Odds and Ends

I'm sick and tired of winter. The good news... Here is it March 2nd it's a nice 54 degrees at 11:30AM. The bad news.... They are calling for two to four inches of snow again tonight starting at 6PM...WTF?!?! If it wasn't for all of the crud on the streets from the melting snow I would be out riding. Lord knows I want to bad enough but not bad enough to ride in all of the salt and sand that is on the roads. Not to mention my bike would be a mess and I don't really feel like spending hours cleaning for only an hour or two of riding. This is the first winter in a long time that I haven't got to go for a ride at least once a month during the winter. Sad part is we've had a "normal" winter this year as far as snow fall an cold temps. I must be getting old.

Yesterday was a "lets fix PCs' today" day. I woke up to a desktop that wouldn't even finish the POST. This is the second time in three months I've woken up and had this happen. Last time like this time it is the mother board that is kaka. Now I'm not sure why but I'm guessing the power supply has something to do with it. I got out the trusty volt meter and checked all the voltages and while nothing is way out of spec I do see that the 3.3 volt outputs are in the 3.45 range. So it is getting replaced just because it is really about the only thing I can see causing these problems. So out the door to the shop to pick up my good old backup Sony laptop. Maybe not the fastest thing on the planet it does always run so there is something to be said about that! Plus I'm a smart guy and always have my stuff backed up so I'm not missing a bunch of stuff I just have to have. It didn't take twice for me to learn that lesson :-)

Back home my friend Chirp shows up with a Dell laptop her sister had given her saying HELP! I knew as soon as I booted and seen A: Windows ME for the OS and B: Always Off Line icons all over the desktop I knew there wasn't much that was going to help this little laptop other then a fresh load of XP. So some four plus hours later and 130+ patches via Microsoft Update she had a spanky new OS and a laptop that is now usable. She's thrilled and I'm tired of PC repair... until it happens again.

fasthair