Date: 2009-01-12 09:07 Subject: Snow and Machines Security: Public Music: Oysterband: The Rose of England

On Friday night we took Ben to the airport, then sat at home and waited for the phone to ring to tell us either that Ben was boarding or that his plane was delayed. I got tired of waiting and shovelled the driveway, clearing it entirely. (Or, as entirely as our driveway is every cleared - down to the gravel in some places, and down to a good, firm snowpack everywhere else.) At about 7:30 the Air Canada website told us that his plane had departed (though the Milwaukee Airport website just said that his plane was 'on time'). And we discussed it, and decided that it was a better idea to stay home for the weekend.

Saturday morning I got up and shovelled the driveway again, then took myself out for breakfast. Laura and I then went to pick up her new glasses, then we went home and I called Henry to let him know I was free for the day. I messed with computer things for a little while, and he came over around 4. We disassembled Blackbox (the sleek, nearly silent black-cased computer that I use for gaming) and reassembled it with new components, discovering that the new power supply only had two cables to drive IDE components. And that the cables we had available would also drive two IDE components. And that we had two IDE hard drives and two IDE optical drives. And that the spacing on the cables was standard, meaning that it wouldn't do exactly what we wanted.

So, a trip to Best Buy. Where we picked up an external drive case. Home again, where we hooked up the DVD drive, a SATA drive to serve as the OS drive, and the smaller of the two hard drives as an external drive. (This machine is also connected to a terabyte external drive, which is the home of the music library.) We installed XP onto the new SATA internal drive, copied the contents of the external IDE to the music library drive, and swapped external IDE drives. And, after much finagling and wiggling and work, fired up Left 4 Dead a little after midnight.

Left 4 Dead, a first-person zombie shooter, is creepy and fast and very cool. I played until I died, which felt like about an hour and was probably more like 15 minutes. There's a weird clipping thing, which Henry suggested might be soundcard related. But anyway, he left and I went to bed around 2.

Sunday morning I installed a different sound card, which didn't fix the clipping problem. I then installed Red Alert 3 and had breakfast while the hard drives chewed on it. I played it for awhile, then installed Command and Conquer 3. In between games I did a few things around the house (so I could justify my sluggishness), ran some errands, and the like. Around 7 we went to the airport and picked up Ben, then I went out to get groceries. And home for more RA3. (Though first I had to clear a problem with the sound cards stepping on each other, which was enormously frustrating.) And finally to bed.

So, we missed Nordskogen 12th Night. And staying with Padruig and G. And movie night at John and Amy's. But I can now enjoy my Christmas presents (Laura got me the games, and I could only *look* at them). And we didn't drive in the snow, and we got to sleep in... and there will be other events. And movie nights. And John and Amy aren't *really* going to move, because that would just be mean.

We have no plans for the evenings, according to my calendar. We're going to try to get to the gym, and I've decided that I need to attack the bookshelves - we looked at what that would entail, and I have to take them apart to router the edges. In so doing, I'll reinforce the supports to straighten them. And then we can sand, primer, and paint them. And/or look into carving or edging them. I'd really like to finish that by the end of the month...

And now, back to work.