Magnolia Beach

by

An Offer I Hated Refusing

Last night, L, Caroline, her husband, and I headed back out to the Indianola Fishing Marina for burgers and a little live music. We had prepared to freeze, but the marina is well sheltered, so we were comfortable and hung out for over two hours.

The marina has a new cook who completely messed up everyone’s orders. L had ordered well before the rest of us and had to remind the kitchen that he’d ordered something. My chicken ranch bacon burger with lettuce and tomato was lacking bacon and tomato and when the manager got wind of this, she offered me a free appetizer. So I got to assuage my curiosity as to what ‘crab poppers’ are (spicy hot and delicious!).

I’m glad we had a chance to hang out since Caroline and her hubby are thinking of leaving today and L is leaving shortly. But we will all see each other again soon as the path through Saskatchewan is straight through their respective cities.

When we got in, Caroline’s hubby asked if I wanted to plug into their generator. We had done that the night before and also a few days ago. The night before, I only needed about 10A to fill the bank, but the computer was discharged, so I was thankful to plug in for a  few amps so that I could start with a nearly full battery in the morning and a full charged computer.

But last night, I had to refuse the offer! I came in to 12.8V, which is FULL, and my computer also had a full charge. There was really no point even though I ended up running the furnace and electric blanket for a bit.

I woke up to 12.59V (99.5% according to the battery monitor) and COLD again, so I’m running the furnace this morning since I have tons of propane. Yesterday, I ran the furnace mid-afternoon for about a half hour, which I’m pretty sure is the only time I ran the furnace during the day this winter. That said, I did run an electric heater almost full-time in Hampton Roads.

by

Cutting It Close

This morning, I was sad to see R and S leave for good, and a whole day ahead of schedule to boot since S wasn’t feeling well. 🙁 Caroline and her husband are threatening to go tomorrow, too. 🙁 Tonight, though, they, L, and I are heading down to Indianola for dinner and a little music. Can’t let them go without a shindig!

I went back into town this morning to reattempt to get propane as they were down for maintenance yesterday. I also needed to pickup a package at the post office and a few groceries. The plan was to do those things in reverse order as Walmart is on the opposite edge of town from propane, which is closer to the beach than is Walmart, and the post office is in the middle.

Anyway, I went to see L and we got gabbing as we do and by the time I got on the road, it was past 11. Just before the first turn for the post office, I remembered that today is Saturday and that they closed at noon! So I veered there first.

The lady at the counter recognized me from the little fit I threw yesterday so I didn’t even have to wait in line. She saw me come in and waved the package at me.

You see, I had two delivery confirmations yesterday and they only had one package for me, claiming that the other one had not been delivered even though it had been signed for not less than an hour before by the guy who was serving me at the counter!

He argued that UPS had not passed, that my package was not in the building, and that I’d have to come back today, regardless of how much mileage that was. The post office had done this before to me and I had been able to get the clerk to go into the back and pluck the package off the unsorted pile. But no dice this time and I was not shy to give them a piece of my mind since I had the friggin’ delivery confirmation in my hand!

Anyway, post office done, I went to Walmart and then moseyed on back to the propane place. I told the attendant that I was glad to see that they were up and running and he brusquely replied that he was going to serve me, but, really, they had closed five minutes before. He filled my 30lber ($23) and didn’t  put it back in the truck for me. It’s extremely rare that I don’t get that additional level of service. Anyway, no big deal; I got my propane! The on board tank is way too close to empty for comfort. The 30lbs should last me till I’m ready to pull out.

by

Installing a New Hard Drive On an Early 2009 17" MacBook Pro

The hard drive on my early 2009 17″ MacBook Pro has been giving me hints for months that it was going to fail. The cost of a replacement drive and the fact that the swap is a DIY job meant that it just wasn’t worth waiting for the drive to crap out. Doing the swap now would mean doing so on my own terms when I was ready for it and well prepared.

First, I had to find a new drive. I did some (a lot) of research and found a WD Blue 500 GB Mobile Hard Drive that was well reviewed, suitable for a MacBook Pro, and available cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else, including Newegg.

The physical job of swapping the drive was very easy. I used a YouTube video to show me how to do it. Since I watched this before buying the drive, I knew to add a T6 Torx screwdriver to my order.

What troubled me was how, exactly, to get my new hard drive up and running. All my research was telling me that the new hard drive would magically boot up and I would be able to restore my system from my last Time Machine backup. That didn’t sit right with me and I dug deeper.

As it turns out, that above info is fine for folks who have newer Macs with internet recovery, as well as access to an open wifi signal or hard wired internet. This was not my case with an early 2009 Macbook Pro. What I had to do was create a recovery disk on one of my external hard drives.

I partitioned my 2TB drive and used the recovery assistant app to create a recovery disk on the partition, which took just a few minutes. That combined with a fresh Time Machine backup meant that I was ready to do the surgery.

One of the mounting bar screws was so tight that I stripped it and had to remove it with needle nose pliers. Otherwise, swapping the hard drives was just as easy as the video claimed.

The new hard drive installed, I turned on the computer, holding down the Option key after the chime. This allowed me to choose a drive for booting, and I selected my new recovery disk.

The recovery disk allowed Disk Utility to open. This made it possible to select the new drive and format it it correctly. I was then able to mount it.

The final step was to to restore my system by choosing my last Time Machine backup and having it restored on my newly formatted hard drive. This took about two hours.

And that’s it! I restarted the computer once the restoration was done and it’s almost like I never did the surgery. I am finding the new hard drive to be a lot louder, but this is something I was warned about in the reviews, so I’ll learn to put up with it.

I also gained 180GB of hard drive space since I went from a 320GB drive to a 500GB drive. Combine that with my external drives and I have 4TB of hard drive space available to me. I won’t be running out of space anytime soon!

by

Guacamole For Breakfast

I was thinking of slacking off the avocados for a bit, but Caroline, darling woman that she is, brought me FOUR from town the other day! Do I have the most awesome blog readers or what?!

This morning, I decided to do a little nutritional comparison between a whole avocado and the two tablespoons of peanut butter or shredded cheese that I normally put on my tortilla (or English muffin) in the morning. In terms of fat and calories, the three were neck and neck, but the avocado has tons of fiber and vitamin C. Add in the fresh lime juice and minced garlic, and guacamole ends up being a much more nutritious (and filling) breakfast than I usually have.

IMGP5885

As my best friend would say, NOM NOM NOM!

by

Low Batteries Are No Longer Scary

I never did get to recalibrate the battery monitor since the big winds the other day because I’ve needed to use an inordinate amount of juice to keep the office running this week. I’ve been keeping an eye on the amp hour count up and down and the voltage at the end of the evening to make sure that my battery levels are at acceptable level until I can get a full charge.

All would have been well if we had gotten the sun we were supposed to get today, instead of a low cloud cover, which meant I drained almost 30A today. When the solar charger clicked off tonight, I unplugged my fully charged computer, and looked at my voltmeter. The reading was 11.9V, which is about 40% capacity, but I didn’t freak out because I know now that within an hour of unplugging the computer, my voltage creeps back up a few points as the batteries get to rest.

Regardless, I was low and I was pretty sure I’d have to run the electric blanket tonight as I should have done so last night and I ran the furnace for a full hour this morning! So I turned on the engine while I made dinner.

To my delight, a steady 17A began to flow into my batteries! It’s true! If you’re below 80% capacity, your alternator charges more quickly to bring you up to that 80% mark! It didn’t take long for the amount to slowly taper down and I cut the engine at 10A coming in. I’m now sitting at about 12.46V, which is about 80% capacity. Not great, but we should be getting sun tomorrow, plus I have errands to run so I can take some load off the house batteries by charging the computer in the truck.

So I now know that, really, there’s little point to running the engine to get a charge if I’m above 80% capacity, but it is totally worth doing so when I go below that.

I’ve been boondocking for over a month now in okay weather and it keeps getting better and easier as I slowly figure out how to use all the information available to me to manage my power use. The new solenoid has been a big help, as has been able to borrow a generator twice, that’s for sure, but they’re just a tiny part of a much larger puzzle I’m putting together.

And with that, I’m off to plug in my electric blanket. It’s going to be another coooooold night.