Finished my second catchment barrel yesterday morning, finally. And today I upgraded MPLAB to version 8.02; sure enough, a whole slew of new problems emerged. After making the relative path to the proper include file, P16F917.INC, and the board still not showing any LEDs lit, I looked at the port numbers in the code as opposed to the board... the code was using port C for output, and the LEDs are tied to port D on the PICKit 2! After fixing that, the damned thing worked again. Now I can do everything from within the IDE instead of having to switch to the separate program.
However, there's no rush. I canceled the order of coffee plants from those dumbfucks at Henry Fields who sit on the order for days and don't respond to emails. When I get back from Cali (Maker Faire and possibly Kinetic Sculpture Race), I'll order some from Gurney's and see if I fare any better. So I won't really need my automatic watering system till June sometime.
I also think I figured out the problem with PayPal. A vendor on Amazon, from whom I bought the foam-filled tires for my dirtboard, consistently fails to complete the transaction on time, and the funds are silently returned to my PayPal balance. Thinking I'd simply forgotten there were funds available, I promptly spent the money... then when the vendor re-ran the charge, I was left with a negative balance. So even with PayPal you can go wrong. And they don't even offer the possibility of an alert when that happens. Fucking financial institutions. None of them are worth a shit except for Bank of Internet, from my experience, and even they won't protect you from accidental overdrafts.
last updated 2013-01-10 21:12:04. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com