Things as they are now

So, let me start at the beginning. If you have been following the weather page here, you may have noticed  some odd readings in the wind direction graphic. For a couple of months now the wind apparently only comes out of the south.

I am running an Ambient Weather WH1080  station that my children bought me for my birthday 5 years ago. Over the past five years various parts of the outdoor instrument cluster have failed and now it was time for the wind direction indicator to seize up and it just happened to do so while pointing south. I need to order a replacement unit, but in the meantime……

I also run Ubuntu Linux on the laptop that reads the weather station console data and then pushes it up to this website. I was doing just fine running  Ubuntu 12.something long term support until the last update when my web browser of choice “informed” me that there would be no further updates to the chrome browser as this version of Ubuntu Linux is no longer supported. Boogers!

I thought that I would be smart to avoid cascading application failures by upgrading to the latest Long Term Support version (Ubuntu 14.04 trusty). In doing so I broke the weather station software. Well, that’s not quite accurate, the linux upgrade does not touch third party software. I run quite a bit of that, and the weather station software is one of those. the only problem is that I was running the wview software which has not been updated for  Ubuntu 14.04.    Boogers!!

Also during the upgrade the Apache webserver I have been running locally (on my computer) was updated and re-configured. That means it no longer can “find” the weather web page data.  Double boogers!!!

At this point I have found and installed a different weather software and have it running on my laptop. Fortunately it recognizes my weather station hardware and it is accurately  reporting what the console shows me. I still need to re-configure the web server, tweak the layout of the web page, and set up the FTP  session to  update that information on this site.

NOW…. to all you young punks that will say ” Oh, I could have that done in an hour or two.” It has been several years since I was employed as an IT worker and I think I am doing well to remember any of this at all!

In other happenings…

I did get last years egg and milk production totals figured. I don’t have them in front of me right now, but the quick figures are as follows:

chickens – somewhere abouts 1800 eggs
ducks – somewhere abouts 2100 eggs
Goats – somewhere abouts 300 gallons of milk

On a more personal report, I had a nuclear stress test last year, recommended due to my brothers death and my older sisters heart attack. I was cleared for normal life activities and exercise. then about the first of December I started having an odd double vision that is still bothering me today. I have been to 2 eye doctors and back to my doctor and they all say the same thing, it can resolve itself.

I am waiting for a change to my glasses that will help in the short term, but it seems to be taking forever to get that in place. In the meantime, closing one eye or wearing an eyepatch helps.

Well, that is all for now. I will try to have the new weather page up by the end of the week. I will also try to do at least a weekly post here. Try being the word.

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