We put away the winter clothes today. 11 degree heatwave...spring is early!

It was 3 degrees when I left the house this morning. I almost zipped up my jacket.

Left the island today as they were calling for snow and ice, and the island doesn't deal with that stuff, so we drive back to Greensboro.

Sure enough, this afternoon the two bridges, to get on and off the island, were both closed, along with large areas around Wilmington (roads, bridges, etc, etc.).

Got back to Greensboro and all was well. Not supposed to get anything here..

6pm the sky fell in. Roads loaded with ice and snow... :-(

I found out cats just keep getting smarter. I mean, they were already so smart that we're naming data cables after them, cat5 and cat6, and so on…

I'm setting up a network, and a black cat heads into the room. I eyed him warily, but more or less ignored him. Sensing my cold indifference, he jumps up on the counter and settles down on top of my laptop keyboard.

A few minutes later I am back at my laptop, and find that my trackpad and trackpad buttons are not functioning. I reboot the computer. Several times.

I discovered it works fine on the W8 opening screen, but once my password is entered, the pointer goes away and there is no function.

Had to go to google on my phone, where several ctrl- and func- combinations were recommended.

Turns out the cat, likely not happy with the lack of attention, went right for ctrl-F5, which disables the trackpad. I toggled it back and was good.

Tom, you're lucky.

He could have went online and ruined your reputation....

I played with a particle accelerator at a government lab... we made photons and electrons smash into shit at the speed of light.... it was cool.

This is exactly how we end up at war with an alternate universe.

this is when dont ask dont tell comes into play... i wish i could have seen what the darpa hutch was doing, but thats all classified and shit!

Now ed glows in the dark

I realized recently that my 2 favorite types of projects to do are:

1. 2 channel hi-fi. Vinyl, tubes, garden hose cables, etc. makes me happy. Even on the simpler side of things, it is great. Right before Christmas, an older couple called and said their Sony 300 CD changer had stopped working. At first, like normal, my head started going towards SONOS, NAS drive, etc....and get them into this millennium with their music collection. But then I remembered that we had some NOS Sony DVP777ES on the shelf. I gave them the option to buy one of those for dirt cheap, and they were so grateful. The wife had a 3 ring binder with an index of discs in the machine, and they were sorted by genre, and artist. They were super happy not to have to learn something new that they likely would not be able to figure out without headaches. I was thrilled because I got rid of one of those boat anchor 400 disc changers, no networking or firmware to deal with, no HDMI, no control system. I had so much time left after installing it, that I loaded all their CDs into the thing in the correct order, even though they insisted they could do it. I offered to take their defunct cassette deck in to get serviced, cleaned, lubed, etc., but they decided they did not use it anymore and declined.


2. Tearing out and replacing analog video systems. I do not know what it is about these. They are sometimes a PITA. Yesterday, I spent the day gutting a cabinet of gear in a theater room we did 10+ years ago. The pile of component video cables alone weighed as much as the new Yamaha AVR. For some reason, walking out with more crap than I just installed is a good feeling. :)

Prewiring a huge house in the middle of winter? Not the worst thing, but pretty close. :\

The burbs north of Houston are pretty shut down today due to a light frosting of snow and freezing rain.
I’ll be enjoying a snow day.

Ed "glows" every night... LOL

thats right bitchez!!!!

Watching as our "light snow", that the local news reported, piles up past 7"....

Started around 3am and here nearly 8 hours, it's still coming down....

That sucks, you’ve got more than we are getting. We might have 3 inches.