Good Morning!!!! 70F @ 10:15AM. Abundant sunshine. High 86F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
AQI 55 and 117, inside and out. Weatherman cautioned that less wind means more smoke. Fire jumped containment on the southern border east of here yesterday afternoon, and there was a constant stream of airplanes and helicopters overhead shuttling between it and the airport in Chico. More work for them today, as they still don't have the upper hand. As a result, another round of evacuations went into effect in that area.
Got a call back from a Rigol tech support guy yesterday, and spent nearly an hour with him talking about AC current measurements and how the data acquisition part of their oscilloscopes works. He was optimistic I could get the results I need, but it'll still mean wading through a lot of data in a spreadsheet before finding the transient part of interest. I was able to use the open source OpenOffice application on a Mac laptop to look at a file from the previous scope that Apple's Numbers application said was too big to handle, so there's hope there. Need more tutoring on how the charting works in OpenOffice, though, before I get the plot I want. Rigol is also having a sale on their hobbyist 'scope, and promoting it with a 5-year warranty. It's only got two channels, but that's probably one more than I really need, and a generous 24 million data point memory depth, much bigger than the one in the scope I sent back. Should be here next week, as Rigol's offices are just across the state line in Oregon.
While I was fooling with that, I started hearing a Stellar Jay's racket somewhere outside the door. I walked slowly up to it and found it in the bird bath, very much enjoying itself. The birdbath is being kept full courtesy of a leaky valve on that part of the whole house sprinkler system, which I found easier to "repair" by strategically repositioning the bird bath than taking apart the valve to remove whatever's propping it slightly open. I call that a win-win situation.
Spotted a trio of mountain bluebirds out on the solar panel rack as I was sipping a beer on the back porch. Don't believe I've ever seen that many together before. Could they be migrating?
Probably gonna take another swing at the alternator warning light issue on the van today, starting with removing the belt on the alternator to check its bearings. The A/C compressor is driven by the same belt, and I've had to tighten it several times to keep it from slipping. My fear is it's too tight for good bearing life, at least as far as the alternator is concerned.
Hope everyone enjoys the weekend and what promises to be some fine fall weather.
