disappointment is the rain gauge that comes with the set.

La Crosse Rain Gauge

There is no way to mount it on anything. You can only just set it out on the ground or some other flat surface and hope it doesn’t blow off or walk off. It’s supposed to rain this coming Wednesday so we’ll see how that works.

Next up was a Bluetooth Keyboard I ordered for my Galaxy Tab 4 tablet.

I  sometimes find that I need to type in a lot of text on the Tab and the onscreen keyboard just doesn’t cut it, so I found this one on Amazon.

Galaxy Tab 4 Keyboard

Bluetooth Keyboard

It was only $14 so I thought I’d give it a try, I had a little trouble getting it to connect to the Tab, but it connected to my Galaxy S8+ phone with no problems. But with a little experimenting, I found that if I unpaired the two other devices on my Tab, it connected with no problems. Then I was able to re-pair the two devices with no problems.



Of course I had the same two devices paired on my phone and it worked with no problems right off the bat. So who knows. But it works now.

Then it was time to try out Jan’s new Instant Pot.

Instant Pot

Instant Pot 8 Qt., 6 in 1, Pressure Cooker. 

Before you cook anything in it you’re supposed to put 3 cups of water in the cooking pot and then run it for two minutes on the Steam setting to be sure it’s working OK. And since it passed the test I think Jan’s got a meal in mind for Tuesday or Wednesday.

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She was worried about the size of the Instant Pot, thinking it might not be as big enough to hold a full batch of her Chili or Chicken Tortilla Soup. But when I checked, her Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker is only 5 Qt., so the 8 Qt. Instant Pot will be just fine.

It’s the End of An Era.

With the latest issue of the Gypsy Journal that Nick Russell just emailed out today, he also announced that it’s going to be the very LAST issue. Now that they’re off the road and have settled down in Florida, Nick wants to spend more time on his burgeoning mystery writing career. But the Gypsy Journal will be missed.

And speaking of his ‘burgeoning mystery writing career, he’s got another book. (how’s that for a smooth segue?) This one’s the 3rd installment in his John Lee Quarles series.

Badge Bunny

Badge Bunny

Get your copy now before Amazon runs out of them.

The Word of the Day is:  Kobold


Thought for the Day:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

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