Thu Dec 1 = Unplanned impulsing first thing this morning: This impulse was about all I accomplished: more researching of smart multimeters since the one I got does not meet my requirements. To save time with my future research projects, I made a chart grid to rate any item's features and scanned the grid into a PDF.
- This afternoon was the semi-monthly shopping trip with JoANN my
shopping partner. It was sort of a marathon of 4 hours from the time I left home until I returned home. We spent most of the time in Winco Foods.
- On the way home I stopped by LA Fitness, a day late for my Wednesday heavy slow legs workout and Protein Frostie. Since it was getting late and I hadn't had supper yet I put off my
poster trim
weekly trimming of my beard, eye brows and little quiff so I match my poster photos
and shower.
- After the late supper at home I took my water heater off of vacation so the water would heat up for a good bath. While the water was heating, I projected my budget through January, 2023.
Then came the poster trim and a warm bath.
- All too common, I got to bed later than I had hoped but I DID update my website with today's blog.
- Got to bed at 11:34 for 8:13 of sleep
Fri Dec 2 = I figured it would not kill me, although it might make me sick. On the other hand it could be a tasty experience. About three months ago, in my refrigerator in water in a 10oz container, I had put some raisins to plump up and use on my cereal in a couple of days. I forgot about it until this morning. It had become a weird concoction with little pillars growing up to the surface where there was a coherent scum. I opened the container, took off the scum and poured what was left over this morning's cereal. It included the slight taste of fermentation.
- The reason this was risky was that I was Barbara's transportation at 12:30pm to her doctor's appointment. Well, if I got sick they have stomach pumps and such. I forgot about the whole thing because I did not get sick... or inebriated.
- After an early lunch, under the auspices of
, I took Barbara to her doctor's appointment over in Glendale.
- While waiting for her I worked on my website, did a monthly Blog rollover from October to November and worked on this blog.
- On the way home we stopped by Winco. Barbara had never been there before. With all the bulk foods and such, she said, "This is better than Disneyland!"
- After dropping Barbara off at her place I stopped by Anytime Fitness for a brief slow arms workout and by Albertsons for beef franks.
- This evening I put the tools that I had scattered around in my van during my van House Battery Project and set up a temporary way to hook up my new Chins LiFePO4 battery. It took some time for me to find the wiring diagrams for the Multimeter I have on my Van's Panel for monitoring the battery. I got smart and added those diagrams to the Instructions folder of my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 laptop computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
.
- Got to bed at 11:33 for 8:14 of sleep
Sat Dec 3 = Real unusual weather for Phoenix: It was overcast all day with some light "rain."
- This afternoon, for the first time, I fully connected my new
battery. The panel multimeter, charging and everything worked perfectly :)
- Tonight I decided on the Kaiweets KM601 smart multimeter over the Kaiweets ST600Y (slightly smaller). Both have pretty good reviews and acceptable accuracy. Like the ST600Y I wish the KM601 was smaller, had the lead jacks on the front instead of the bottom and had a 2-way mode selector. I like that it has more precise measurement readouts and measures millivolts, milliamps and frequencies.
- Got to bed at 11:56 for 7:51 of sleep
Sun Dec 4 = This morning I ran across a review comparing the two multimeter finalists from yesterday and decided I preferred the smaller one.
- I learned some neat new features of my Windows 10 trackpad as the result of listening to a Leo Laporte podcast while fixing breakfast. Now, having the touchpad inactive while a mouse is connected, I won't keep accidentally moving the pointer around the screen and typing stuff into random wrong locations. Also I learned a number of one, two, three and four-finger taps and gestures for the touchpad.
- While I was learning stuff I examined all 32 buttons at the top of Notepad++, that I use for my website. I found a button to "spell check document automatically" as I am typing. It was like finding gold and will save me lots of time. This evening I spent about a half hour correcting lots of uncaught spelling errors from November 1st in this blog. That job would have taken about three hours with my old way of pasting the text into an email and using that to check the spelling.
- After breakfast, for my Comedy Home Page and Electronic Press Kit, I added code to each video so that YouTube will no longer send cookies. That will comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the European Union. It means two things when people watch videos on my website: 1) They can view the videos on their web browser even if they have cookies turned off and 2) They may no longer get additional video suggestions after watching.
- At noon I succeeded in signing up for Wednesday's Stir Crazy show in Glendale. Not an easy accomplishment. That happily changed my schedule and I:
through Mail Chimp, sent out several hundred emails announcing the show.
designed this poster for the show... and made a template of it for future use.
printed four 8x11s of the poster
made 40 microposters for it, which I will pass out the next three days.
added the show to my calendar
studied my previous sets there and decided on my topic for Wednesday.
The show will be at 7:00pm at
Stir Crazy suite E-206 in the Westgate Entertainment District at 6751 N Sunset Blvd in Glendale, AZ. You can buy tickets here. They will give me seven instead of three minutes if I have three or more guests who say they're there to see me. Come if you can. It will be a fun show.
- Got to bed at 10:57 for 8:51 of sleep
Mon Dec 5 = Today figured out the ins and outs of my online T-Shirt sales. I spent some time chatting with Printify and found it is going to get complicated and take some of my time if there are any customer issues with my online sales. The chat said issues seldom occur. However 30% of my last sample order had defective printing.
- This afternoon I made the first poster for my March California Charity Tour.
- Between the clouds at solar noon, I got some sun - for vitamin D.
- A Christmas gift from my son-in-law arrived today, and it is absolutely perfect: The Kaiweets smart multimeter (the smaller one pictured above). Of course I had to spend some time running it through its paces. It is so cool! Thank you Robby.
- Since I was tired and it was getting a little late, I decided to do my brief, light fast arms workout here at home instead of driving the 5.7 miles to Mountainside Fitness where I wold be able to do the workout and also hand out microposters for Wednesday's show. I decided to put forth the effort and compromise by driving a half mile to Anytime Fitness, doing the workout and putting some microposters on the bulletin board beside the 8x11" one that I had put up yesterday.
- While flossing and brushing, I watched some of the last SNL (Saturday Night Live). My Phoenix comedian friend, Michael Longfellow is new on the show this season.
- Got to bed at 11:20 for 8:28 of sleep
Tue Dec 6 = This morning I got a ticket for tonight's concert at the Madison Center for the Arts to see my grand nephew who plays the violin.
- On FaceBook, I added tomorrow evening's show in Glendale: Wed Dec 7, 2022; 7:00pm;
Stir Crazy; E-206 Westgate Entertainment District; 6751 N Sunset Blvd;Glendale, AZTickets-->
- It was not worth my time, but next it might be $302. With a half hour phone call I got Bank of America (BOA) to reverse a $3.02 interest charge on my credit card account due to bank error.
- The special welding cable I ordered Nov 30 for hooking up the new LiFePO4 "house" battery for my van arrived today. It is 6 AWG and super flexible... and expensive. I needed three feet of the stuff. It was only $2.06 per foot but their minimum length was 10' and they have a minimum order of $20. By the time they slapped on the shipping the total came out to a little over $42.00, or $14/foot for the two 18" pieces that I actually needed. Living large??
- After supper's trip was to the Colonnade LA Fitness where I accidentally did a heavy slow instead of a light fast torso workout.
- Then to the Madison Center for the Arts to see my grand nephew play the violin. he is center in the picture. It was an excellent show with elementary string musicians up to 8th grade. It was my first time in the Madison Center for the Arts. I did not even know it existed.
- This evening I finished the installation of the new 100Ah Chins LiFePO4 "house" battery for my van by attaching the van's power to the Anderson connector that mates to the battery's Anderson connector.
First picture - old van: The first installation for the 60Ah LiFeMnPO battery with the shunt (the small wires are to the monitoring system on the dash) and 100A ANL fuse. This became much more complicated after I added a voltage-activated battery isolator (which did not work well with a lithium battery) with remote switch and a high-amperage manual cut-off switch.
Second picture - new van:
red Velcro strap to the top right is to hold the battery in place
80 A breaker
red wire is from the van's battery and alternator via an automatic isolator
black wire is to the van's chassis ground
shunt (the small wires are to the monitoring system on the dash)
orange wires are super flexible, abrasion resistant, and go to the new Chins 100Ah LiFePO4 battery
- Got to bed at 11:16 for 8:32 of sleep
Wed Dec 7 = Today was mostly preparing for my three minutes tonight at the Stir Crazy Comedy Club. Of course I pretty much got my routine down - a new one for the venue.
- I had a little more energy after an hour's nap.
- I ate my sandwich, cashews and banana on the way to Glendale. I had a salad at the comedy club.
- Stir Crazy over in Glendale was a lot of fun with a good audience as usual. Out of respect, since it was December 7th, in my routine I mentioned Pearl Harbor, thanked our military for their service and got a lot of laughs in 2:58. After the show I sold four t-shirts including an orange one for $20. Also it is the first time I wore my new red comedy T-Shirt (see the picture below).
- Here are the comedians who were on the show:
- After the show on the way home I stopped by LA Fitness for a legs workout,
poster trim
weekly trimming of my beard, eye brows and little quiff so I match my poster photos
and shower, which earned the Protein Frosty which I had when I got home.
- Got to bed at 11:45 for 8:03 of sleep
Thu Dec 8 = After the gym and supper I succumbed to my "If you can do it, you should." impulse and added these basic electricity formula graphics to my Definitions web page.
Electricity Circle
Ohms Law Triangle
Power Triangle
Energy in Joules (Watt-second) Triangle
Energy in KiloWatt-Hours (Thousand Watt-hours) Triangle
- Got to bed at 11:57
Fri Dec 9 = Today I did the big trip I have been putting together.
- At 2:40 I drove to
Harold and Bernadette
my EX-brother-in-law and his wife
's to visit and show off my new smart multimeter. They were delayed getting a prescription so I sat in my van and did my monthly blog rollover with, for the first time, my computer plugged into the inverter plugged into my new FiFePO4 battery. Chet and David (son and grandson) stopped by so we had a good visit.
- Then off to Mesa to visit with
George & Cindy
my younger brother and his wife who live in east Mesa, Arizona and have a mountain place in Christopher Creek
at Cindy's new rehab facility.
- Then northeast to meed Anne and the girls at Residence Inn and, with them, to Hallmark's Enchant Christmas to meed Becky (my niece) and her boys and a friend.
- It was a little cool (what do you expect in December?) but we did a lot of visiting and found all nine reindeer in the Reindeer Game. Some ice skated.
- Here you see the Enchant Christmas, the kids, the mothers and the old fogies.
- Got to bed at 11:48 for 8:00 of sleep
Sat Dec 10 = Today I was really tired and so drowsy that, when unable to function at the computer, I took three 12 minute naps (at about 11:30am, 2:30pm and 7:00pm). Disgusting! My body may be telling me that I need more than eight hours of sleep.
- Big project for today, in spite of the drowsiness, I got the back of my Christmas letter, with its 19 pictures, finished today. I included dates so you can find more details and higher resolution pictures in my blog if you wish.
- Got to bed at 11:37 for 8:11 of sleep
Sun Dec 11 = The deadly "But First" attacked again this morning. Before doing my comedy writing, and since the back of my Christmas letter was in an open window on my computer, I decided I should save the letter as a JPG image for this blog (see above). Of course I had to do some experimentation, to save time in the future, with resolutions and JPG compressions.
- What I learned from the experiments was that, at least for people in my Christmas letter (above), the best. resolution/file-size compromise for a website seems to be a width of 1120 (1120x1449 pixels) and 90% (10% compression). - Here's the test results, zoomed in, with file sizes to the left and resolutions and zoom percentages above each sample:
- All day, I never got around to my joke writing :( but I did work on my Christmas letter.
- Also, I researched multimeter probes and probe adapters for alligator clips and spring-loaded connection hooks.
- In all one fell swoop this evening, I downloaded my bank statement and got it resolved :) I also signed in for a urology appointment later this week. I did it on my cell phone. It took three tries because I got dumped off of their website trying to upload pictures of my health insurance card. Each time they made me start all over from the very beginning.
- Just before bed, I did a brief light fast legs workout here in my home gym.
- Got to bed at 11:02 for 8:46 of sleep
Mon Dec 12 = A little technical here: Google sent me notice that it crawled my March 2016 web page four days ago (12/8) and, today, detected a broken video. It was a March 17th video for my Iriscan document scanner. I solved the problem by removing the video link.
- Also in a link from their email they said, "Duplicate without user-selected canonical." Evidently this indicates that Google found duplicate URLs that I do not have referred to a preferred version so Google didn't index these duplicate URLs, and assigned a canonical version on their own. This is beyond my pay grade. I am not aware of any duplicate URLs on my website and, from what I understand, it has been taken care of.
- The Booking Game goes Big Time (see The Super Mario Effect video, Nov 18th). I got out my roller ruler for parallel lines and made the perfect sheet, I thought. However when I scanned it the lines were too light to print. Anyway they weren't exactly spaced (the upper sheet below).
- So I decided tonight's project would be to create the sheet electronically with Libre Office Draw the lower sheet below). The lines are exactly spaced for 17 challenges and rows for a month. When the lines were too light to print, it was a piece of cake to make them a little thicker. Also if I need to change something, I won't have to re-do the whole thing.
- Got to bed at 11:18 for 8:29 of sleep
Tue Dec 13 = After driving all the way to north Scottsdale to my urologist and walking up to check in, I was informed that I'd have to reschedule... again, with his next availability in January 2023. They scheduled me for today after they canceled me back in August. It turns out that I was just waisting my time this morning taking a bath and putting on clean underwear. They said Dr. Bernard Gburek had a last minute emergency surgery. He must be good, but not good for me if I can't get in to see him for five months. I scheduled to see a different urologist on Monday.
- With a little extra time on my hands due to the cancellation, I stopped by Mountainside Fitness for brief, light, fast arms and legs workouts and my favorite car wash for their basic touchless automatic wash. Gotta have my van clean for this afternoon's appointment to fix the drivers' sliding door. It does not latch properly.
- It was cloudy at noon but there was just enough sun by 3pm so I lay in it for 24 minutes, although that is not the best time for vitamin D.
- This afternoon my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
was not cooperating so I am doing part of this blog on my little
The little 10" computer I bought in 2016 to get me by in Tobago after my Dell XPS died. It's tight, with only 2gb RAM and a 32gb SSD hard drive, but the 128gb micro SD card I have in it helps. T
.
- After an update the XPS sat around rebooting for five hours and never getting past the Dell logo. I held my breath when I did a forced stop. It then started normally after two more reboots.
- At 3:30pm I went to Ken Garf Kia to see about the sliding door problem. At this point there were two unexpected problems. 1) My appointment was scheduled for 1:30pm and 2) the door worked perfectly. I rescheduled for Friday.
- Things got mixed up around here today.
This morning I finished mixing three pints of the concoction that I use on my turkey sandwiches:
BBQ sauce
minced and powdered onions
black pepper
This evening I mixed up six batches of my Wednesday post-workout protein frosties.
I mixed up my appointment with Ken Garf for my Kia (see above).
The little 10" Windows 10 computer I bought to get me by in Tobago in 2017 after my Dell laptop died. It's tight, with only 2gb RAM and a 32gb SSD hard drive, but the 128gb micro SD card I have in it helps.
configured as a bonafide backup to maintain my website by adding CoreFTP to it. That took some doing!
- Got to bed at 11:30 for 8:17 of sleep
The little 10" Windows 10 computer I bought to get me by in Tobago in 2017 after my Dell laptop died. It's tight, with only 2gb RAM and a 32gb SSD hard drive, but the 128gb micro SD card I have in it helps.
, updated its version of my blog and updated its icons for my website to - This is the first day I officially used The Booking Game and earned a record score of 87.
- I wasted some time this evening, but hey, everyone needs to relax! You guessed it... on the Internet. I watched some of Jonathan Winters with Johnie Carson and these five minutes of unbelievable bicycle stunts by Danny MacAskill in San Fransisco. They did not even edit out all of his falls. Danny just got up and tried again.
- Got to bed at 11:15 for 8:33 of sleep.
Thu Dec 15 = What a positive change, going Pentacle Dermatology and seeing a new dermatologist. It was one of the easiest check ins yet, all done on an iPad. Dr Frank Tobin was personable and did my semiannual skin check more thoroughly (he checked EVERYTHING) than they ever did at Affiliated Dermatology. Scheduling was much easier and their office is closer to my house.
- On the way home I stopped by Mountainside Fitness for a workout.
- At home I made my Google Drive shopping list in preparation for the next thing on my schedule:
- Shopping with Joann under the auspices of
. It went pretty smoothly and both of us enjoyed our shopping experience.
- With so much today I did not have much time to work on comedy bookings, so I only scored 16 on The Booking Game.
- The big project this evening was to fill out an online application to renew my Global Entry which expires next year. As usual, it was more complicated than expected. When I got everything completed, the government website repeatedly said, "There was an error with the server. Please try again in a few minutes. If you still need help, contact us." Of course the website never worked and they did NOT say how to contact them. All that put me to bed late.
- Got to bed at 11:37 for 8:00 of sleep
Fri Dec 16 = First thing this morning I canceled by Ken Garf Kia appointment. The van's left sliding door is working correctly, although for the past three month it has not been latching properly, the van thinks the door is still open and the the doors will not lock. Also if I drive, the van it will give a continuous alert. I have to push the back of the door to latch it. I think the problem may be a hot-weather one.
- At the government website I finished my renewal application for Global Entry. Fortunately the website had saved all my data so the process wasn't too difficult.
- In the booking department, I got all my scheduling challenges completed today and scored 148 on The Booking Game. Trying to keep it a game, I don't have "tasks" or earn "points" but have "challenges" and "score" (no not that kind of score. Shame on you!). Booking a March show at the Moose lodge in Lemon Grove, California, alone, added 20 to my score.
-EōS Fitness was my gym target today where I got two new comedy fans:
Drake G; EōS Fitness; Phoenix AZ; 12/16/22
Chase M; EōS Fitness; Phoenix AZ; 12/16/22
- Got to bed at 11:26 for 8:22 of sleep
Sat Dec 17 = Today I scored 48 on The Booking Game, without booking any new shows.
- This evening's project was to get a good quality video of the intro to my appearance on Delmarva Life back on July 13th before WBOC pulls it off their website. Firefox browser's video helper was no help, I saw no way for VLC to download the segment and my CyberLink Screen Recorder could not keep up with the full motion video... until I closed all programs and did a fresh reboot of my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 laptop computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
. The best I had before this was poor video and terrible audio that I recorded with a camcorder aimed at a computer screen.
- Tonight I finished watching the Saturday Night Live show from a few weeks ago that was hosted by Steve Martin and Martin Short.
- Got to bed at 11:36 for 8:12 of sleep
Sun Dec 18 = For the last few nights, one time when I get up to pee, I have been practicing juggling briefly. At 2am this morning I set a JUGGLING RECORD of seven catches.
- It is not often I wade into the weeds of the CSS (cascading style sheet) file on my website, but today I did it, to easily get images to center on a web page. This way should future proof it for HTML5. After about an hour, it did not work for me. so I just used a non-breaking spaces to move the logos over to the right a little on my Comedy Home Page.
- At noon I wasn't fast enough to get on Stir Crazy' open mic on Wednesday.
- This is the way talk radio works: Amazingly I got in by phone to the Leo LaPorte, the Tech Guy
radio show. That's the good news. The not so good news is that he ran out of time before he got to me so I did not get on the air... and I would have been the last caller of the last hour of the last show of the year and Leo's last radio show. He is retiring from live radio, but continuing his podcast. It will be more relaxed as a podcast with Mikah Sergent on Sundays, starting January 8th. A link for that is at My Favorite Talk Show Hosts .
- The management company for our HOA doesn't seem to think they should have to follow our CC&Rs. I think they were unethical, fining me for not repainting my house before they even told me that they wanted me to do it. After no success through previous phone calls and email, today I composed a 3/4 page letter which I sent by certified mail, signature and return receipt requested. I'm a very slow writer, but think I did a pretty good job without being too negative.
- Yea, my Global Entry/Trusted Traveler/TSA PreCheck was approved today, in two days... without an interview. Filling out their online form was kind of a pain, but now just watch me sail through the TSA and Immigration lines :)
- For a brief, light, fast legs workout the site was Planet Fitness - my first visit there in 103 days, according to their computer. Since it was cold I wore shoes, which kept their shoe policeman off my back.
- I sort of got in trouble this evening. I came up with the idea for
Cindy
my younger brother George's wife
to join in a possible family Christmas get-together. I would cover the expenses and logistics of getting her from her assisted living home. First thing was to check with a nurse to see if it was doable. The nurse was George's daughter. George was unhappy with me, feeling I had bypassed him. In retrospect, I should have contacted him first about my idea. He said it was not workable.
- I was so busy doing other things that I only scored 5 on The Booking Game.
- Got to bed at 11:02 for 8:37 of sleep, which is pretty close to my current goal of sleeping 8:40
Mon Dec 19 = This morning I saw my new urologist, Dr Goldman. We seemed to click. At this point my voiding is slow and not complete with a residual of 218cc, but a livable situation for me.
- On the way home I stopped by Mountainside Fitness for a brief fast light arms workout, a post office to send the certified letter I wrote yesterday to our HOA management company and Fry's to pick up my prescription for a spacial shampoo that my new dermatologist said would take care of the scalp flakiness that I didn't know I had.
- Today I scored 96 on The Booking Game. Twenty were for getting a show confirmed on Apr 8th for an American Legion in El Paso. Of course I immediately added it here on my website.
- Today I watch two of my favorite comedians. James Cordon with Jimmy Fallon on last night's Tonight Show. James is leaving The Late Late Show on CBS.
- Got to bed at 11:29 for 8:19 of sleep
Tue Dec 20 = I tried something new this morning. At about 9:50 when I got too drowsy to function at my computer, unusual this early, instead of doing something more active, I took a 10 minute nap. The rest of the day I got a little drowsy but did not take another nap.
- I worked on my comedy writing today, stretching out my required 10 minutes
- Planet Fitness, North Phoenix, phoned in response to the feedback they requested in an email. I thanked them for reading my feedback. I should have told the gal that "being chased out of your club" because of wearing my sandals was an overstatement.
- There was barely enough red thread - actually I had about four inches left. This evening I sewed the sleeves up two turns on my new red, blue and yellow Comedy T-Shirts. That was my reward for getting my kitchen island cleared off... mostly.
- Tonight I went out to LA Fitness for a light fast torso workout. It made me feel good by being out with people - especially by getting this new fan, who is proud to be an Apache.
Marty Cassadore; LA Fitness; N Phoenix, AZ; 12/20/22
- My score for today was 109 on The Booking Game.
- Got to bed at 11:35 for 8:13 of sleep
Wed Dec 21 = Today I focused on making Tour Booking contacts; mostly by phone, scoring 108 on The Booking Game - It was a beautifully clear sunny Phoenix day for my sunning at solar noon. The 45-degree air temperature kept me comfortable without a spray bottle.
- I found a Thursday open mic at the
Wayward Tap House on Grand Avenue, so put it on my schedule. It will count as a new venue because I haven't appeared there before, although I did appear there when it was called Third Space.
- Yea, I finished writing my Christmas letter. Don't you think it's about time?
- This evening's trip was to LA Fitness for the usual brief slow heavy legs workout,
poster trim
weekly trimming of my beard, eye brows and little quiff so I match my poster photos
, shower and protein frosty. For the workout I wore my "winter" workout shirt (pictured below). It is my first comedy workout shirt. I had it made by the Deep Blue T-Shirt store the same day I designed the logo there on
, about nine years ago. Mike here at the gym became my newest fan:
Mike "Sano" Anchrum; Moon Valley LA Fitness; 12/21/22
- On the way home I went by Fry's for some coupon savings. I tried to speed things up with my coupons by going to a regular checkout instead of the self-checkout. Turns out that was mistake. My coupons did not register because the clerk did not put in my phone number. It took over 10 minutes for another clerk to get everything straightened out.
- Something weird happened with my left ear when I got home. Nothing I could think of would have caused it. About 9:30pm I heard tinnitus and was almost totally deaf in that ear. It was sort of like when an ear is waterlogged. I did take a shower so did all the normal things to eliminate water in the ear. The ear did not improve
- Got to bed at 11:39 for 8:09 of sleep
Thu Dec 22 = By morning I was able to hear a little with my left ear, although it sounded scratchy, especially with loud sounds. I figured it should be looked at by a professional, so I made an urgent appointment with my doctor.
- This afternoon my doctor found nothing unusual about my left ear - no wax buildup etc. They did a little hearing test with a tone generator and found both ears about equal. I was hearing 1000 Hz but not 500 or 2000. He initiated a referral to an ENT, who I will plan on seeing after the holidays if the situation has not improved.
- Some how I forgot to upload tonight's comedy event to my website, and I have told a lot of people that they can find it there.
- This evening's trip started out to Albertson's to find that they were out of blackberries on sale.
- Then to 99¢ Onllyfor two bunches of their overripe bananas.
- Next was Joe Cool's ARCO to fill with gas in preparation for driving to Flagstaff to visit my daughter and her family.
- The
Wayward Tap House on Grand Avenue was the comedy stop for the evening. It was my first time there since it was Third Space. I remembered all nine topics of my new routine... in order, although my bit about Keke Palmer's wardrobe was a little rough.
- On the way home I stopped by Winco Foods for English Muffins for Christmas in Flagstaff and peanut butter for my daughter. Winco's peanut grinder was not working, so I got the lead guy to temporarily switch it to another outlet that was working.
- No time for a gym visit today.
- Got to bed at 11:06 for 8:42 of sleep
Fri Dec 23 = This morning I got my Christmas cards and letter in the mail. I had EXACTELY the number of cards I needed and plenty of stamps after raiding my stamp stashes and my wallet. I had enough for all the envelopes and four left over.
- Today was low key for booking comedy shows. I figured some possible venues to contact, only scoring 26 on The Booking Game - In spite of getting my goal of sleep last night I took a nap with my alarm set for 30 minutes, thinking it would be alright if I woke up early due to being rested. I didn't and was soundly sawing logs when my alarm went off.
- My office light quit working this afternoon, an LED IP66 Flood Light by GLORIOUS-LITE from Amazon. It is still under warranty but I could find no way to contact them. All I need is another project!
- It was convoluted, but I finally was able to send a message and image of the non-working light to GL Lighting through the Amazon Marketplace. They replied that they will send me a replacement.
- The temporary solution for the office was to move an identical, but working, LED light from the kitchen array to my office. I won't be quite as bright... in the kitchen for a while.
- The short trip this evening was to Albertson's to find they are still out of the blueberries and blackberries that are on sale and to Anytime Fitness for a brief slow heavy arms workout.
- Two big website projects tonight: First, I added this new SOC (state of charge) table, here on my Technology web page, for my new van "house" battery. Where it applies to me, I want to keep my LiFePO4 "house" battery between 13.1v and 13.2v (60%-70% charged) when it is not being used. Between 13.0 and 13.3 (40%-80% charged) would be OK, but not ideal.
- Second, I added my July interview on WBOC TV here to my press kit:
- The video will be good until WBOC removes it from YouTube video. I hope I notice when that happens so I can upload the video from my spare stash.
- Got to bed at 11:26 for 8:21 of sleep
Sat Dec 24 = I did not booking today, but the day's project took pretty much the whole day, and into the evening. It was final editing of the top video (Tybee Island, GA) from my Annual Veterans Appreciation National Tour, which was from the first part of April to the first part of August this year.
- What took so long was having to re-sync and produce three of the cameras' videos to combine their segments into single files, before I could begin editing. That will no longer be a problem, with my four new Sony HDRCX405 camcorders. Also there was a syncing problem with Camera #2. That, also, should not be a problem in the future with my new Sony HDRCX405 camcorders.
Some things would have improved the video
Tucking the lanyard for my body mic into my T-Shirt collar at the back
Using my own PA system, which would have worked during the video segments
Zooming Camera #1 in less, to include the thigh, to capture more gestures & reduce jerkiness
Zooming in camera #3 more
Aiming Camera #3 farther back in the audience
Starting camera #3 before the show
Replacing cell cameras #2 and #3 with regular camcorders
Using four identical camcorders that each record the whole show as one file (now done)
- Before supper I went toEōS Fitness for a brief slow heavy torso workout.
- This evening I gave myself some hearing tests using my Casio keyboard and high resolution ear buds. Some results for my left ear were:
When I pressed the ear bud into the ear it went deaf, hearing less than 1%
Left ear was generally weaker that R ear, especially in the higher and lower frequencies
Mid frequencies, I could hear almost normally
Starting at 1046 Hz I started hearing an additional higher harmonic
Starting at 1568 Hz I could not hear the tone, but only inconsistently pitched harmonics
High frequency phonemes, like "s" are inaudible or result in a high pitch scratchy sound like a loudspeaker with a bad voice coil
Low frequencies, down to 65 Hz were OK, but quieter than right ear
Cupping hands from mouth to ear resulted in a high pitch scratchy sound like a loudspeaker with a bad voice coil
No pain has been experienced
- Got to bed at 11:13 for 8:34 of sleep
Sun Dec 25 = Merry Christmas! - a full day.
- I got everything all packed up for the trip to see my daughter and her family in Flagstaff, then lay in the sun for 20 minutes, then tried to get booked for Stir Crazy's Wednesday open mic, then packed up my computer and took off for Flagstaff, eating a light lunch on the way.
- In Flagstaff we had a good time with just family: Anne's and
Rose Anne
My X wife who lives in Payson by a lake
. We got a lot of visiting done, ate our ham and stuff, went for a walk down to the nearby lake, had desert and did more visiting. After sunset we went in my van and watched a pretty spectacular light show at a neighborhood house.
- When I got back home here in Phoenix, I had time to add a LiFePO4 SOC chart to my Technology web page and update this blog. I should have called it quits but got a text from Anne that Katie left her water bottle in my van so I prepared a package with it for UPS and also multimeter leads to return to Amazon. That means I...
- Got to bed at 12:18 for 7:29 of sleep :(
Mon Dec 26 = The idea this morning was to get out early before the Christmas cards were all picked over, and also to get ship Katie's water bottle and the test leads early in the day.
- First stop was UPS to find that they were closed, celebrating Christmas. Second stop was to Safeway to find that they were out of blueberries and blackberries, both on sale.
- Third stop was to Big Lots where I bought 2 packages of 16 identical Christmas cards for next year at 15.6 ¢ per card. Then to Winco where I will be shopping for Christmas cards in the future. They had a much better variety of boxes. I bought three boxes of 12 cards for 12.4 ¢ per card.
- Fourth stop was to LA Fitness for brief light fast legs and arms workouts. Fifth stop was Fry's for blueberries on sale.
- Late yesterday I put my occasional load of laundry in the washing machine. Since I have an older top-loader, I've found a way for things come out clean and bright (or white) with a mixed load in cold water. I set the machine to fill, agitate then soak for a while with plane water and a Shout ColorCatcher. Then drain and spin the water and fill and agitate, adding soap about half way through the agitation and then soak again - in this case until late this morning when I put the load through the rest of a normal wash cycle.
- Thank goodness for backups. Today I "lost" the primary video from my most important show in Vienna Austria. After retrieving the video from a backup drive, I got the show produced and uploaded this afternoon to YouTube.
- Here is the video. Samantha had sent me her cell phone recording. That came in handy. When one of the comedian gals was blocking my primary camera I could switch to Sam's video.
- This will be the last time videoing my comedy using cell phones, thanks to my matching Sony camcorders.
- Got to bed at 11:11 for 8:36 of sleep
Tue Dec 27 = Amazon delivered a sort-of heavy package this afternoon. I couldn't think of anything I had ordered. Turns out it was a two-pack of Glorious-Lite IP66, 100w LED lights. One of mine went out last week, was still under warranty, so they replaced it with two! The second one will make a good spare. Thank you, GL Lighting (Amazon seller)
- I got accepted for a New Faces Of Comedy show in January so added it to my Future appearances.
Sun Jan 22, 2023; 7:00pm;
Stand Up Live; 50 W Jefferson St, #200; Phoenix, AZ 85003
For FREE ADMISSION, before 6:30, tell the box office that you are there to see Arizona Lou or show this ticket on your phone.
- Old is new with some of tonight's projects. First I fired up my old trusty Dymo 280 and printed out stickers with the new show information to stick over the show information from over two years ago. The stickers personalize the physical tickets that Stand Up Live supplies for us comedians.
- Second was using sew-on Velcro from a 20 year old kiteboard leash ankle strap to hold a newly designed mouse holder. If it works out like it is supposed to, I'll be able to stow and retrieve my mouse without opening up my computer bag. My sewing machine helped with this project.
Efficient Decision Making: Make decisions faster with confidence; Ideas by Damon Zahariades
Deadline - Set at minutes, hours or days depending on the nature of the decision.
Habit - Create for routine decisions so you don't have to decide, like what shirt to wear.
Stop Information incoming or gathering. Limit your research.
What's the worst that can happen with a poor decision? If it is not the end of the world, who cares?
Lou's addition: INTENTIONALLY make an occasional imperfect decision, just for spite.
- Just before going to bed I started backing up my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 laptop computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
with EaseUS. Of course EaseUS had to be updated first.
- Got to bed at 11:42 for 8:06 of sleep
Wed Dec 28 = This morning I sent out 488 Mail Chimp emails announcing these two shows. Within 6 minutes, six recipients had opened the emails. It would be cool if they also come to the shows.
Wed Dec 28 ,2022; 7:00pm;
El Charro Hipster; 1325 NW Grand Ave; Phoenix, AZ 85007 - Open Mic
Sun Jan 22, 2023; 7:00pm;
Stand Up Live; 50 W Jefferson St, #200; Phoenix, AZ 85003
For FREE ADMISSION, before 6:30, tell the box office that you are there to see Arizona Lou or show this ticket on your phone.
- Shortly after, when preparing for my afternoon/evening trip, I found that Charro Hipster is closed until next year. Since I had invited quite a few people to come to the show, if they did, I would personally give them a show. So I drove the 21 miles just in case anyone showed up for the 7:00pm show. I wasn't very smart. I ordered a Caesar salad at the next-door vegan place and sat inside at one of their front tables where I could see anyone who came to El Charro Hipster... I thought.
- On the way home I stopped by the Colonnade LA Fitness for a heavy arms workout and to pass out some of my Stand Up Live Show tickets.
- After I got back home, my comedian friend, Liz Frisius texted me that she was at El Charro Hipster at 7:04 and missed me. Instead of eating my salad inside I should have eaten it at one of the outside tables. Sorry Liz.
- Got to bed at 11:10 for 8:37 of sleep
Th Dec 29 = In the finance department I opened a brokerage account at Charles Swab.
- It was cloudy most of the day so I got no sun
- Aldi was out of green seedless grapes on sale for 88¢ a pound so I went to Safeway and bought red seedless grapes for 97¢ a pound.
- Although it is not my nature, Safeway is where I decided I had to be more aggressive in telling people about my upcoming comedy show. I decided I would not leave Safeway until I gave five tickets to people who were interested. I got rid of five tickets and got four new fans!
Donni Walls; N Phoenix Safeway; Phoenix AZ 12/29/22
Sean Pascoe; N Phoenix Safeway; Phoenix AZ 12/29/22
Hash and Hector Vargas; N Phoenix Safeway; Phoenix AZ 12/29/22
- On the way out of the parking lot I saw some guys setting up a fireworks tent. Got three more new fans and gave away more tickets :)
Mike Zink; 7 St & Bell Fireworks; Phoenix AZ 12/29/22
Mike Zink & Jerrin Parker; 7 St & Bell Fireworks; Phoenix AZ 12/29/22
- After accomplishing that feat, I went to LA Fitness with the same ticket mission, plus a brief slow torso workout.
- Actually I enjoy bantering with people about my show tickets and being on my fan web page. I can't be in a rush when doing it though because it does take time.
- Got to bed at 12:04 for 7:44 of sleep.
Fri Dec 30 = There wasn't much sun with the clouds, but I needed the vitemin D so got a little sun about 11:30am.
- Down in Sunnyslope, my ENT doctor found nothing unusual about my left ear and the audiologist there, after extensive tests in a sound-proof booth, determined that I can hear better in my right ear. What a surprise!
- On the way home from the doctor's, I stopped at the N 7 St Anytime Fitness and then the 3 St & Bell Planet Fitness, splitting a brief, light fast legs workout between the two gyms. Why two gyms? So I could make more people laugh... and give them show tickets if they were interested.
- This evening I added the 10 new fans from yesterday and today to my Fan Webpage giving me 346 fans so far.
- Evidently I did some poor planning because I stayed up late working on this blog.
- Got to bed at 12:06 for only 7:42 of sleep :(
Sat Dec 31 = To make up for lost sleep, this afternoon I took a 54-minute nap.
- The fun part of today was this afternoon, going to EōS Fitness for a workout, giving out 10 ticket to people interested in going to my show in three weeks and then to Albertson's to buy a grapefruit and give out about 10 more tickets.
- What a big gnarly project. After a couple weeks of searching I found how to put a line over a letter in HTML. That was important to me because I did not know how to properly display the correct name of one of my favorite gyms. You have to use "EōS Fitness" to get "EōS Fitness." So I did a multi-file case sensitive search/replace to change 19 occurrences in my blogs from October and on my Fans web page. I about strained my brain but probably staved off Alzheimer's for an extra week or so.
- This evening I added the eight fans from today to my website:
Dominic Parker, Ivan Alvarado, Moses Thurman; Cactus EōS Fitness, Phoenix AZ 12/31/22
Angelo Berdicchia; Cactus EōS Fitness, Phoenix AZ 12/31/22
Danny DeEscarcega; Cactus EōS Fitness, Phoenix AZ 12/31/22
Nereida & Miguel Correa; Cactus EōS Fitness, Phoenix AZ 12/31/22
Adrian Felix; Cactus EōS Fitness, Phoenix AZ 12/31/22
- I celebrated the new year early in the evening by incrementing the copyright date on this website and cleaning my toilets.
- I have started clearing my floors in preparation for a Roomba J7+ robotic vacuum cleaner that I plan to order this coming week.
- Got to bed late because, you guessed it, working on my website. I HAD to update this blog and put my new fans up.
- Got to bed at 11:44pm for 8:04 of sleep
- Here is Google's map of my travels during 2022. The travels included 4 countries, 181 cities, 644 places and 30,550 miles (equal to 1.2 times around the world).
