t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i went to walgreens to get a few things, before heading to union square to deposit steve's plumbing repair check, and finally to market basket for some groceries (yogurt, granola, ham & cheese ingredients). i always go to walgreens whenever i need to get something embarrassing (hemorrhoid cream, athlete's foot medication), since it's just far enough away that i don't often visit. they did have a sale on tilex shower spray, and i picked up a bottle as i seem to have a recurring problem with soap scum and mildew on my shower curtains (later i discovered MB sells the same thing, but at the same low price without a sale).

in the afternoon my father brought home the bosch drill set i ordered for my sister 2 weeks ago which finally arrived. the lithium ion batteries came partially charged but we charged them to full. the two drills - a driver drill and an impact drill - seem well made and slightly heavier than i'd imagined. they have handy LED lights to see where you're drilling and a battery level indicator. i'm curious to see how an impact drill operates since i've never used one before. the one strange thing was the set came with a carrying case, but the straps inside are positioned in such a way that it's impossible to figure out how the drills attach. i'm still confused as to how both drills can cost just $89 but the driver drill alone is $129. i keep on wondering whether i got a previous model, but so far i haven't found any differences. i think i just got lucky, found a black friday deal. currently the two drill set costs $169 on amazon.com, which is still a bargain compared to getting the drills separately.

i also helped my father upgrade his amateur radio call sign to a vanity call sign. it was a little technical because he needed to create a new FCC account using his FRN. but when they awarded him the license, they automatically created an FCC account for him. the problem was how to get into the account without the password, which the FCC never sent. i finally fixed it by registering a personal question/answer and using that to reset the password. once i did that it was easy just to submit the online form to upgrade the call sign, which should take about 2 weeks.

after dinner my father left for my grand uncle's place. my grand uncle was supposed to leave for the senior home today, but the nurse called and said either the room and/or paperwork wasn't ready yet, and he'd need to wait a bit longer. that means my father will have to be there to help him get up every few hours to use the bathroom.

i have a second raspberry pi 3 (rpi3v2) which has been sitting unused gathering dust. i finally decided to investigate using it as a OSMC/kodi device to stream online content. it's a little technical but nothing i haven't done before. i haven't played around too much with the rpi3v2 so erasing the memory card was no problem (i didn't however copy the .bashrc file, which is the same copy as on the other rpi3). but to erase the card turned out to be a little tricky because NOOBS was installed and had partitioned the card into 5-6 different parts. i figured it out by erasing each partition separately, before using the SDFormatter app to wipe the card and consolidate all the partitions. i then copied NOOBS onto the card, booted up the raspberry pi, and had NOOBS install both raspbian and OSMC.

i spent the rest of the night playing around with OSMC. to access the good streaming addons i needed to redirect OSMC to use a different repository. i'll have to do some more research. i also need to install some form of VPN to protect the streams from prying eyes.