Thursday, 4/9/2020
Somehow today I felt busy all the time. But I hardly left my unit.
Ran that 20 minute exercise video in the morning. Tomorrow I think i will try the in-house “strength and balance” stream at 9:15.
Worked through a couple more sections of Crafting Interpreters. This is being a great and enjoyable exercise in refreshing my knowledge of Python.
The exciting activity was that today my 6th floor InstaCart order was shopped and delivered. A few substitutions, but not too bad. I was on the app exchanging texts with the shopper as he worked. He rolled up outside about 2pm and I had everything wiped down with bleach and delivered by 3pm.
My bag of fresh linens wasn’t quite right. I guess Wanda, my usual housekeeper, is off being a nurse’s assistant. The bottom sheet was for a twin bed, so didn’t fit, and the top sheet was also a twin I think, but worked. And no pillowcase. I am not going to complain. I just reversed the old bottom sheet and made do.
With a fresh 9V battery I could check and indeed the bulb in the metronome was toast, but not because it was a burned-out incandescent. It was a neon bulb that had been smashed. And the little plastic dome that had been over it. Pretty clearly the thing had been dropped on its head. I couldn’t see the broken bulb because it was under the cracked and crushed plastic dome. Now they are both off and I am wondering what to do.
I could get a neon bulb, but a bare neon bulb wouldn’t look good. How to get a neon with a finished-looking dome over it? I spent some time on electronics websites like Jameco and Digikey. There are plenty of attractive panel lights but they are all at least an inch deep behind the panel. Unfortunately this light is right on top of the little motor, with less than a quarter inch of clearance. The old one had a couple of wires snaking through a hole and the neon bulb lay sideways on the top of the wood under its little dome.
There are nice looking orange LEDs that have no depth, the leads come right out of the bulb. But the available power is 120VAC. LEDs want low voltage DC. OK, google some more. In fact you can drive an LED from 120VAC, if you provide in effect a voltage divider and a diode. So I ordered a handful of parts and I will see if I can make that work. Been a while since I had to solder resistors and diodes and shit.
Helped another person, Judy, whose Mac had suddenly said, you are not connected to the internet. In fact, she wasn’t. Somehow she had managed to turn the wi-fi off. Telephone technical help is not fun. You try to talk somebody through finding the wi-fi icon in the upper left corner of their mac screen, and open its menu, and select “turn wi-fi on”, when you can’t just point and say, there, click that.
Codgerville 