10 June 2009

It was a pretty good day. Had a mental checklist of things I wanted to do, and while I didn't get it all done, I got enough of it done to earn my shower.

Tried tweaking the top teevee antenna by moving it up about 6" to the top of the mast pole and tilting it slightly to point over the leaves. This doesn't appear to have done much of anything, though this probably isn't the day to gauge its effectiveness, given the dreary weather. I tried this because since the leaves came out in full force, we've lost a reliable signal from WBZ-4, WLVI-56 and WSBK-38 (all out of Boston). The meter jumps willy-nilly from mid-20s to mid-60s, to 0, to mid-20s.... The above tweak has been recommended by the technologically-inclined in avsforum.com and the like in the 'Try it and see what happens' milieu. I will leave it as is until after the official digital conversion on Friday. But if it's still a problem then, I still have one item left in my bag of tricks. It's called double-stacking, and with my two XG-91 antennas (an earlier post about our antenna system is required reading to have a better understanding of what I'm saying), the idea is that I would point them both toward the target signal farm (Boston) and connect their two output wires with a good signal combiner (read: a signal splitter, inverted), then connect to the pre-amplifier and into the house. In theory, this would double the signal strength. We'll see if it comes to that. But then again, I'm getting Boston's iON station, 68 (real-channel 32) that has a lower reading than the drop-outs. I just don't know what to make of it other than my "Digital is a finicky b----" line.

While I was on the roof, I took off the lower antenna's pre-amplifier and took it to the campground because reports were that the teevee there wasn't getting good reception of the Hartford channels. Sure enough, 61, 24 and 30 weren't coming in, and channel 3 was spotty at around 50%. I took off the old Radio Shack pre-amp and put on the Channel Master 7778. Went inside, rescanned the tuner (the Best Buy Insignia model) for extra measure and suddenly they were all coming in at 90%+. Wasn't getting channel 59, MyN, which I also haven't have any success with here at the house. All the info I've seen says it should come in, but it doesn't.

Went to the small nursery in the next town over and picked up some nice herb plants --- lavender and sage --- in a buy one-get one sale ($3.50), and two bell pepper plants to finish out the garden. At the big box stores and most other places, $3.50 will get one of the smallest Bonnie seedling plants. And it's nice to support a small, local business. We also dropped off a few items for an annual fund-raising tag sale that the nursery does. The owner's adopted son was killed while serving a tour in Afghanistan a few years ago, and a fund has been set up to build and supply an orphanage in Honduras. This had been the intention of the son even before his death (he was adopted from that country). It's the least we can do to offer some support to someone who made the ultimate sacrifice. ... Got home and put those herbs, a largish rosemary plant, and some others I'd started from seed (dill, parsley and basil) into a strawberry planter that's been hanging out empty for a while. It just feels good to put your hands in the soil and know that your work and care is growing things.

Brought the trailer home and loaded on a pile of wood that I've been wanting to move out of the yard for a while. That will be delivered and burned at the aforementioned campground this weekend. We got it from a nearby house that had a tree (a red oak) cut down and for some reason or other, it was stacked against our woodpile under the deck. It's been sitting here for about two years because it's just slightly too long for our wood stove. Makes quite a difference now that it's gone, and I'm keen on doing something with the spot now. Also, raked up the debris that was under some of the pallets that we stack our wood on, and threw them in the trailer for burning as well... their bottom-side wood was badly deteriorated. We need to either get some new pallets or come up with a different rack system for firewood storage.