“A date which will live in infamy”

So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, after the attack at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Here is a transcript of his speech, courtesy of GMU. This important historical even seems barely mentioned by big media these days. I was pleased to see that the flags in Maryland are at half staff today to honor those who died in the attack.

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Along with finishing up Marcia’s quilting cabinet (see the December 4 post), and getting some house cleaning done, I managed to spend some time working on building a sump pit monitor using the code and recommended hardware from Al Audet’s Raspi-Sump webpage. This useful project came to my attention via the October issue of Linux Journal.

It’s also good fun to find something properly useful to do with my version 1 Raspberry Pi Model B. I recently got a Model B+, so I’m going to have to do something with that, too.

I poked at the project for a while, and geared up a bit for some electronics work (which I’ve not done for a long damn time). This evening, I got it working, and finally grokked the fiddly bits of the config file, which uses the word “distance”, when the word “depth” would be much more useful. I’m also going to rig up a water sensor as a backup: once the sump failed by pumping the water out of the pit, but not out of the house. Yup, a water sensor would be good thing.

But next, I’ll start monitoring to get a sense of how the water ebbs and flows, so that I can tune the variables in the config file properly. I’ve also still got to configure the alerting system.

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Our condolences to the families, friends and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Capt. William H. DuBois, 30, of New Castle, Colorado, died on Dec. 1 when his F-16 aircraft crashed near a coalition air base in the Middle East.
  • Staff Sgt. Matthew R. Ammerman, 29, of Noblesville, Indiana, died on Dec. 3, in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from small arms fire while conducting a clearing operation.
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About bilborg

I am who I am, there's plenty of data on this site to tell you more. Briefly, I'm a husband, computer geek, avid reader, gardener, and builder of furniture.

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