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police work solves a mystery
Thursday, November 21 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
This morning Gretchen asked if I wanted to go with her to meet the police over at the Downs Street Mansion to discuss the strange disappearance of the tenant who had been living in apartment #1L. That sounded like an adventure, so I said sure, I'd be coming. We even brought he dogs, who could snort around in the backyard in the rain while we waited for the police to arrive. I was the first one into the apartment, which hadn't changed since the last time we'd been in there several days ago. It's still a cluttered mess. I tried to put one of the heating elements that had been detached from the stove back in, but it was missing the tray it is supposed to sit in. The tenant had bought a bunch of new trays, but none quite fit.
The police who arrived were two white gentlemen who looked to be in their thirties. They said they had no idea what to expect and had anticipated a dead body. But they could tell right away that there was no body, as the apartment didn't have the smell it would've had were that the case. Gretchen told the police officers what she knew, which now included some information she'd found via internet searches, particularly the name of an organization the tenant belonged to. One of the officers called that number and eventually learned that the tenant was "in the hospital." This amounted to good police work even if it was a simple phone call. Gretchen had tried calling the numbers she had but had gotten nowhere. But when it's the police calling, the person being called is more likely to give an answer. The fact that someone claimed to know the tenant's whereabouts implies she must've communicated with someone, if not us. Still, if the tenant is communicating at all, it would seem important to communicate with the landlord, especially when you're on a month-to-month lease and are three weeks late on paying your rent. We thanked the officers and they were sure to stipulate that their involvement in the matter was now over, as they're not the ones to enforce the collection of rent. That is a civil matter. We assured them that we knew this and had even had to go through the process of getting an eviction in the past.
While we were in Kingston with the dogs, Gretchen wanted to take them to the dog park at Kingston Point (on the west bank of the Hudson). So we drove over there and took them in the direction of the park. But it was a cold rainy day, so nobody was there. We didn't end up going into the dog park at all but just walked around in the wet grassy field adjacent to it. Charlotte had the opportunity to run through a patch of woods adjacent to a tidal arm of the Hudson, but Neville was moving so slowly that he never left the grass. Owing to the conditions, we weren't there long.
Back at the house, I'd decided to drive up to the Adirondack cabin, so I began gathering the things I would need, which included my various Hall-effect experiments, various USB adapters, the leaf blower I bought specifically for clearing out gutters, but no food. Since it looked like it would be cloudy this weekend and there isn't much sun at this time of year even when it isn't, I'd decided to take the Forester. I also took the dogs, who were a little reluctant to go outside again in the rain after the experience at Kingston Point.
On the way north, I stopped as usual at the Cairo Hannaford, where I concentrated on easy-to-prepare prepackaged Indian food. I also got tostadas, a bag of refrigerated sauerkraut (I hadn't know they stocked this), soft corn & wheat tortillas, guacamole, corn chips, and a twelve pack of Atomic Torpedo IPA. It rained for most of the drive to the cabin, though near the end there in the dark a wet snow was falling. There was a treacherous layer of slush on the front entrance deck that I was very careful not to slip on, because I didn't want to cause any further injuries to my left shoulder and right elbow.
After getting a good fire going in the woodstove, I went down to the basement to figure out what had gone wrong with the East Basement Controller, the ESP8266 that handles most of the remote control. I wanted to try a few basic things before reflashing its firmware (which I assumed I would need to do). But when I unplugged its power and plugged it back in again, it came up just fine. But something was clearly amiss, because one of the first batches of weather data it logged included a temperature so cold that it is never even reached in Antarctica. I'd noticed that the Atmega-328-based Arduino Mini Pro that is attached to the ESP8266 as an I2C slave (to provide more pins) acts a little flaky sometimes, perhaps due to a sketchy connector on either its power wires or its two I2C signals. Perhaps the I2C connection with it managed to get into a state where the ESP8266 got hung. That would explain the weird temperature data and the fact that a power cycle was all it took to get it working again. So I replaced the four wires that connect the Arduino slave to the ESP8266 with new wires, and all the flakiness disappeared. Perhaps it will be much more reliable now.
But I also reflashed the firmware with a new version that performs an explicit WiFi.persistent(false); to hopefully prevent flash corruption. It's very important for these systems to all be extremely reliable.
An ad hoc shrine to someone named "Mister" adjacent to a ball field in the Kingston Point park.
Click to enlarge.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?241121 feedback
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