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leaving roof repair to the professionals Monday, April 25 2022
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
In amongst some work on a subeditor for the admin page of my AppStream login webapp, I also polished the edges of my new Hotspot-Watchdog GitHub repository. Once I figured out how to add images to the README.md file, I could include helpful photos of the inside of a Moxee cellular hotspot and even upload a wiring diagram. In the past I might've wanted to use proper circuit diagramming software for such a diagram. But today's electronics is usually done by running wires between pre-assembled modules (some of which I occasionally have to make custom). So it's easiest just to copy images of the components as found in a Google image search and use a freehand tool to draw wires between the various pins appearing on the images of those components. I also figured out that the best way to avoid uploading secrets such as passwords to GitHub is to separate those out into includes that then aren't uploaded (they could be included in a .gitignore or excluded from manual file uploads). This was such a good idea that I also updated the code in my ESP8266-Micro-Weather repository to have such includes. This seems obvious once you remember to do it, but it's usually not done in examples I find on the web or GitHub, probably for the sake of simplicity.
At the end of my workday, I wanted to do a little roof repair work, starting with some exposed shingle underlayment on the roof over the east half of the laboratory. I got a new sheet of shingles (a lot of extras came with the house) and climbed up onto the roof via the laboratory deck. I could reach a couple feet from either side of the roof ridge all along where it ran, but the missing sheet of shingle was a little too low to reach, and all I managed to do was pry loose a nail and let the remnants of the damaged sheet fall to the ground. An experiment with trying to put a ladder up from the east side of the house (where the house stands particularly tall) was hopeless. It then occurred to me that there was no sense at all in me trying to fix the problem. Given my salary and the many demands on my time, my waking hours are worth a fair amount, and it would be hard for me to do to all the things I could do, especially given the cabin (and the many projects that need doing there) and all the rental units. We already pay some ladies to clean our house twice a month and this year Gretchen is hiring a gardener to built us a proper garden this year. So why not just have a professional roofer come out and, using all the proper safety equipment, fix the various problems with our roof? Just avoiding the risk that I might fall off the roof would be worth the expense, given the opportunity costs that would result (which might include the next thirty or forty years of my life). It came as a great relief to have this realization, so I then took my customary Monday night bath in the desired tranquil state of mind.
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