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my father was both mowing and watering the front lawn when i got to belmont in the late morning. earlier my parents had already gone out for a walk down to cushing square and back. when he started mowing the backyard, i helped with clearing away obstructions. i spotted a small bunny that seemed spooked by all the noises and managed to drive it out of the yard. we spotted a second bunny but it hid in some understory and i decided to let it go. bunnies seem like a cute thing to have in a yard, but not when they eat your plants. a cursory check of our seedlings showed they were safe for now.

i had leftover thick noodles for lunch (the same thing i had yesterday) along with a pan-fried pancake stuffed with pork floss. originally we were going to make belgian waffles with bacon (grilled outside) but when my mother went to get the waffle mix, it was crawling with pantry beetles. she ended up doing a cleaning of the cupboard and tossed out several packages of flour mixes, all contaminated. suffice to say, we did not have waffles. my parents had finished eating and both had left the dining table while i still sat there enjoying my lunch in peace on a lazy sunday.

the reason why it took me so long to eat my lunch was because i was busy preparing my resurrection plant (Selaginella lepidophylla) for blooming. i got this package of resurrection plant - marketed as a dinosaur plant - from my neighbor don 1-2 years ago. it'd been sitting in my house, waiting to be bloomed. of course i set up my gopro so i could get a time lapse video of the resurrection plant in action. not only did it come with one dried plant, but also a plastic dish and some red lava rocks from new mexico. i put it out on the windowsill in the sunroom so it could get some sun as well. as soon as i soaked the plant in some water, it started to unfurl. what was once a dried up ball opened up over the hours to become a green fern.

my father and i started piecing together one of the LiFePo4 battery boxes, now that we have most of the parts. first we made the 6 AWG wires that connect the batteries to the red/black terminal posts on top of the battery box. we crimped on a ring terminal first, which involved stripping one end of the 6 AWG wire (rated to 115A) then crimping the large terminal with NEIKO crimping pliers we bought 2 weeks ago. the pliers made simple work of high gauge crimping, an essential tool, not sure how we would've crimped it otherwise.

next we had to decide how long to make these power supply cables. after some careful measuring, we decided to make both the red and black wires 12in long, giving us enough slack to open the battery box if we ever need to fix with anything inside. we then cut the 6 AWG cable to size using the heavy duty cable cutter (8-0 AWG) - it went through 263 strands of bare copper like butter. after crimping that end, we cut some heat shrink tubing (came with the 6 AWG cables) and my father used the bathroom hair dryer to shrink them around the terminals. after making the black negative wire, my father made the red positive wire to the same specifications.

with the power supply cables made, we could assemble our battery box, but i wanted to top balance the LiFePo4 battery cells one last time before we attach the BMS. my father got the bench power supply and we slow trickle charged the cells to 3.6V. while that was happening, my father cut 3 holes in the plastic battery box so we could attach the 3 socket power panel: 2 quick charge 3.0 USB outlets, 1 12v cigarette lighter socket, and an on/off toggle switch. my father found a circular hole cutting drill bit that was the right size but it'd been heavily used in the past and all the teeth were gone. it still worked to cut the holes, but instead of actually cutting, it was more like drilling through the plastic through the force of friction. the power panel attached perfectly.

once the LiFePo4 cells have been charged to 3.60V, we can finally assemble the battery and put it to use. that also meant we needed to put back our backyard flexible solar panel. up until now, we've been charging the 12V 35Ah lead acid battery using a trickle charge, ever since some critter chewed up the solar panel wires. we ran into some problems however when i tried to read the outlet of the 100W solar panel with the multimeter and got zero. we tried the smaller 50W panel and that worked fine, so we opted to just use the 50W panel for the time being. while i pulled the red/black 12 gauge wire (copper clad aluminum) from the window to the solar panel hanging from the wall, my father was in the basement connecting all the wires: solar panel wires into our 100A in-line watt meter and power analyzer that goes into the MPPT solar charge controller which connects to the battery and also connects to the on-demand water pump. we tested it out, everything seems to be working. once the battery box is ready, all we need to do is swap out the battery and change the MPPT controller so it uses a lithium-based solar charging profile.

one last bit of battery work was to buy some 12-10 AWG (yellow) ring terminals with 5/16" (M8) studs. we only need a few, but the quantities on amazon are all 50-60 pieces at least, so we ended up getting 60 heat shrink ring terminals for $9.

my mother spent most of the day in the bedroom watching her japanese/korean drama on the imac, crocheting her flowers. today she was making daisies. around 5pm she came out to make dinner. earlier she was outside harvesting a bunch of chinese celery stalks to make a tofu and leftover porkchop stirfry. she also made a chicken and asparagus stirfry along with a bowl of smashed cucumbers.

there were no interesting clouds tonight to chase around with the drone so i went straight home after dinner. there were no parking spots close to my house so i ended up parking 2 blocks away, in my usual emergency space. game 5 of the finals won't be until tomorrow night, so there was nothing good to watch on tv. instead, after a shower, i finished episode 9 of the offer. later - around midnight - a spot opened up nearby so i went out and moved the motorcycle. it's supposed to rain overnight but i'm not going to cover up the bike like i normally do because it needs a good rinsing (sticky tree sap, bird poop, pollen dust).