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unexpected loss of sensor data
Friday, November 29 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
Bright and early this morning, a delivery guy called and told Gretchen he was from Lowes and would be delivering our new refrigerator in about 45 minutes. "Fabulous!" Gretchen replied, and the guy repeated that he was from Lowes. (Spanish was his first language, and apparently he was unfamiliar with the English cognate of fabuloso.) When the truck arrived, one of the guys brought a ruler to measure the spot where the refrigerator would be going. The refrigerator was exactly 33 inches wide, and the space it would be going into was also exactly 33 inches wide. The guy said it was too narrow; evidently he needed more than zero inches of clearance. I said that this wasn't a problem, that I could cut away some trim on the cabinetry to make more room. I didn't want to do it in a hurry, so I said he could just drop it where it was in front of the void it would eventually live in. He plugged it in, and I guess that was what the "free installation" amounted to. He didn't even hook up the icemaker hose, the one task that maybe a housewife couldn't do for herself.
Yesterday Gretchen had been insisting that I let the delivery guy do the "free" installation, perhaps only out of concern that if I didn't, we would be missing out on a valuable service. But my attitude had been that I wanted to carefully measure it first to make sure I could put it back as far into the cabinetry as possible. This seemed to be a case of Gretchen wanting to defer to "experts" even in a case where I'm arguably the expert, since I am the one who designed the space that the refrigerator fits into. In the end, though, I was the one who had to do the installation. I used an oscillating tool to cut off the trim to give myself 0.75 inches of additional room. Then Gretchen's father (who had been intently watching everything I was doing) and I pushed it as far as it would go into the void. After that, I could stuffed the sawed-off trim back in and it looked like I'd never cut it off.
After that, it took some effort to remove all the tape, plastic, and styrofoam. And then I had to bring in all the crap that had been cold chilling on the east deck. Somehow it came to more than I could comfortably get into our new refrigerator, which is slightly larger than our old one. This new refrigerator is a better match for the other kitchen equipment we currently have. It's our first one clad in stainless steel and it's also our first with french doors.
Early this afternoon, some woman whom Gretchen's parents (and Cathy and Roy) know came over from near Rhinebeck to socialize. Gretchen can't stand the woman and did what she could not to participate in the socializing. Conveniently, we had a walkthrough to do at the Brewster Street property because our tenant is moving out. I came with Gretchen, mostly to figure out a way to make it so the dehumidifier in the basement can continually drain. But there was also a door to rehang and some paint to be found in the basement. Our friend Erik the Painter arrived while we were there to repaint the walls before our next tenants move in.
Back home in Hurley, that woman Gretchen dislikes was still there in the living room yakking away with Gretchen's parents. At some point, I checked the data from the cabin and was horrified to realized that the data from most of the sensors had been cut off a little after midnight this morning. The sensor on the east wall in the basement had continued a couple more hours, but then it had conked out too. I couldn't think of how this series of failures had occurred. But it meant there was no way for me to heat the cabin remotely and no way to monitor the falling temperatures inside it. I was going to have to drive there, probably today. Meanwhile, the yakking continued. In fact, Gretchen was also yakking away behind a closed bedroom door to someone on the phone. It didn't feel appropriate to interrupt anyone to tell them that I needed to go, but now their yakking seemed especially inane and pointless.
I should mention that Fern had spent the night in the Powerful's old room in the basement. She was busy today working on filling out applications for various prospective academic jobs, grants, or something. I'd seen her a few times and even made her a french press of coffee for me and her to share.
Eventually, though, that woman left and it was appropriate to bring up the situation at the cabin. I began to carry things out to the Forester while Gretchen prepared me a large plastic container of leftovers. Eventually I said goodbye, since Gretchen's parents would be leaving while I was at the cabin. When I left, I didn't bring the dogs out of fear that the big porcupine that had quilled them might still be around.
On the drive north, I stopped in Cairo, but only to get a half gallon of gin at the liquor store. In two places along the way I encountered deer. Near Preston Hollow, a couple does crossed in front of me. And then just after I crossed the Schoharie on the south end of Sloansville, I nearly hit a beautiful buck with a huge rack crossing Route 30A. The poor deer are besieged at this time of year, when humans go crazy trying to kill them.
Snow appeared on the landscape somewhere in Greene County and continued here and there for the rest of the drive. When I got to Woodworth Lake Road, the snow that had been plowed out of the way was deep. Fortunately the guy doing the plowing had made me a place to park at the bottom of our driveway. I put some rubber boots I'd thankfully brought and trudged to the cabin. The snow seemed to be about a foot deep, and huge pile had been dumped off the roof onto the entrance deck. It was 39 degrees Fahrenheit in the cabin. I built a fire and then checked to see why the sensors had quit logging data. The reason was immediately obvious: the battery had been so depleted that the inverter had cut off cabin power to everything but the east basement remote controller and the cellular hotspot. But the wires giving that hotspot extra power had slipped off the marine battery I have for it, so all it had to run on was the tiny lithium battery inside it. It was enough for a couple hours, but then it too died. It was great to discover that nothing was wrong with any of the sensors. Wires getting disconnected are an easy problem to fix.
After shoveling the snow off the entrance deck, I returned to the Forester to get a few more things. But then I holed up in the cabin for the night, drinking booze and watching episodes of Alone. (I'd put all the episodes on my travel laptop.)
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