Google Map Maker adventure

Google Map Maker
GPS Visualizer

I've been playing with Google Map Maker fixing some map errors I've encountered while hiking/biking. It's interesting that Google goes to its base as a way to verify ground truth. I've corrected a couple of roads that are now only open to bikes or walking.

Interestingly the Google reviewers quickly responded to my changes and some are already approved.  Here's my first contribution currently available from Google Maps.

My first contribution to Google Maps The green line is a new bike route courtesy of RJB

From 2011-05-17 Google Maps

One of the things I did was to offer a new bike trail that runs along the Assabett river.  I'd tried to get the the Rails to Trails folks to include it in their maps without luck.  A bit strange that as it is in their planned routes!  At any event I offered it to Google Maps and quickly got some feedback that part of the route is in the river.  Since you can't effectively ride a bike in a river clearly something is bogus.  Fortunately I have a saved GPS track of the trail so there is some sort of ground truth there.  I was able to lay this on Google Maps with GPS Visualizer.  Here's what it looks like:

GPS Visualizer GPS track overlay on Google Maps

You can also get an elevation profile that looks something like this:

GPS Visualizer elevation profile

I remember the 105.9m hill VERY well.

At any event the tool is interesting and useful.

I've sent a note to the Google reviewer offering the GPS track.  Haven't heard back yet though.

Cape Cod trip 2011 05 - Repost

Blogger ate the original post during their recent problems.  Repost!

BB and I went to the cape to do a bit of biking.  Sadly, large offshore storm brought heavy rain, 40+ MPH winds, and temps in the 40s.  We did a bit of touring then decided to punt and try again in a few weeks.  Here's a bit of video of the affair.

Raspberry Pi Foundation - Very Cool

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Coolest computer I've seen recently.  Hard to imagine that the first computer I worked on was the size of a large room, didn't have even close to this much storage, didn't have a disk, and had only teletype output!

Cape Cod trip 2011 05

BB and I went down to the Cape for a bit of bike riding.  Timing is sometimes everything and ours was very poor.  Big offshore storm brought 40mph wind, heavy rain, and temps in the 40s.  We did a bit of touring but decided to punt and returned home.  We'll try again later.

Short bike ride today with BB

Went for a short bike ride with BB around the neighborhood.  Here's the route:

And here's the video.  Video is better I think.  The mount is almost secure with a bit of foam to keep it from loosening.  Need to work on camera stabilization and vertical.  Shot at 1 frame every 10 seconds.  Seems about right.

Getting from google maps to a gps file for Delorme

Google maps is really handy for finding bike routes.  But, how do you get from the Google Maps display to your GPS device?  For reasons that escape me, Google Maps do not export a GPS/GPX file.  But, you can do it with a bit of effort.  To do so use the handy app at elsewhere.org.

The directions are good and work for me.  I use the full version of the output since it gives a much better track to follow.  With my Delorme PN-40 I bring up Topo USA then import the GPS file as a draw object.  From there it's easy to export to the PN-40 and then follow the track as wanted.

1. First make your route.  This was done with bike routes set on.
   
   
   
   
2. Then GMAPtoGPX it.  You'll get a display that looks like this after you select Full. 
   
3. Copy the code to the clipboard and paste into notepad or some other application that allows you to save the file as a GPS file.
   
   
4. Then within Topo import the saved file as a draw object.
   
   
   
5. Now you'll have a draw object within Topo that you can save to your Delorme device.

That's all there is to it.

Cape Bike Rides

BB and I are planning a trip to the Cape to do a bit of biking along the Cape Cod Rail Trail

One route goes out to the park at Ocean View Dr.  About 5.4 miles one way.

It's actually possible to go all the way to P Town.  That's about 30 miles.  A bit far for BB and I.  There's a shorter route just down the Rail Trail.

There are also some options going south.

We'll work out the details when we're there.

Introducing Poolball, America’s Next Great Barroom Sport | Playbook

Introducing Poolball, America’s Next Great Barroom Sport | Playbook

Where can I play?

Bike ride to library

We're having a great spring day so BB & I decided to bike over to the library and drop some books off.  Here's the route and a video slide show of the trip.

As you can tell, I'm still getting the hang of using the time lapse feature on the camera.  This video was done from photos taken every 2 seconds then made into a slide show with goggle picasa.  It is a bit better than my first effort I think but still needs some work.

I'm still having some issues with the camera mount.  The shoe is coming unscrewed!  I've put a bit of rubber material between the plastic shoe and camera.  Hopefully that will create enough friction that it will stay screwed in properly.  I also need to do something about the mount since it is steering sensitive.  Finally, I went through a fresh set of AA batteries doing this!  Some sort of external power supply is clearly wanted.

John and Marie over for dinner

Our neighbors and good friends John and Marie were over for dinner last night.  We'd hoped to eat out on the deck but not withstanding a couple of days of teasingly nice weather it's gone a bit cool again.  Still, I cleaned up the grill and grilled leg of lamb, and eggplant.  Rather than grill the leg of lamb whole I went ahead and butterflied it.  We also tried an interesting noodle salad and a wonderful sweet kale dish.  Great meal!

Rome Lab's supercomputer is made up of 1,700 off-the-shelf PlayStation 3 gaming consoles | syracuse.com

Rome Lab's supercomputer is made up of 1,700 off-the-shelf PlayStation 3 gaming consoles | syracuse.com Sometimes technology is remarkable at several levels. Many years ago I worked at the labs in Rome. This is interesting and amusing at the same time.

Bike ride with BB.

BB and I took a short bike ride today.  Here's a time lapse of the adventure.

Here's the route with elevations and speeds:

It's clear that I'll need to do a bit more experimentation with the time lapse parameters.  I'm inclined to shoot at one frame per second or perhaps a bit faster.

Pan-Seared Sea Scallops

How To Make Pan-Seared Sea Scallops: Step-By-Step Tutorial With Photos

The grocer had scallops on sale yesterday.  So tonight it's pan-seared scallops and salad.  They are rather easy to make just don't shake the pan.

Herb-Crusted Chuck Roast, chocolate, and a rainy day

I'm not a great fan of chuck roast but this one (Herb-Crusted Chuck Roast Recipe - Allrecipes.com) is really good.  There's a new Target near us.  While I'm no great fan of big box stores, this one has a grocery of a sort and some great prices on Angus Chuck Roast.  It turned out outstanding.  Made some herb new potatoes and zucchini as well and then French vanilla ice cream with home made pecan chocolate sauce for desert.


Beyond good food, today is cool, low 30s and rainy.  Good day to run errands then stay indoors and read.

Deck day, time lapse video, Art and keyboard

Up early this AM.  I was a bit concerned that BB was well recovered from yesterday's tests.  She is.

Plan for the day is to work a bit on the deck furniture.  Understand that we have a LOT of deck furniture so getting it all out of storage and setup is a challenge.  Also I'll need to put up the screen room on the deck.  Here's what it looked like:



This is my first attempt at a time lapse video using an old Canon A530 enhanced with CHDK to take a photo every 15 seconds.  In hindsight I should probably have had the interval set rather shorter.  Still it's a bit of fun.

You might note that pugs are very good at being still.

Had a good conversation with Art last night concerning keyboard and music generally.  I've decided to track Craigs list for a bit before doing anything.  One of the things Art suggested was that I spend some time on the web studying music theory.  Really sensible suggestion.  So I'll spend some time today doing just that.  Wikipedia seems like a fairly sensible place to start.

Not just another Thursday

Today started a bit early.  BB had an appointment for some tests.  You know the ones where you need to bring along someone to drive you home.  Not a big issue but it did mean driving during the mourning commute.  I must admit that I felt rather smug while driving in heavy traffic in the knowledge that virtually everyone around me had to face it every work day while I didn't.  Being retired does have its advantages.

Unfortunately, when we got home Cindy, one of our pugs, had been rather ill and I spent over an hour cleaning up the floors and rugs.  Hopefully she's OK.

One of the things I've been interested in now that I'm retired is learning to play the piano/keyboards.  At one time I had a Casio keyboard but it's vanished, perhaps destroyed in the fire.  So I've been looking on Craigs list.  There are lots to choose from and all sorts of prices.  Since I don't know anything about such things I'm going to involve my brother and try to take advantage of his experience.

Dreary day

Another rather dreary day.  Oh well, good day to do inside things.

Spent some time messing with CHDK to get a handle on setting up time lapse videos.  I'm a bit concerned about battery life.  A bit of checking found some links for external battery packs.  Surprisingly, there isn't a commercial one!  I also found an interesting video on using Picasa to make the video.  I'm a fan of Picasa and a bit of experimentation suggests that it will work well.  The final piece is to work out how to set parameters when taking the photos.  Todo list:

• external battery pack for camera
• good set of rechargeable batteries
• work out parameters
• mount for bike/self

Used CHDK and v_intvl and Picasa no make a test video time lapse video.  Interesting but unfortunately you have to click through to actually see the video.

From 2011-04-20

It's a bit like a time lapse video made from still photos but instead made from a set of short videos.  Hopefully this will resolve some of the blurring I've encountered when making time lapse from stills.

Put the video on youtube which does allow embeding:

Computer mystery

While the Toshiba seems fine I got a curious email:

What's curious about this is that I've not had any issues there!  Time to run a very through security scan.

Toshiba lives

Happily my Toshiba now seems to live.  After getting the HP working reasonably again I did a bit of research on the problem.  Great thing about the Internet is that it's full of suggestions.  Now, admittedly many are not so sensible but one mentioned really powering down by taking the battery out.  Duh!  This is something I know, really I do.  So I pulled the batter and left the machine sit for a bit so the electronics would good and truly reset.  Put it back in.  Powered up and bingo got a sensible Windows restart screen.  I'm not sure what happened but all seems well now.

Interesting day

Good news, after yesterdays bike ride my weight is down a bit.  Sadly, my pelvis is a bit saddle sore.  Not so good but tolerable.

It's a rather grey and rainy day so I'll not be out geocaching or riding.  Good day to mess with inside things.

After messing with the Canon camera things took a sour turn.  My Toshiba laptop seems to have died!  I think it may be a display related issue.  So faced with the need I've been working to get my old HP machine working properly again.  PCs seem to always need some amount of updating so it will take a bit of effort.  Meanwhile, I'm going to try to boot the Toshiba from a CD to see if it might be a software issue.

Hack PowerShot With CHDK

Hack Your PowerShot With CHDK

One of the things I've been wanting to do for a while is to make videos of my geocaching and biking adventures. I don't want to make a big deal out of taking and creating videos so what I thought I'd try making a time lapse video.

Now there are a number of ways to do this but most involve some amount of equipment or software.  That's not an especially attractive option.

I've got an old Canon A530 that I've been happy with and is small enough to use while riding or walking.  Unfortunately, there is no time lapse feature built in.  Enter CHDK!  It provides a set of additional software that runs on the camera and provides a remarkable collection of advanced features normally only available on much more expensive cameras.

After a bit of research, fuss, and bother I've got it installed on one of the camera's memory cards and have tried it out.  It works, rather well actually.  It's now possible to take a series of photos evenly spaced over time automatically.

What remains is to turn these photos into a reasonable video.  I've experimented with a couple of free Microsoft programs on my laptop and they seem to work well enough.  So it seems I'm ready to actually try it.

Ants Climb A Tree

Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook : Ants Climb A Tree

Mine looks like this but I forgot to actually take a photo

Wonderful dinner last night.  This is one of our favorites.  There are many many recipes but this is the one I use, sort of.

The dish tends to be rather salty because of all the soy sauce.  So I replace the 1/4 cup of soy and all the water with chicken stock.  It's still a bit salty but delicious.

I've also experimented with replacing the hot pepper paste with hot bean paste.  Again a bit of adjustment to the quantities is necessary as they can both be very salty.  I control the heat with a bit of hot pepper oil or sauce.

Finally, I adjust the noodle to meat quantities since we like a bit more meat than the recipe calls for.  I find about 6 oz of noodles per pound of port about right.

Leftovers for lunch today.  Yum.

Bike ride with BB

BB and I took a bike ride over the the Assabet.  Great day for the ride.  Here's the profile and a photo of herself.  I noticed that we're both riding a bit faster than last year on average.  We also seem to have a higher top speed.  Perhaps it's time to try touring with a group.

Sometimes you just got to love the news.

YouTube - Chinese Students Do Michael Jackson Dance

Where was this when I was in school?

Bright spring day

Beautiful spring day and a holiday to boot! Lets hear it for MA Patriots day and the Boston Marathon so BB and I get an extra long weekend!

I think it's finally safe to put out the deck furniture. We'll probably go for a bike ride and checkout what's happening over at the Assabet wildlife reserve.

Tornadoes v. cold: is this a choice?

I'm glad I'm not in the south where they are having very dangerous weather, but really 20° and possibility of snow!  Enough already it's flipping spring!!

Canceled plans to go for a longer bike ride.  It's to blinking cold.  Instead it's a good day to read in front of the fire and tend to some inside chores.  Also need to send tax return off.

Facebook page for Common Sense

Created a Facebook page for Richard's Common Sense here.  Not entirely sure how it should/will work but worth a bit of effort.

Also created a new gmail account richardscommonsense@gmail.com and associated Facebook account.

Friday plan

Today's a bit of an odd Friday.

I've spent some time this mourning trying to connect my Facebook account and my two blogs.  The Facebook published technique didn't work with an error that said Facebook couldn't find the RSS feed.  Never mind the feed verifies OK.  So I'm going try using RSS Graffiti.  It should allow me to flow both my blogs into my Facebook account.  We'll see.

I need to do some paperwork today as well.  That's the plan for after lunch.

I've also got to make a bank run.

All in all a fairly quiet day.

Dinner last night

Had some very nice Haddock last night.

Haddock baked (20 min at 350) in 1/4 cup white wine with mushrooms, scallions, and seasoned with dill.  Quinoa with portabella and pecans.  Brussel sprouts sauteed with onion, chicken stock, worcestershire sauce and Tabasco.  Outstanding!

Great day for a bike ride

BB and I went for our first bike ride of the year today.  We only did about 3 or 4 miles or so but had a very pleasant ride in 50F and clear skies.

The bikes are in generally good shape though I've got some sort of catch in my crank.  I'll have to take a look and see what's up.  Also the rear break could have a good deal more authority.  Otherwise things are good.

The return of Spring has BB and I thinking about possibly taking a trip in early May to the Cape for a bike ride.  There is a 22 mile rail to trail path.  I'll see if I can find a B&B about mid way so we can ride one half one day and the other the next.  Should be fun.

Just another Friday

It's been an interesting couple of days with some good and some not so good.

I got an email from Deb Williams letting me and other friends know that Bill Bradway had died.  Bill and I worked together at Meridian and Financial Insights.  He was a good man and very well regarded.  He'll be missed.

There is something about a colleagues death that gives me pause about my own mortality, particularly when it's someone who was a contemporary.

Mark stayed with us last night as he had an early mourning meeting in Hudson NH.  We had a nice if somewhat brief visit.  Their new house is coming along and they hope to be in by mid May.

We are down to two cars just now as Mike's is in the shop.  It's a bit inconvenient but we'll doubtless survive.

April fools in NE

Spring was rather late this year.  Here's what April 1 looked like.

Another of those Winter in Spring days

I'm beginning to wonder when Spring will actually arrive.  The last of couple of days have been wonderfully bright and clear.  Unfortunately, the temperatures have been in the low to mid 30s during the warmest part of the day.  Hardly like spring.

BB and I went by the library to pick up books but unfortunately it was closed.  They've reduced their hours in an effort to save money.  Between that and the fact that for whatever reason we were out earlier than we have recently been on Sunday we'll have to pick up books tomorrow.

BB had dropped off some shoes at the cobbler in Marlborough last week.  I'll need to pick them up tomorrow as well.  It's interesting that cobblers are a vanishing trade since shoes are increasingly seen as simply cheap expendable things.  I find that curious as I've several pairs of well made shoes that are 40 years old and still going strong.  I suspect that shoes aren't made as well as they once were, but even so it is curious.  About the only shoes I replace on a regular basis are tennis shoes.  Not so much because I wear them out as I generally don't, but because they get so dirty that they can't be worn outside the yard.  I've tried washing a couple of pairs but they haven't taken well to water.  Perhaps the thing to do is to get shoes designed to be wet and wash them.

Will Spring ever come?

Bright and sunny today.  It's an illusion though as the temperature is well below freezing.  I'm beginning to wonder if Spring will ever really arrive?

The planters that I store under the second floor overhang next to the house have begun to sprout.  Hopefully, the plants will be OK with the freezing overnight.

This should be as quiet Saturday as BB is off with her office friends having a girls day in Hingham.  I'm not really sure what's in Hingham but I suspect it's about shopping.  For my part I'll spend the day reading and tending to a few inside chores around the house.

Just an average Thursday

Keeping a daily blog is rather more difficult than one would expect.  What does one write about when life is, well, just life as it is much more often than not.  Today is one such day.

As usual, BB is off so we spent the day together.  This mourning we ran errands as usual.  There wasn't all that much to do but do it we did.

I had three books at the library to pick up.  I'm somewhat surprised about how reserving books at our local library works.  It's a very good library and part of the Minuteman system of Massachusetts libraries.  One nice thing about the Minuteman system is that between the member libraries almost any book one would want.  The entire catalog is available online and one can order books from any of the libraries delivered to your local library.  That's really convenient.  I've taken to having three books in hand and ordering another as I finish reading each one.  On the whole that's worked well.  But, every once in a while I don't have a book to read then all the books I've ordered show up at once.  That's just happened.  I am finishing reading The Sea Hunters II and had no other unread books.  Then yesterday three books I had ordered came in and today another three.  From none to six in two days.  One wonders how the system works.

Speaking of The Sea Hunters II it's an interesting read based on the stories of ship sinkings that the author, Clive Cussler, has looked for.  Cussler has organized the book around a pair of chapters about each sinking.  The first is a fictionalized semi-historical account of the event and the second a description of his effort to find the ship.  There is a fair bit of nautical history about each sinking and I've found it really rather interesting.

We stopped by the coffee shop.  I've been talking to Dave about the possibility of going to work for him and learning more about coffee including possibly roasting.  He's talking about possibly something this summer.

We also stopped by the grocer to pick up a few things.  Eighty dollars later we had six small plastic bags of food!  Gives one pause about regularly eating!

This afternoon BB was off to the doctor.  Just routine but it gave me a chance to do an chore or two around the house.  I've gotten rather behind and need to focus rather more to catch up.

Marinated steak tips for dinner.  We'll have left overs so there'll be good lunches or another dinner.

Spring 2011: don't you just love it?

So the 20th was the first day of spring 2011.  Good news.  Right?  So here's what the yard looked like.

Fairly encouraging with the snow mostly gone.  Near the house and driveway where it's a bit warmer there is actually some green showing.

Good news?  Well, it's New England.  Here's whats happening today:

That's right, it's snowing relatively heavily!  It's fairly warm so it shouldn't be overly long before it melts, but goodness I'm just a bit past wanting more snow this year.

So what to do?  To heck with the snow, I'm going to smoke some salmon since it's really spring.

I'd planned to put out the deck furniture today.  Guess I'll wait a bit.

Bike project 1: Still more gears

A bit of investigation showed that I can fairly easily replace the existing 6 gear cluster on the 20" wheel with a 7 gear cluster.  If I use a 7 cluster mid gear here's what I get:

This looks like a fairly good arrangement with perhaps a somewhat smaller mid drive gear, say a 26 or 28.

Bike project 1: More gears

Spent some time sorting through gear issues.  The wheel diameter issues can be dealt with by a 1.3 gear that makes the 20" wheel equivalent to a 26" wheel.  The issue then becomes the gear range.  Here are some of the spreadsheet results.  The key seems to be the mid and rear gear ranges and the drive gear on the mid.

Switching to 9 speed cassets gives these results:

The key here is the 11 tooth which gives good high speed and the 34 tooth that gives good low speed.  The mid gears also provide a very low low and very high high gear.  As a practical matter reducing the mid drive gear to a 22 or 24 gives better range with a low speed below 2mph and a more reasonable high of around 30mph.

Bike project 1: Got a line on Baltic birch plywood

I got a line on Baltic birch plywood thanks to a friend of HB's.  Here's the contact info.  It looks like they can provide 5 ply 1/4" at a fairly reasonable price.

The two suppliers in the Boston area that everyone uses are Boulter Plywood in Somerville, Toll Free (888) 9 LUMBER (888) 958 - 6237, www.boulterplywood.com and Downes and Reader in Stoughton, www.downesandreader.com. 

I think I'll give the Somerville bunch a call and drive down.

Meanwhile, I revisiting the issue of wheels.  I've got a set of 20" wheels.  The rear has a 6 speed hub. I'd planned to use a 3 speed crank.  Using the sprockets from the bike here's what I have for available speeds:

The good news is that there are some nice low speed gears.  The bad news is that there are no high speed gears.  I could use a larger crank gear or use an intermediate gear.  A bit of playing with the front gear suggests that an intermediate gear is a better solution.  I'd like the low speed to be somewhere around 2.5mph for hill climbing so I'll need a step down gear of about 1.6 to 1 or so.  I'd like the top speed to be around 25 mph so I'll need a step up gear of around 1 to 2.

Dinner and auction with HB, Max, and Allan

BB and I drove out to Leeds to visit with HB, Max, and Allan.  It's a bit of a haul, about 2hrs drive in the rain, but it was nice to see them.  We had a nice visit and I had a chance to play with Max.  We spent some time learning to juggle and then worked on slight of hand.  The last was really quite fun as Max at age 6 still believes in magical thinking.  I took a coin and made it disappear then pulled it from his ear or dropped it in his pocket. It was really priceless.  Allan made a very good Minestrone soup for dinner then we went to an auction sponsored by Max's Montessori school.  All in all a nice visit.

Spring snow

This winter has been very snowy.  Now don't get me wrong, I like snow.  It's clean, white, and really lovely in the yard.

It's relatively warm today so the snow is really lovely in the trees.  With only 3" it was easy enough to clean the deck and the plow guy will take care of the driveway.  All in all a nice Sunday treat.  It should be mostly melted by Monday so this snow should be no trouble at all.

HB, Allen, and Max here for a visit

HB, Allen, and Max came by for a visit and to have the last bit of Christmas today.  We had a good time.  As usual Max was full of himself playing a pool came he made up called Calvin Ball.  I got out the old slot car set that had been HB's and we all had a good time with it.  I'd given Max a marble race which was a fair hit as well. HB and I had a good chance to talk.  All in all a good day.  Here's a picture of Max and the marble game.

Sign of spring - orchid bloomed

A couple of years ago we bought five orchid plants.  Surprisingly three have survived.  More surprisingly still and a sure sign that spring must be coming one has two blooms!

Surely winter will soon be over.

Quiet Sunday

BB off on a girl's weekend.  It's a good day to deal with some indoor house chores.

I've got some issues with snow/ice on the roof

After 5 days of warm weather, melting, and raking here's what the roof looks like.

Not the roof but a 6'+ pile of snow!	Still over 18" of snow after 5 days of melting and shoveling
More snow and ice	I've got some serious ice dam issues.

Looks like heat tape is on the agenda for this spring when I can get back on the roof.

Several days of warm weather

We've had several days of warm weather.  It's done much to help with the snow on the roof.  I'd gotten somewhat concerned about it as there are some plaster cracks and minor racking of the house post and beam frame.  I spoke with Dom V. about it.  He suggested I get someone to shovel the roof.  I was able to find one roofing company but they wanted $4800 for the job and couldn't get to it until after the warmer weather when it would be far less needed.  So I've spent the last several days clearing the back of the house and things seem to be better.

It does look like I'll need to put up heat tape though as this kind of buildup is definitely not good.  That's a project for next summer.

Tuesday Snow, Wednesday Snow, Thursday dig out!

Well, we've got snow.  Lots and lots and lots of snow.  Tuesday brought about 8" then another 6" or 8" of snow/sleet/freezing rain Wednesday!  Chris, our current plow guy, didn't get by until after BB got home so I had to do the driveway using friend Toro (my snow blower) to clear it and get her up the hill.  I'm a bit unclear on the concept of paying someone to plow and then having to use my snow blower so just now Chris is flirting with a bigger snow blower as an alternative.

Thursday was dig out day.  I cleared about 5' of snow away from the mailbox so we'll still get deliveries.  I tried to bring the snow blower up the the second floor via the front decks but that was a no go because the front walk is under about 4' of snow.  I ended up bringing it in through the garage then BB and I carried it up the inside stairs.  It took about 45 minutes to do the driveway deck since the snow needs to go over the ends now and not into the driveway.  I've not bothered with the front door decks or the east deck.

I'm a bit concerned about the snow on the roof.  There have been a fair number of commercial flat roof collapses and we've now bot about 3' of snow on our roof.  I've also got some serious ice dams but so far no leaks.  I'd really like 3 or 4 days of warm to get some of the roof load gone.  I was able to break off most of the icicles but they are just forming rather quickly so that is now an every other day job.   If we get one more big storm I'm going to have to do something though I've no real enthusiasm for going up on the roof.

BB and I got out to the library and ran errands today.  The secondary roads are not good with most down to 1.5 lanes and covered in 4" to 6" of snow.

Midst all this there is another storm coming Saturday.  Thankfully it's predicted to be a fairly small storm.  Lets hope.