My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on February 22, 2022

For years now we have been satisfied with the bulky (and older) Canary Cams for added security at home. The first Canary continues to work flawlessly “inside” our house and thankfully just perches quietly in our great room and is suppose to trigger when motion is detected “when we are not home.” The plan was to use it without the monthly monitoring costs associated with adding a camera to our normal windows/doors/fire/etc home security setup.

Being early to the game, we added a second one for the detached poolhouse garage, but since then added a low-cost Wyze Cam and have been pointing the older 2nd Canary out the window to monitor the driveway. It works great during the day when the glass reflection is low and the bugs and birds stay away.

Unfortunately the cam switches to infrared mode at night and does not work very well through a window. I’ve contacted Canary.is to see if there is a away to switch off the night-mode, but after going through their re-calibration and trying everything their customer support offered … there is not.

So … I’ve added a new Wyze Cam3 (outdoor safe) driveway camera to the Wyze side of my accounts and am currently paying their “lower-cost” PLUS service which offers more cloud storage and AI to detect people, vehicles, packages, etc. The product I opted for this time was their Socket Cam that plugs into a garage light and offers a sunset-to-sunrise feature for the outdoor garage light. This is controllable on their app, but better yet is that it feeds power to the Cam3. The shipment arrived and unfortunately would not powerup … but giving me the chance to test the Wyze customer service. I was far better than Canary and they quickly sent me a new camera (testing it below) to plug into the socket. So far it has been flawless. Stay tuned as I’ll soon be testing the new Wyze Cam Floodlight for our HOA’s pool as mentioned last month for a Tech Friday post.

Category: Cloud, Gadget, Misc, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: canary, floodlight, house, security cam, socket, wyze, wyzecam3

Posted By RichC on February 21, 2022

Although the artist wasn’t mentioned, Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted out an impressive painting this afternoon. Happy Presidents’ Day.

Category: Art, Holiday | No Comments »
Tags: congress, Holiday, jim jordan, potus, presidents day, united states

Posted By RichC on February 21, 2022

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Category: Memories, Music | No Comments »
Tags: 8-track, album, band, boston, cassette, college, flooding, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, rock and roll

Posted By RichC on February 20, 2022

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Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photos, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, birthday, drew, ellerie, facetime, family, katelyn, michigan, Photos, richc, rocking chair, woodworking, workshop

Posted By RichC on February 20, 2022

The photo to the left is one of those photos taking up bandwidth and being passed around the Internet in emails and on social networks. The assumption is that most people see a photo of a girl who is NOT smiling.

The suggestion is that if you “squint” a bit, you can see a photo of a girl who IS smiling.

Any luck? The mind is impressive … just like trying to read typos and jumbled text (see below).

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Category: Human Interest, Social Media, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: brain, eyes, mind games, Photos, spam, squint

Posted By RichC on February 19, 2022

I used the word “customized” because besides getting the “rocker” for this chair from a set of plans … for safety sake … I’ve been tweaking the children’s rocking chair from collected ideas … and trial and error. Besides wanting to use dimensional lumber and running it through the planner for the frames, I’ve pulled couple ideas from other plans — like the single angled back post, seat and arm dimensions and slat on the back (not shown). The goal is to to use only oak dowels (photos above), biscuits and Titebond III waterproof glue on the project and no mechanical fasteners, then paint with an exterior paint so that the chair can be left out on a patio or deck (have I mentioned how much I like the Silicone Glue Spreading tool?)

Anyway, I’m archiving a few photos marking my slow woodworking project progress below. (more…)

Category: Archive, Hobby, Personal, Photos, Tidbits, Tools, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: biscuit, dowels, glue, project, rocking chair, silicone, titebond, tool, workshop

Posted By RichC on February 18, 2022

Over the years of playing (learning) Linux, setting up APIs and running webservers on a few Raspberry Pi computers, I’ve set up a Twitter “bot” in order to track them and keep them running.

Last September 2021 Twitter launched an experiment of labels for these kinds of accounts that was voluntary. I run a “bot” for this blog (not on Raspberry Pi computers and I have not set it up yet) and another on to update my Quickdex “bot” (on the Raspberry Pis) which is Qdex (sample below, now setup).

So far so good and the only notification is that each Tweet is now labeled “automated” and under the Qdex profile is indicate that the account is “Automated by @quickdex.” Someday maybe I’ll work a little more on the Quickdex database project, although I did connect earlier this week with entrepreneur James Altucher on his latest website idea.

Category: Computer, Raspberry Pi, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: automated, bot, bots, james altucher, qdex, quickdex, tech friday, techfriday, twitter

Posted By RichC on February 17, 2022

Well, two doses of disappointing news in one week. First, the Bengals lose in Super Bowl 56, and then my Barron’s magazine gets smaller with even smaller type (requires a second pair of readers!). They call it “shrinkflation” in an attempt to save a few dollars and probably force subscribers into a 100% digital subscription. I must be getting old as I miss my printing and ink on paper days. And if that wasn’t enough, the week ending “shrunken” Friday published paper Barron’s magazine is no longer going to be delivered on Saturday … and not until Monday! Frankly by the time I pick up 3 to 4 day old financial stories on a Monday night, they are no longer all that important or interesting, besides it was my weekend reading.

To make matters even more challenging, I also received an email from the publisher of the Wall Street Journal telling me that my Saturday WSJ is no longer going to be delivered on Saturday morning, but now on Sunday. I know … the message is clear. It is time to go fully digital. Still … browsing the newspaper or sifting through the table of contents isn’t the same on a computer, tablet or smartphone and I definitely miss reading content (that said, I do often spot the article in the paper and finish reading it on the iPad). The Times They Are-A-Changin’ …

Category: Business, Financial, Misc, News, Personal, Photos, Tablet | No Comments »
Tags: barrons, changing, delivery, digital, inflation, magazines, newspaper, shrinkflation, wsj

Posted By RichC on February 16, 2022

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Category: Archive, Blogs, Human Interest, Memories, Personal, Photos, Shopping, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, arabica, chock full o'nuts, christmas, coffee, costco, cpp, drew, dunkin' donuts, ellerie, family, hawaii, hazelnut, katelyn, kirkland, kona, valentine's day, wikipedia

Posted By RichC on February 15, 2022

This post is going to be “a day late (or so) and a dollar short” post … just as the Cincinnati Bengals were in Sunday night’s Super Bowl LVI. Our young Bengals put up a valiant fight, but came away with a disappointing loss: Rams 23, Bengals 20.

As so many have said, 2022 for the YOUNG Cincinnati Bengals team has had a fairy tale season considering their lack of experience, five previous losing seasons and early season analysis that they needed another year of maturing. So as a Wild Card longshot, three playoff wins to earn the AFC title and trip to the Super Bowl was pretty impressive. It excited and inspired fans, the entire city of Cincinnati and everyone living in Ohio and for that matter, the tri-state area.

I’ve heard from friends and rival AFC fans who told me even they were rooting for the Bengals. Having lived 13 years in NE Ohio, it was good to hear from Cleveland fans (Go Browns!), and even Pittsburgh Steelers fans (I don’t know if I could cheer for them – just being honest) … and even a few people in Toledo who favor the NFC Detroit Lions.  I can understand their flipflopping dilemma in rooting for their old quarterback, Matthew Stafford, who QB-ed the Rams this season (I was secretly happy to see him finally win a Super Bowl ring).

Although I was disappointed in the loss, I was really disappointed that such a close game came down to a couple 2-minute referee calls that may have changed the outcome. I know it can go both ways (as it did with a missed call that favored the Bengals early in the game), but considering the referees stay out of the game until the last couple of minutes, it was difficult to stomach. Nevertheless, it feels good going to the big dance for the first time … in my son’s lifetime (last Super Bowl was in 1988 … although still no wins).

I commented on a Tweet from our young team leader and quarterback Joe Burrow … he has given fans something to get excited about; this hopefully will not be the last we see of him and this young and spirited group of guys – they definitely play as a team (and maybe in the off-season the coaches and head office can work on improving the offensive line? – hint, hint!) 

Also …

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Category: Archive, Idioms, Personal, Photos, Sports | No Comments »
Tags: bengals, cincinnati, grammarist, granddaughters, idiom, idioms, joe burrow, katelyn, LA Rams, matthew stafford, nfl, super bowl, superbowl, twitter