And the verdict is...recycled

Well, the motherboard is toast, so in a few days I'll have my new computer, about the size of a shoebox for kids' sneakers. Hope everything will work OK on the new platform, which I understand will have Windows 7. How about that? Leaping right past Vista...
And I've been furiously working from time to time on getting shelving in my building so I can finally get all Debbie's twenty-'leven boxes of Christmas stuff put away out of the living room. Tomorrow is payday, so I will get insulation and put it up, and order the gas to hook up to the heater I bought earlier this month. I'll post some pictures of the new computer, and of the progress on the building, when I get the chance.

Will it be resurrected or recycled?

My home computer, that is! It's about 8 or 9 years old, but I've upgraded it a time or two. Yesterday morning, it wouldn't turn on at all. The hard drive has been bumping up on "full" warnings for quite some time...strange to think that a 40-gigabyte hard drive could fill up so easily. I know it's quite a small drive compared to what is routine now, with some drives measured in terabytes...but I still remember how excited I was in 1990 to get my first hard drive. A whole 40 megabytes! And at the time I thought, I'll never fill up a drive that large! Now I have a 500-gig external drive. And that's filling up!

The computer had a couple of other strange episodes recently, too. One day a couple of weeks ago, I plugged in the camera to download some pix, and suddenly got a message on my screen "the device has failed." Didn't say which device, but I had to restart. Then a couple of days ago, I plugged in an iPod to recharge it, and the same thing happened. Had to restart once again. Last Friday I turned the computer off (usually I just let it run) because I knew I'd be away from it a couple of days. Then yesterday morning, it was like there was no power to the computer at all. Checked all connections, switches, etc. but no good...so it's off to the repair shop.

My go-to tech guy has the thing at his place, analyzing. He'll let me know if a memory upgrade and a larger hard drive will keep me going awhile, or if it's best to just start from scratch. One of these days I'm going the Apple route. Used to have a Mac when I worked at NAMB, and liked the experience, but PCs are just so much cheaper.

Snow Day

This is the snow angel Debbie made on our driveway today. Looks pretty good, huh? Here's a video of her on her sled, too...

"It's freaking COLD, Mr. Bigglesworth!"

Wow! 9 or 10 degrees this morning, didn't go above freezing at all yesterday, and isn't predicted to go above freezing again around here until Wednesday, and then only by 4 degrees. Snow predicted for Thursday and Friday.

Must be all that global warming.

Waterproof roof

Well, my Christmas present was permission to hire a carpenter to get the 'tin' on my building roof, and it's done now. I'll try to put up a picture soon. I'm really excited to have the building 'done'--now I only lack these things... (all upgrades! So I don't have to 'permit' the building)
*finish the floor over the subfloor
*put in insulation in the walls
*build shelves for the Christmas decorations
*put screens in the vents at the top of the walls
*put in overhead insulation and some kind of ceiling
*rip 4" boards down to 2" boards and install on the outside to simulate 'board & batten'
*spray paint the outside
*run power to the building
*install a breaker box
*run interior lights and other wiring
*put in two more treated posts
*build the deck on the back under the porch
*reinforce a beam, install Debbie's 'ancestral' swing under the porch
*put in some kind of walls inside--including lots of perf-board
*paint the interior if needed
*install the woodburning stove as heat, run all the venting for it
So it looks like a full spring. But I can at least do it in the dry!

Skype rocks!

I think of myself as being somewhat "up" on technology. I write this blog, I use Facebook, and of course I use e-mail daily and do my sermons with PowerPoint notes...but I'd never got around to using something called Skype.

The other night, we finally got around to installing the software on Debbie's laptop computer. Our son Nathan in TX helped us get everything configured right. It was wonderfully strange to be talking to him, and see him and the background of his living room in Karnes City.

The next night, we called early enough to 'visit' with our granddaughter Brenna. We carried the computer into the living room so she could see our Christmas tree...she kept asking her Dad where we were...I guess she doesn't get the concept completely quite yet.

Lots of people ask "Where's my George Jetson flying car?" but I'm glad to finally have this version of a videophone!

For those of you with Skype already installed, I will publish our 'address' in the future. Don't remember it right now! (One of the disadvantages of the new technology--remembering your various electronic identities and passwords.)

Blue Ridge TubaChristmas 2009

Well, this year's TubaChristmas has come and gone. I've just received many pictures of the event, and will try to post them on my FaceBook account. In the meantime, here are a few images to enjoy... and here is the link to the full photo album on FaceBook (I don't think you have to be a FaceBook member to view them): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41267&id=1454783473&l=8069b784f1