November 26th

Today was Thanksgiving, when a nation currently scared of Syrian immigrants celebrates when they were all immigrants and were taken in by the locals.

Vic was cooking, so I left her to it and painted the remaining 2 wheels on the van.  It was deathly cold, so I ended up peeling the wheels and respraying them when it warmed up a little, as the paint wasn't too happy to be out either.  The backs were OK, it was just the fronts that needed redoing, and they're all nice and clean now, so it didn't take too long to do.

We discovered that the TV doesn't like getting a 480p signal (from a DVD) on its 2160p input, so I switched it back to an HDMI 1.4 input.  I _can_ do 2160p, I just don't have a reason to just yet (we have nothing that outputs 2160p.  Yet).

In the evening, we watched "Max".  Tilly was very taken with it, but it was a stupid movie.

November 25th

I still couldn't get the new GT730 to install, so I took the PC apart again, and cleaned everything out.  The drivers installed, and the PC immediately changed the resolution to 3840x2160, and Media Center immediately whined that that seemed like a lot.  It works though, so I'll see how it does before (maybe) changing it to an HDMI 1.4 socket on the TV.

November 24th

The fan on the graphics card in the home theatre system has been getting louder and louder, so I was looking to replace it.  I found that the nVidia GT7xx cards can fake 2160p without needing HDMI 2.0 (which is a 9xx feature), so I bought a GT730.  It arrived, so I took the PC apart, installed it, then went through the driver installation process about 50 times.  It's obviously working, as I can see the screen, but it's not loading the nVidia drivers.  I think it's something to do with it installing the default VGA drivers, as it's saying it can't find an nVidia card at all.  The problem is that each time I try with the drivers that the card came with, it downloads 280+Mb, so the process is slow.  I left the PC running a chkdsk /f and went to bed.

November 22nd

I finished stripping and repainting one wheel on the van, and took another off and got that one done too.  I'm leaving the van on a jack stand for the moment while the wheel dries out properly.

November 21st

I went over to the airfield and flew with Mike.  We went and looked at a yard full of old cars, he pointed out a marijuana farm, we chased birds and saw the colours changing along the Feather River.

When we got back, I went over to the pancake breakfast.  It was at the end of the session, so I ended up cooking my own damn breakfast / brunch / lunch, and cooked for a couple of other people who were also waiting.

November 20th

We watched "Jurassic World", and it was OK, even though Chris Pratt wasn't a funny guy.

November 18th

I went to the EAA meeting and got voted back on to the board of directors.  I'd have been happy to be replaced :o)

November 17th

The latest wheel I've painted does have droops, but you just peel the paint off, so I did that.  I'll try again when I have the time to do it properly :o)

November 16th

I put the painted wheel on the van, and cleaned up the one I've taken off.  I painted it, but I was in too much of a hurry in the cold, so it looks like there'll be droops.  We'll see how it comes out.

November 15th

We went over to the airfield so I could replace the compass (that seems sticky) with a new one.  We went and swung the compass so it's about as accurate as it's going to get, but it was way to windy to fly.

I painted one of the wheels on the van with this plasti-dip paint, just to see how it came out.  It looks good, but it'll take quite a while to dry.

In the evening we watched "Terminator: Genisys", which, despite the awful spelling, was pretty good.

November 14th

I started the day at the airfield, doing 90 minutes with Mike the instructor, who wouldn't shut up about being cold :o)  When I left him so he could go and get warm, I tinkered about with a few things on the plane before giving up and heading home.

November 11th

Today was Veteran's Day, so the government gets the day off.  The rest of us don't though.

We watched "American Sniper" to get us in the mood.

November 8th

We watched the last MotoGP race from Valencia.  It was an interesting race, but meh.

November 7th

We went to the motorcycle show in Sacramento, and met up with Sandra and Cindy.  I haven't seen them since the YSR racing collapsed in on itself, back in 2003.

We enjoyed the show, and Vic found a jacket she quite liked.  It was $1500.

In the evening we watched "Spy".

November 5th

I've noticed the buttons on the sprinkler controller are very hard to get to do anything... to the point where I couldn't be bothered to update the clock.  I've now replaced it with a Rainmachine, so I can update the thing from my tablet, and it'll even look after turning off the sprinklers when it's raining.

November 4th

I went to the EAA board meeting.  I think I got away without having anything new on my "to do" list :o)

November 3rd

We watched the very silly "San Andreas".  I tried to see the office, in flames, but we were on the wrong side of the ball park.

November 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated

The clocks went back, so I spent some time going around the house (and garage) setting those all right.  Tilly was most upset about her breakfast being late, but what are you going to do?

It rained on and off, so I spent the day just sodding about in the house.

October 31st

We drove to Vallejo to meet Vic's niece.  Tilly came along, as it was a nice day out.