Cool Arrival

It wasn't snowing when I arrived in Boston this year but it was a little cool.

Cold at noon

Tom

Cold December

I don't know if this means it's going to be a cold winter, or if we've peaked.

43.9° is outside: I thought the living room heat turned on at 60°; I've never seen it that low before. What ever it was there was frost on the roofs and it was cold when I went out for my morning walk. But, there was no breeze so it wasn't too bad.

Tom

Odd Month - Last Sunday

So, it was a non-normal weekend - the weekly routine was broken. As usual, I went down to the ACP computer swap meet. I even took my camera so I could document how sad the situation has become: I've written about it before, and things have only gotten worse.

I had my list of things to buy, and was open to other useful items. Since, after that unfortunate burn-out a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had a spare power supply, that was one of them. The ones at ACP tend to be the cheaper ones, but they work in a pinch.

My usual small-parts supplier had a very poor selection, and, even the recycler didn't have much out. After completing my tour, as I headed back to the car, I reviewed my list and nothing was crossed off. I picked up several power supplies and between them I don't think they weighed a total of a pound. I judge power supplies by weight.

Before leaving, I went across the street to take a couple of snapshots, then was gone. When I got home and was ready for the post, I pulled out the camera and found I had no pictures - I had the camera in the wrong mode and didn't notice it.

I'll take another shot at it in January - if the swapmeet survives.

Tom

Sunday Routine

I pretty much do the same thing every Sunday morning. Get up, get the paper, throw away everything except Fry's ad and the TV Register, take a short rest and walk down to the swap meet.

Every week I see the same thing. I walk past the AT&T box: there it is with the hedges they installed to try to pretty it up. The box changes appearance weekly, because the local "artists" mark it up, then someone covers the graffiti with a variety of paint.

Then, down past where the grapefruit grow and are sold in the driveway. I wonder what happened this year. There were grapefruit in the back-yard trees, but none were sold.

After that it's the kids playing futball the school yard. Sometimes I field a loose ball and boot it back on to the pitch.

A little further on, I start to angle over to the swap meet: it's in Cypress College's north-west parking lot, and I am on the south-east side. Cutting through the futball field, there's usually an adult match being played. This is where I walk my laps every weekday morning. It's about a half-mile from my apartment, and I do seven laps, then home. The college's "good" futball and baseball fields are on the right side of the picture, behind blue-screened fences, and I'll be going to the left of those to the parking lot.

There is a little variation in where the vendors are set up, but it's usually about the same. This end has some junk. It's mostly old junk, and I suspect a lot of it is from storage units that are unpaid and auctioned off. Moving to the west, there's more junk, but most of it is newer - cloths, furniture, etc. Since I have most of the junk already, I usually don't buy anything. Maybe a small tool, or last week a bicycle chain.

When I've done all I can do, I head home.

This is an odd month and with the end near that means a little variety - ACP swap meet in Santa Ana. I can almost always find a piece of computer junk I need (I'm already making a list.)

Tom

What A Waste

I've needed to get rid of this TV since it burned out. It's been taking up floor space in the spare bedrooom (storage room) for almost two years now. I've been thinking about taking it to the city's recycler for some time, but they charge by the pound. Over the weekend, a neighboring city's chamber of commerce had an e-waste event, so I decided to load up the car and check it out.

It was a simple drive-thru. I didn't even get out of the car.

The only way I could think to reward their efforts was to return home, pick up a couple of computer monitors I don't need any more and drive through again.

Tom

Suspendah Extendah

I got the expected phone call other other day (the 26th). The general conversation was about normal — nothing new here – nothing new there.

Eventually the conversation came around to my sewing (it frequently does.) Sewing is not a hobby for me, the only reason I have a sewing machine is boat projects. Since I don't have the boat any more don't use it for much else. Now, I mostly do small clothes repairs and things like that.

But, I have had a little project going. In the mornings when I go out for my exercise, I wear an old pair of pants that aren't good for anything else. The problem is I have trouble keeping them up. A belt is marginal at best, and my last one gave up a couple of weeks ago, so I have been trying suspenders.

The (cheap, of course) suspenders work pretty good, but there are problems. One is they are just slightly too short making my pants too high. My project has been to make the straps a little longer – or some other solution. Extending the straps a little seemed like a lot of work for a little result.

So, my suspender extenders are attached to the pants and just give that little extra length. It didn't take long to put a prototype together. Test time in in the AM.

Back from the test — I would call it successful. Now on to durability testing.

Visible in the picture is one of my earlier sewing efforts. I found that the suspenders liked to slide down my shoulders as I walked, probably aided by the shirt I wear. So, I added straps with Velcro to prevent the straps from spreading. And, as I look at the picture, I am wondering about that piece of cloths hanger that is spreading the pants. Since it was already cut, has it ever been on a fishing expedition?

Tom

Smoking In LA

Here's the view of the big Los Angeles fires that I get from my apartment. The wind hasn't been blowing much and that allows the smoke to rise almost straight up.

This was taken just after noon and a breeze has started blowing up there. Just fifteen minutes ago, the smoke appeared more as a cloud, and now it's starting to move.

There has been just a little smoke-smell in the mornings here, but I am well to the south, so I'm sure it gets worst while moving to the north. The days have been around 100° and that can't help.

Tom

Motherboard Fun

I ran into a little motherboard difficulty this past week. In the morning, before I go out for my exercise, I don't use my main computer, the Dell does early duty. But, I flip on the powerstrip, that powers the main unit, to get the network switch powered. On Friday, when I flipped it on, the main computer fans started running – that's not right. After some testing, I concluded that the motherboard power-on circuit must be bad.

The board is an ECS NForce250 754: I don't care what people say about low-end motherboards, this one has served me reliably for several years. That means turned on and off twice a day and 12+ hours of on-time per day.

Fortunately, I have the same motherboard in my MythTv recorder, which I haven't been using lately. Swapping the motherboard, processor and memory was a pretty quick and easy task. Since I still have Windows 98 and 2000 Pro on the computer, it's important to have the same board so drivers don't need to be changed.

Main computer on right and MythTv being disassembled on left.

Now, I'll have to consider how to replace it, either the same board, maybe I'll find one on on eBay, or a more modern board. Fry's usually has some deals that should do the job. They routinely bundle motherboards and processors for a reasonable price. I'll have to buy new memory, but, a lot of boards have video and network built-in, so I won't worry about those.

It didn't take too long to make the swap and get on with what ever it is that I do. I could have been quicker, but the plumber was in changing my water heater's P&T valve, which was frozen solid, so I had to have some discussions with him. I've lived in this apartment for 11+ years and the manager came in and checked it and changed the smoke alarm batteries for the first time. I guess some people never change the batteries – mine were new (and marked) last month. I don't know about the water heaters, quite a few are being replaced.

Notice how clean that 15 year old carpet is? That's not my fault. Part of repairing my shower's hot-water pipe leak a couple of weeks ago, was the carpet cleaning. They didn't do the whole room, but everyplace that wasn't occupied.

Tom

Shaken - Not Stirred

That was the best one for some time – a real good shake. I was watching License to Kill when it hit.

Magnitude - 4.7
Date - 2009/05/17
Time - 20:39:36
Location - 33.940N 118.338W 13.5

20.3 miles, bearing 293 °(T) from my apartment.

The shake map
and
event info link.

Tom

A Little Shakin'

Don't bother asking — I felt it. It was a slight shake, but I filled out the 'Did you feel it?' anyway.

According to my GPS the center was 15.2 miles bearing 68°T.

Here's the stats/maps:

16:56:22 NE of Yorba Linda

and

shake map

I better get back to what I was doing. Hey, what waaas I doing?

And I felt the two that happened before 8:30 PM. There was one followed almost immediately by a second: they occurred in the same area as the 16:56.

Tom