Saturday, Stuff in boxes

Mom stayed up last night playing Solitaire, so she didn't get up today until quite late. I worked on the spread sheet for the new plates. Once she was up, we were able to get several things started.

We went thru one of the two boxes in the garage of dishes. Mom had little things to say about some of the dishes, but not much.

After going thru that box, she went thru a clear plastic box that seemed to have old dish towels and other old rags. She found two "bonnets" and kept them. I will re-use or re-cycle the rest.

John and Karen came over and talked for awhile; we agreed to have Sunday dinner tomorrow with them after church.

Then we went out. First to Hollywood Treasures, an antique mall on 7th street. We wandered around for about an hour looking at things. Quite a few things elicited comments like "I have one of those" or "My Mom used to have one like that". They had a fair number of collectible plates; I didn't see any bottles. But this might be an outlet for some of the dishes in the box we went thru today -- we have another bigger one for tomorrow.

Then we stopped by Fred Meyer and got rid of Mom's bags of bottles -- $3.65! -- and got a roast chicken for dinner. Lots of leftovers.

After dinner, we watched the DVD of our old home movies. John had said earlier that it seemed that the audio clips often just stopped, and I noticed the same. I should check the master at home to see if this is a production problem (me) or with the duplicator.

Also, it occurred to me that the film that Dad took in Korea might be somewhat rare. There were certainly journalists and professional military photographers in Korea, but Mom says that Dad asked her to send him a camera and he had never used one before. So this is raw amateur footage of the Korean War from the point of view of a particular Army draftee. There couldn't have been very many such. We should look at donating it to an appropriate museum or something.

It being New Year's Eve, the neighborhood was lit up with fireworks. Blue did not like that at all and had to be drugged to go to sleep.

Friday, Reorganizing the Plates

While we were at the EWEB offices, we borrowed a "Kill-a-Watt" device. These plug into an outlet, and provide an outlet. It measures how much power is being used. So I unplugged the refrigerator and plugged in the Kill-a-Watt, then plugged the fridge into the Kill-a-Watt. After a couple of days, it showed that we had used about 23 cents of electricity. So roughly, the fridge costs 10 cents a day.

The computer was 19 cents (2.33 kilo-watt-hours) for 2 days. This is for the way I use it -- turn it on in the morning and then off before I go to bed, using is off and on during the day, for e-mail, to look things up on the web, word, spread sheet, ...

We returned the Kill-a-Watt to the EWEB offices today; it's a two-week max check-out. My conclusion was that Mom uses relatively little energy, except for heat. That also shows up in the energy usage chart from EWEB for her place. Notice that it goes to about 500 kilo-watt-hours per month in the Summer; that's her base usage.

I re-packed the plates in the garage. While we were out, I picked up a couple of left-over cardboard boxes at Walmart that looked like they would do well, and re-ordered the plates so that they would be consecutive by item number. Then I put them back in the boxes, so that there was no empty space from the ones we sold. These are all then on just the top shelves in the storage room.

After that I pulled out the Jim Beam bottles that would seem to have the least value -- 5 boxes of them, 48 bottles -- and posted them to Craig's List as "Free".

We got a reasonable response -- 4 responses in an hour and a half. So let's see if someone will actually pick them up. And why they would want them?

Thursday, Recycling

I installed two new grab bars for Mom. She has had one at each of the two doors that change the floor level: (1) from the office to the dining room, and (2) from the Sun room out to the back yard. I added a new one to the other side of each door. This gives her the freedom of choosing which hand to use, and/or to use both hands.

Also, I cleaned out the central part of the garage. This required a trip to the recycle center to unload mostly cardboard boxes. This will give me room to work in the garage.

Wednesday, Recovery

We are back in Eugene, after spending Christmas in Camas with Sue. The trip went pretty well.

On the way up, and on the way back, we stopped in Albany to get gas. Gasbuddy.com showed a Fred Meyer in Albany as having the best price on gas from Eugene to Portland, and it was right.

Sue was an excellent hostess and Christmas dinner with their friends meant lots of people to talk to. I didn't get out of her house for two days. Finally on Monday, I went out to Powell's and found a few books. This should give me plenty to read while I am here. I limited myself to only books that I wanted to read while here.

Today it has been cold and rainy all day. Mom is still working on her Christmas cards. I ran some errands to drop off some stuff at Goodwill and to get additional grab bars to install for Mom at the doors with steps. She has one for each of the two doors, but I will install one on the other side of the door way, so she can use either hand (or both) to help her up or down thru the doorway.

Also I worked on trying to clear up the aoldial.exe problem. There was a suggestion that the AOL icon in the drawer could be used to affect the settings for the AOL dialer, under the Connectivity menu item. Whether this is working or not, I don't know. If I select the Connect Options or the AOL Dialer Settings, neither seems to do anything.

I listed on eBay the complete set of Old Crow Ceramic Chessmen for sale.

Friday, Heading out

While we are up at Sue's, Blue will be at the doggie motel. So after breakfast, we bundled Blue and her bed into the car and took her out to the Willamette Valley Dog and Cat Motel.

On the way back, we stopped and filled Mom's car with gas. Then Mom decided she wanted to go over to the Holiday Market at the fair grounds. We wandered around and looked at things, then left, got some lunch and home.

Last night, I went to Jerry's to get a replacement for the power strip that Mom uses to turn on and off all the computer equipment. I figured this should be a surge protector, and since the process to using the computer is first to turn on the power strip, then to turn on the computer and when shutting down, first power off the computer, then turn off the power strip, it should be a power strip that would be easy for Mom to turn on and off. Jerry's had one that has a foot pedal switch, which might be easier for Mom than one turned on/off by hand.

This power strip has another little light that is labeled "ground", and the instructions say that this lights up when the unit is properly grounded. It doesn't light, which suggests that the outlet we are using, despite being a 3-prong outlet, only has two wires (power and common), not three wires (power, common, and ground). Checking the circuit breaker box, all of the wiring in the house is two-wire Romex -- very old Romex -- with the exception of two that might be 3-wire. These would probably be for the last addition -- the sun room. Bottom line is that the house needs to be completely re-wired. Current standards would mean that we should replace all the wiring -- lighting, outlets, appliances -- with new wiring. Since it appears everything goes up into the attic, even tho the house is pier and beam, this should be do-able. It just might take a month or so. I re-wired my old house (built in 1936) and added outlets and such. It was a major undertaking.

As soon as Mom is thru packing, we can leave to drive up to Sue's.

Thursday, Giving Blood

I gave blood today, and the lady that drained me, Gerine Snyder 747-1068, said she was starting an antiques store at an antiques mall on 7th street (near the Franklin/Jefferson bridge) called Hollywood Treasures. I will stop in after the holidays to see how things look and see if maybe this could be an outlet for some of the bottles and plates.

I gave blood 8 weeks ago in Texas, and 8 weeks from now should be back in Texas, so I figured I could try it up here. We leave for the Portland/Vancouver area tomorrow, so I could do it here or there. A check of web sites suggested that the Red Cross ran the blood centers in the Portland area, and it was difficult to figure out what, if anything, was going on there. I eventually ended up at Southwest Washington Blood Program which appears to be a web site that has not been updated since 2007. In Eugene, on the other hand, Google takes me to Lane Blood Center and they are having a Pint for Pint drive -- a pint of blood for a pint of beer! So I went there.

Wednesday, Shopping

Mom got up early today -- 8:00. Amazingly, by the time she had showered and gotten ready for the day, it was still 10:30.

But then we got out and did some shopping. Not going to say for whom.

Then we took some meat that Mom had bought (should have been used a couple days ago, but ...), and veggies and put it in the oven to roast. We used some left-over rice from the Chinese food a couple of days ago to make some rice pudding. All that is in the oven now.

This morning, while Mom was getting ready, I looked around and found another box for the plates in the garage. It was a long box -- 30 x 16 x 12 -- that was meant to hold recyclables, but was still wrapped up in cellophane, never used, and very dirty on the outside. So I cleaned it off, opened it up, folded it into a box, and it was perfect. It held all the remaining plates. So I glued it shut, put an address label on it and mailed it off. Postage cost $36.22 for a 28 lb, 10.2 oz box, plus $150 of insurance. This was a set of 22 plates:

A007	$1	COUGAR
A069	$1	AWAITING THE FIREBIRD
A071	$1	THE GOLDEN BRIDLE
A072	$2	THE GOLDEN CAGE
A090	$1	THE FOURTH OF JULY
A092	$1	SOPHIE
A093	$2	ALBERTINE
A094	$2	FRANCOISE
A126	$2	SCARLET
A127	$2	EDITH
A130	$1	MONARCH BUTTERFLIES
A131	$1	COLLETTE
A132	$2	MARLENE
A138	$2	SARAH
A151	$2	HELENE
A153	$4	NIGHT OPERATOR
A157	$1	IVANS CONQUEST
A162	$1	MALLARD
A176	$1	JOURNEY OF TSAREVICH EVAN/ELENA
A178	$1	IN SEARCH OF THE FIREBIRD
A179	$3	IVAN AND THE GREY WOLF
A187	$2	THE MAGNIFICENT FIREBIRD

which should total $36.00. Assuming it gets there okay, that would mean we paid 22 cents to sell these plates. All told, we should receive $185 for 48 plates which cost $93.58 to ship. This is just under $2 a plate for shipping, and suggests that we should not have bothered with the plates that we only got $1 for.

We should actually do better if the boxes are lost or damaged and we collect on the insurance.

But that is 48 plates gone, out of about 200.

Tuesday Post Office

Mom didn't get up until about 10 and it was 11:00 before she had her hearing aids in and was ready to start the day. After scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, I helped her go up into the attic. She wanted to see and select from the Christmas decorations, but was disappointed by what little was there. My intent is to clear out part of the garage, and bring everything down from the attic to prevent her from even wanting to go up anymore.

While she was sleeping this morning, I packed two boxes of plates. I tried to organize them to contain the most expensive plates first. Each offer was for a set of related plates, and there is a piece of paper that I printed at home for each offer. So I picked the groups that would fit into each box.

The first box has plates

A075	$3	SILENT NIGHT
A077	$8	A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN
A079	$5	TARA: SCARLETT'S TRUE LOVE
A080	$5	TARA: SCARLETT'S TRUE LOVE
A091	$2	BONAPARTE TRAVERSANT LES ALPS
A105	$4	WINTER-A BOY MEETS HIS DOG
A106	$10	SPRING-ADVENTURES BETWEEN ADVENTURES
A107	$6	SUMMER-A MYSTERIOUS MALADY
A108	$13	AUTUMN-PRIDE OF PARENTHOOD
A119	$14	SUMMER-FLYING HIGH
A121	$6	GAILY SHARING VINTAGE TIMES-WINTER
A122	$15	SWEET SONG SO YOUNG-SUMMER
A123	$13	FLOWERS IN TENDER BLOOM-SPRING
A124	$13	FONDLY DO WE REMEMBER-AUTUMN
A159	$3	SILENT NIGHT
A190	$5	LE DIVORCE
A195	$1	THE PILGRIMS THANKSGIVING
A196	$1	THE PILGRIMS THANKSGIVING

18 plates for a total of $127. This is 28 pounds in a 22x14x14 box.

The second box has

A073	$3	ST BASILS-MOSCOW
A082	$4	CASE OF THE FOLDING FANS
A129	$3	GRANDPA'S GIFT
A171	$4	THREE POOLS MIRRORING MOON
A173	$2	FLY-IN PEAK
A174	$2	ANCESTORS OF TEA
A177	$2	TWELVE MONTHS
A183	$2	PHOENIX MOUNTAIN

8 plates for a total of $22. This was 14 pounds, in a 17x11x11 box.

I tried to price things out on the internet web pages for USPS.com and UPS.com. It looked like the least expensive might be UPS ground for $30.42 for the larger one, so I took them them to a PostNet facility that the UPS site suggested as being closest. But the guy there said it was around $45. He commented that they were only a feeder to UPS and it should be less at the UPS store itself. The UPS store was just down the street, so I went on down there. That guy gave the same basic price. He said the PostNet store should have higher costs, and figured that the two of them were using different measurements, but then said that the size didn't matter and both of them where using the same weight -- 28 pounds, so he had no explanation.

But this was still much higher than the $30 I was expecting, and more than the $35 that the USPS web site said it would cost thru the postal service. So I went home and got a magazine to read and then went back to the post office. It actually went very quickly -- less than a half an hour. The big one cost $36.22 -- 28 lb, 0.4 oz -- slightly higher than expected. The smaller one was $21.14, again slightly higher than the $20.27 on the web page (14 lb, 1.0 oz). Maybe the extra ounce or less is what takes the price up. (yep, going back and computing it again, but 14+1 oz instead of just 14 lbs explains the difference).

But this raises a very significant problem. While the first box should return $127 for shipping costs of $36.22, a profit of $90, the second box should return $22 with a shipping cost of $21.14 -- a profit of 86 cents. While 86 cents is 86 cents, is this going to be cost effective? The average price per plate in the second box was $22/8 = 2.75, and so suggests that a plate with an offer of less than $3 does not justify the shipping.

On the other hand, it is also clear that with postage of $21 for 14 lbs and $36 for $28 lbs, the cost is non-linear. I should try to get a big box and put the most expensive plates into it. The first box had 18 plates, for a shipping cost of $2 per plate; the second box had 8 plates for a cost of $2.65 per plate. (Of course, the weight per plate for the first box was apparently smaller too.)

I also went to Jerry's and got some exterior flood lights to replace the 4 that were burned out.

And there were some stamps, French postage stamps from the 70's and 80's on wrappings around some of the plates, and I posted those on Craig's List and Nick came by and picked them up.

Monday Talking to EWEB

After this, Mom was up and I tried to organize the plates. Some of the boxes were
empty, and we had to search for the plates.

We went out. I had Mom do the driving, in part to evaluate how well she is doing with it. There was some confusion about how to get to places that she doesn't go to very often (EWEB offices), but her driving seemed fine. In my opinion, as a rider, she accelerated a bit more than I would, but as a driver I would probably do the same. With the higher speeds from more acceleration, I was apprehensive about stopping, but she did that just fine. As long as her brakes hold out, she should be fine. And at least some of this is the difference between driving and riding -- I notice the same thing when I drive with Linda (and she picks up my body language and then doesn't want to drive with me as a passenger).

We went to the EWEB offices and had a long discussion. I looked over the file they have with an energy audit taken back in the 1990's. From it, they say there is insulation in the attic, walls, and under the floor. There was little there that differs from what we know (other than insulation in the walls). They agreed that even tho some double paned windows may leak, that doesn't cause a thermal issue -- mainly it's an aesthetic issue. Also that the baseboard heaters are efficient -- they turn electricity into heat -- only that the only source of heat is the baseboard heater, so it's all coming from electricity.

The alternative would be a heat pump which uses electricity to suck heat out of the air, so you use less electricity to get the same amount of heat. They support either a ducted or ductless heat pump. We could put ducts into the attic, or under the floor (heat rises), but it would probably cost at least $10K. A ductless system would be $3600 for one outlet and $1200 for the next, so $5K for two outlets.

A ductless system works by having a heat pump unit outside (in the back or the side to be mostly out of sight), and then sends the heat into the house by a hose with a "refrigerant". The outlet has a heat exchange part (basically a radiator) that blows
the heat out into the house. For Mom's we could put one heater outlet in the kitchen and one in the sun room, or the office, to try to heat the areas where she spends most of her time.

The question is whether or not it is cost effective. Mom may be in the house for only another year to 3 or 5 years. The value of the house would probably not reflect the total cost of the unit. Figure we got a 50% increase in the value of the house. Can we justify the other 50% in increased comfort or decreased electric bills?


John and Karen came over and we all went out for Chinese Food.

Monday Cleaning up the computer

The complaint has been that Mom's computer is hard to start up and shut down. Part of this could be from security software. We have removed all the random stuff and tried to limit ourselves to Microsoft Security Essentials. It has a little icon down in the tray, and said we could be vulnerable, so I am manually running a full scan now. (This scan finished in about 4 hours, with nothing found.)

In addition, I looked for remnants of the old programs and found directories for AVG, Search and Destroy, and Spyware Blaster, in C:/Program Files. They were mostly empty, since Bill had uninstalled these, but I removed the complete directories just to be sure.

Also there were comments about AOLDial.exe still running, and refusing to shutdown when the machine was turned off. I found a web site

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080623113237AACS5rr

which tells how to run msconfig and remove how the program gets started. I looked at the other entries in the startup list and everything there looks okay at this point. Actually, looking at it again, to refresh my memory for this post, there are other entries there that look strange -- two that are enabled, but appear to be empty, and some others that I should look up to see what they are. And AOLDial.exe is back on the list, although I thought I disabled it last night.

I also found

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_start/list-of-anti-malware-program-cleanupuninstall/407bf6da-c05d-4546-8788-0aa4c25a1f91

which had a note about how to get rid of "ghost drivers" and found a couple of those.

Most of the services that run at startup are update programs: HP Software Update, Java Update, Adobe Update Manager, My Heritage FTB Check Updates, Real Player update check, install shield update service, ... Presumably these programs will make a short query to see that everything is up to date, and then quit.

I guess one option would be to list every startup program and check what it is and if Mom needs it. Looks like there are about 25 startup items.

Sunday Church

Mom wanted to go to church this morning, so she set her alarm for 7:00. I heard it go off, but after twenty minutes, Mom had still not gotten up, so I turned the light on in her room. She says this is the first time she has not been awakened by the alarm.

That put us late to get to church at 8:30 -- we even skipped breakfast -- but it turns out that they had rescheduled everything to 9:00, so we had plenty of time.

At church, we sat in the balcony, so she could get a good view. But she says she can't hear the words of the sermon, just the music and the general noise of the congregation. Seems they should do captions to help those, like Mom, with hearing problems.

After the main service, we went to her Sunday School class. This was a service followed by a lunch at Harlow lodge, not the main building.

After we got home, we called John to let him know I was in town. John and Karen stopped over, on their way back from shopping, and we gave them the gifts and things from Texas and from Mom. They will be going down to Napa on Thursday Dec 22.

After that, Mom got to work on her Christmas cards.




I went out to try to pick out the plates that we need to send to Replacements.com. This turned out to be fairly easy. The list I had printed was sorted by box. Once I found the box, I had the list of item numbers. Each plate has a small sticky label with its item number, so it was simply selecting the plates from each box that were on the list. This gives me a big pile of plates. I need to go over them to check that each is what is needed, and find some boxes in which to pack them.



Mom remembers that John was named after the song "Every Tom, Dick and Harry's Named John". Using Google, we were able to determine that this is a Guy Lombardo song from February 1953. It was issued on Decca Records 28546 by Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians, one side of which was

John, John, John (Every Tom, Dick And Harry's Called John)

and the other side is

I'm Skipping Rope With A Rainbow

But we can't find the lyrics or a copy of the music.

Flying up to Mom's

The flight up was uneventful. I took Southwest Airlines into Portland. Sue met me at the terminal.

I spent the night at Sue's and then drove down to Mom's the next day. I borrowed Sue's Subaru Legacy. The drive down was overcast and drizzly. I should probably get new windshield wipers for the car. Left Sue's about 2 and got to Mom's by 5.

We talked a bit and then went to Applebee's for dinner. She had French onion soup and I got a salad and a baked potato.