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I decided a while back to put a second battery in place for my solar system. Thus a while ago I welded one together and later bolted it into place. That was where things stayed for a long time since work at 12+ hours a day is pretty exhausting.

The other day I tried to install my new DVR unit thinking it would be easy. Indeed it is supposed to be easy. In fact though, it is anything but easy.

Needless to say it’s probably Chinese. There are two video connectors and two audio connectors. One is for audio/video in and the other for audio/video out. It’s supposed to sit between the camera and monitor. Try as I might though and I could get it to record video nicely. I could not get it to output the video to the monitor. Thus after thinking for a while I decided to put a Y connector (which has been ordered but has yet to arrive) so that I can read the video signal and show it on the screen without having to process it through the unit (which seems to lose the signal).  More testing will be needed so I’ve been unable to install it yet. In anticipation I ordered a pair of microphones (I needed one but they came in pairs) thinking this would be my front video camera controller. I will probably buy another to do my front recording if it works just fine for recording my rear view camera.

Today though as it was wet there was no hope of working under the bus. Thus I worked inside. As many of you know when I last moved hours I did what I normally do and emptied whole drawers into plastic totes to go through later. I’ve done that 3 times in a row now! Thus I have plastic totes filled with goodness knows what. So I spent the day going through totes.

I didn’t find the key to the gold vault or a signed confession by the real assassin of JFK. I didn’t find the lost ark either. I did, however, find that I had an awful ot of just plain trash. Most of what was in those totes was old court documents, old pay stubs, old bank statements from banks I no longer use and thousands of receipts - most of which were too faded to read.

The amount that passed through the first sifting reduced the quantity from 5 boxes to 4 and I’m sure I can reduce it yet further. I have yet more boxes to go through. Most of the stuff in those boxes I have not seen for upto nine years. It all has to be gone through though. Some of it is inspiring letters and cards from my late mother. Those are definitely keepers since she won’t be sending more.

One thing I found is my surveillance clock. It’s a neat little clock that looks worthless but records anything that moves in front of it. I’d used that years ago to record somebody that kept breaking into a place I used to stay at. Now though I’m afraid it has seen better days. Despite being quite expensive, the plastic was cheap and has just become sticky. It’s not that it has got sticky it’s that the plastic has begun to break down. I’ve heard of this happening before with some of the Panasonic cameras. I’m sure I have encountered it before too.

You can probably see the oily sheen on the surface of the plastic. There’s nothing as far as I know that can be done when plastic breaks down other than to throw it away and buy another. I’m sad because this is a $50 surveillance device but on the other hand it had served its purpose and I have better devices now.

I looked out of the bus window and saw what appears to have been a buzzard that was dragging a wing on the ground. When it saw me, it hopped away, dragging its wing. Figuring it was badly injured I went to grab my rifle so that I could put the thing out if its misery without it having all the pain and fear as some other animal tore it apart alive. By the time I’d loaded my rifle and put the magazine in, the thing had vanished. I just hope it has a quick and painless end with no fear.

One of the things I kept finding was old second generation phones. I have so many defunct Virgin flip phones that it’s not even funny! I’ll have to try charging them and copying down any numbers etc. Then I’m not sure what on earth I can do with phones that are on networks that no longer exist short of using them as rifle targets or fishing weights.