Downtime caused by New Laptop!

On By stefrobrtsIn laptopLeave a comment

I’ve been recovering from a big computer changeover. A friend heard about my sad old laptop and GAVE me a new one! Unbelievable! I’ve never had anyone do anything so kind and generous out of the blue like that. I am so grateful to him! But of course it takes a while to get everything moved over, learn to navigate Vista, and get all my accessories (like my wireless keyboard) working again – all things that turned productivity way down. But today I’ve finally got it all back together. I ca get pics off my camera again, and the keyboard/mouse is working (hard to get any serious work done on the laptop keyboard and touchpad). I LOVE my new laptop, a Dell 1545. It is fast and the screen is HUGE and it’s been pretty easy to work with so far. I don’t even have any complaints about Vista (it was free, who am I to complain?)

After copying all my data off the harddrive, the old laptop retired to the store, where it is getting used everyday. Nice to not have to drag a computer between home and work anymore.

Hot Rod Laptop

On By stefrobrtsIn laptop1 Comment

My six year old Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop has been a faithful friend. Oh, we’ve had our ups and downs, but for the most part it has been a workhorse. A couple years ago I upgraded to a bigger/faster harddrive and maxed out the internal memory. For the past year it has gotten dragged to work everyday, and back home at night.

Last Christmas the monitor went out, and I was lucky to find one on eBay which was mis-labelled as the smaller monitor, when I could tell from the picture it was the larger one. So I got it for a steal and replaced my broken monitor. Then this year the power adapter went bad and we found replacements for $6. Then the battery gave up and it turns out the laptop won’t work without a somewhat functioning battery, even if it’s plugged in. So we replaced that, and it kept plugging along.

A couple weeks ago the fan gave a sad little squeel and quit. Without the fan the laptop could only run for a couple minutes at a time without overheating. Once again to eBay, where I found a new fan and heatsink combo. While waiting for it to arrive I pulled the laptop apart.

There’s a view I’ve seen all too often. The fan is on the right, and the CPU is under it, just to the left.

Pulling out the fan/heatsink as a unit, I realized the chip was cemented onto it from the years of cooking that cooling gel between them. This is actually an opportunity in disguise. Instead of trying to pry the chip off the old heatsink, or pullling just the fan out of the new one, why not buy a new CPU? The old one is a Celeron 2.3GHz. It only has a 128k cache I think.
I did a bit of research, went on the Dell forum to double check my understanding, and went on eBay again, this time looking for a Pentium 4 CPU, with a 400MHz bus and 512k cache. I had my choice of CPU speeds, since the laptop requires the more plentiful desktop CPU, not a laptop CPU, so there were many to choose from. I went with a 2.4GHz, hoping that would not increase the laptop’s cooling issues. Then I sat back and waited for my parts to arrive.

Drops right in.

New heat sink and fan go in on top of it (with cooling gel between). I reassembled and held my breath as I pushed the power button. It made a noise like someone had stepped on a small animal. Uh-oh! I tried a couple more times, then followed the power cable back to the wallplug and discovered I had unplugged it! Duh! That sad little noise was the dead battery. Ok, plug it in, turn it on, and it came right up like nothing had changed. Ran a few programs, and it seems nice and quick. But the real change is online. Suddenly it can handle watching videos online, and even streaming video on Hulu – what a bonus for those long boring days at the store!

Yay – long live the Inspiron!

When I bought this laptop I was thinking it was going to be a sort of throwaway computer. My last couple desktops had grown obsolete so quickly, and I knew that laptops were even less upgradable than desktops. So when we bought it we bought the cheapest one available. It has been a great little computer, and thanks to the pages of information on the internet, as well as the easy accessability of parts on eBay, it is going to continue to be a workhorse for a little while longer. I can’t complain about the six years of use I’ve gotten out of it so far.

LCROSS and the moon

On By stefrobrtsIn telescope2 Comments

I’ll admit I was excited to hear they would be crashing something on the moon, and that it would be visible to folks with big telescopes (because I have a big telescope, and because the moon is pretty much static so it would be cool to actually see something happen), but disappointed when I heard I needed at least 500 power to view it, since my smallest eyepiece is about half that, and even at that magnification you have to constantly nudge nudge nudge the scope to keep what you’re looking at in view. I’ve never gone higher power, and rarely even use my high power eyepiece anyway, because it’s a rare day when the atmosphere is still enough to see at that magnification. So last night I stayed in bed while NASA crashed their project into the moon. I heard from other astronomers that our area was socked in by clouds anyway, so just as well.

I didn’t want to miss the excitement, so I set the DVR to record NASA TV. NASA TV is about as dull as watching paint dry, even to me, and I’m actually interested in what they’re doing! While setting up the DVR I had it on ISS coverage briefly as they determined that the new space treadmill wasn’t working. Nothing like ten minutes of the view from a camera pointed at a treadmill that isn’t moving. That’s some gripping TV right there!

You’d think someone could make it more engaging. But instead it’s the same old thing: watching people at flight control punching away on their laptops. Hard to decipher technical messages between the various stations. At least in this case there was an interesting view from the LCROSS spacecraft as it got closer and closer. And then the screen went white. So I assume that was impact. The guys at mission control clapped, got up and stretched, folded up their laptops and got out of there. And that was it. Literally, they were clearing the room within 15 seconds! And then the announcers said they’d have pictures in about 2 hours! What, are you kidding me? I’m so glad I didn’t climb out of bed at 4:30AM for that – talk about anti-climactic!

I’m sure they were off to another room to work on some important science stuff, but still, you think that for an event that had been covered this much in the last couple weeks, they could have found a way to make it more interesting to the general public. It’s stuff like this where people actually get excited to see what NASA is doing, and then they let us down. Might as well have not even built it up if there’s going to be nothing to see. I mean, I’ve been being disappointed by NASA for many years, so I had pretty low expectations for the event, and they managed to set the bar even lower.

Playing around

On By stefrobrtsIn guitar3 Comments

I had an audition yesterday. Yeah, kind of a weird thing for me to do, since I don’t perform, and I hate being judged (hey, I have a very fragile ego, so sue me). But it was tempered by the fact that it was our theater company looking to put together a music group, and the folks running the audition are good friends. So you think it wouldn’t be very intimidating, right? Yeah, sure. Songs I have played on my guitar a jillion times were suddenly ruined by ‘finger freeze up’ as my nerves got the best of me. Oh well, I pulled off the strumming portion better. I’m hoping we’ll get a group together to play around with.

I have been playing guitar since I was a kid. When I was nine my first acoustic nylon-stringed guitar was my birthday present. I remember I discovered it hidden in the closet and got yelled at for ruining the surprise. Oh well. I loved my guitar, and I tried to take lessons, but I had trouble getting anyone to drive me up to the music store so I missed most of them and didn’t get very far. So I played by myself until I was ready to go to college, and then for some reason I cannot fathom now, I decided to give my guitar to my brother, thinking I would need to concentrate at college and it would just be a distraction. How stupid was that?

So I went through college and five years in Yakima, and then when we moved back to Vancouver I went and bought one of those cheap electric guitar kits where you get a strat-look-alike and a little amp for $100. And I signed up for lessons with Mark Lengal at SW WA Music Studio. He was a great teacher, and I learned more from him the year or two that I took lessons than I had figured out on my own in ten. It was a lot of fun! But then I moved and it was too far to drive into town for lessons.

I eventually upgraded from my cheap electric guitar to a Martin dreadnaught, which I soon discovered was just plain too big for me. I could barely wrap my arms around it! It was very uncomfortable to play. Sure sounded nice though. Then one day I was at the local music store and hanging there among the regular size guitars was a little guitar – a ‘parlor’ guitar. It was a Takamine, made of beautiful red Koa wood, and it had the most heavenly sound, light and bright – not big and boomy like the dreadnaught. That was it, the Martin went up for sale, and for my birthday I got the Tak, and that has been my instrument ever since.

So, many years of playing, a few years of playing well 😉 It’s all fun, that’s all that matters. I play by myself a lot at home when I’ve got the place to myself. Now if I can just learn not to crumble from the pressure when I have to play in front of (or with) other people!

(click to see the cute and relevant cartoon)
Rose Is Rose

First chicken lost to a predator

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens1 Comment

I was out in the field with Jack and Barclay, when they both started sniffing at something. I went over to see what it was before they started rolling in it (it’s usually a dead field mouse or something disgusting), and I was surprised to see feathers. Clearly it was a bird. I was thinking hawk, but as I looked at it I realized it was a chicken – it was one of MY chickens! Dang it! It was one of the wandering chicks. I knew something like this would happen. They refuse to stay in the chicken yard, and so this one must have been out in the pasture and a coyote or something got it and had dinner. Very annoying, mostly because if coyotes start coming back for dinner all the time they’ll pick off my chickens one by one until they are gone, and maybe eat a cat or small dog while they’re at it (a couple years ago we lost a cat to coyotes, and I’d rather not do that again). Which is why I have been trying to keep the chickens inside the fenced area where there is lots of cover and trees and it would be harder for a coyote to catch one than to just chase it down in the open field. But this latest batch of chicks are just like their mom, Big Red, who refused to stay in the chicken yard. I found her a new home to wander in, maybe I need to do the same for these chicks.

Update: Because of the condition of the carcass I think it was a hawk that ate the chicken. I think a coyote would have eaten the whole thing, but when I found it the back, wings, and legs were still intact, so whatever it was mostly ate away the breast and body. I’m a lot happier knowing it’s a hawk than a coyote prowling around our farm!

My first attempt at saving tomato seeds

On By stefrobrtsIn garden5 Comments
A friend grows these wonderful little tomatoes every year. They are small and sweet, like giant cherry tomatoes. She said her father ordered the seeds for them about 40 years ago from a 4H club up north that had developed them to be an early tomato for the NW climate. They grow on low bushes and are productive from July on throughout the season. Every year she saves the seeds so she can grow them again next year. He family has been growing these for 40 years – how’s that for a recommendation?!
 

Start by cutting a few tomatoes open
And scoop out the middle with the seeds (save the rest for eatin’)
Separate the seeds from the pulp as much as you can. and rinse them in a fine strainer, then put them in a small jar of water on the windowsill for three days. The pulp will slowly let off the seeds and float to the top. I pour it off and replace with fresh water every day.
Rinse them one more time to remove any leftover pulp, and dry them on a coffee filter. After they are completely dry you can put them away in an envelope for planting next year. 
I hope this works, I can’t wait to grow my own next year!

Barclay and the limp

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay3 Comments

This morning we were outside playing, and Barclay was at one end of the yard when he spotted one of the cats coming through the gate at the other end. He paused a second and then charged across the yard at full speed. I was sitting in the middle, on the deck, and looked over at the cat to see what she was going to do, when I heard a crash, and looked back and Barclay was still running at top speed, but he had obviously run into the plastic lounge chair! I don’t know if he tried to jump over it, or just had his eye on the cat and ran into it. Either way he made it about twenty feet past the chair and suddenly stopped with a concerned look on his face, and turned around and limped back towards the middle of the yard.

I went over to him and asked him how he was, and he looked at me and flopped over on his side and held up his paw for inspection. I looked it over and it seemed ok, but he just kept laying there, looking at me through one eye. It always cracks me up when puppies first discover they aren’t invincible and something hurts them! He just laid there on his side and I said ‘well, how about we go inside?’ and after a minute he sat up with this ‘I guess so’ sort of look, and limped inside and flopped over in the hallway.

I had to go to work, but I came back and picked him up later and he was back to his usual self, no limp at all (as I suspected). Poor little guy didn’t even know he COULD get hurt! I’m sure he’ll forget and be charging around the yard with a complete disregard for his own safety again in no time.

Out with Big Red and her roosters

On By stefrobrtsIn chickensLeave a comment

Big Red has been seriously getting on my nerves. She won’t stay in the orchard area with the other chickens. I even clipped her wings to make it harder for her to fly over the fence, and that didn’t do the trick. So several times a day I was finding her out and about, and getting chased by the dogs, and calling her chicks to come out and join her (though her chicks don’t seem to need her anymore, they spend more time with the rest of the flock than she did)!. Worst of all she was hiding her eggs somewhere out in the bushes! So I had enough, and asked if anyone wanted her on the chicken list, and sure enough someone piped up and said they’d trade a young buff hen for her. Deal! They came by tonight and gave me a lovely little gold Buff Orpington hen (I’ll get a picture of her tomorrow). She’s very sweet, and calmly sat in my arms while I was talking to the folks who brought her over. When they left it was already getting dark and the other chickens had already gone to roost, so I slipped her into the coop. They should all wake up together and be one big happy flock in the morning.

Likewise I found a home for three of the baby roosters. So far I only had three I was sure of, so I gave those away. There’s two more I suspect, but I’m waiting to make sure. I’m not sure why this lady wanted all the roosters she could get. She asked me to call her and she’d come get any more I pick out. I guess I should just be happy I found someone to take them. I’m guessing they’ll grow up to be dinner, but that’s sort of a rooster’s lot in life. Since you only need one rooster for 8 or so hens, and there’s a 50/50 split, that’s a lot of extra roosters!

I am thinking of building a more secure chicken run area off the coop, where I can confine them when I want to. I’m getting really tired of this constant escaping. It would be nice to build something where I could easily watch them from the house too. Right now the orchard is just far enough away I can’t really see them and enjoy them without going out there. It would be nice this winter if I could just glance out the window and see my girls 🙂

Cold Hives part 2

On By stefrobrtsIn health4 Comments

Well, the Zyrtec worked really well. I only took one, and I didn’t have hives again until today, even though there were several situations where I was expecting to get them – almost asking for it really! However, the second day after I took it I started to get anxiety and jitters and had trouble concentrating. I can’t say for sure it was the Zyrtec. The side effects of it don’t mention anything like that, except in the list of very rare side effects. And it’s also ‘that time’ (you ladies know what I mean) and sometimes that throws my body off in weird ways. I’ve had problems with anxiety attacks before, but I haven’t had one like this for a long time. I hate to blame the Zyrtec, when it could just be coincidence. The anxiety lasted until today also, and when I got some hives on my hands and feet this morning, I reached for a Claratin, just to be safe. I think I’ll wait a while before I try another Zyrtec.  It sure was nice to be hive-free for a few days though!