Lost friends found...
First off, Happy Birthday to zrath ! Hope you got some new Lego sets to celebrate with! :)
Today was another typical day; Get up, eat something, take care of the horses, tidy up a little more, head into town to drop off the recycling, buy some horse-food and groceries, head back to the farm, take care of the horses and dog, tidy up some more, try to fix things....
I made some important progress today though: I restored contact with a couple of friends I'd lost contact with, and I recovered some important files from an older computer. The hard part was the although the computer had been working when I shipped it out here, when I tried to power it up it just wouldn't come on at all. Seems that the power-supply is fried, and because it's an actual IBM machine, it has a proprietory power-supply! Thankfully, I had another of the same model, so I was able to swap out power-supply and get my files. It would have been easier to just pop the HD into one of the several removable HD drawers that I have, except that I can't find the darn things! I know they're in one of these boxes somewhere, but which one? Probably whichever one is buried the deepest and thus the hardest to get at. It only took me five minutes to swap out the power-supplies, so I think that was the better course of action for the time being.
As I mentioned, I regained contact with a couple of friends that I'd lost contact with; one of whom is now 80 years old! I sent him an Email with my new contact info, and within half an hour he phoned me! He's using Skype, which I've been hearing great things about for a while now, though I wonder how well it would work out here given that my connection is via satellite? It should work fine in town where we have an ADSL connection, but I don't know about here at the farm. Might have to try it once I get a decent head-set.
I hear a lot of you folks state-side got hit with a pretty massive blizzard. 20" worth in 24 hours! Pretty impressive, though I remember (all too well!) the St. Patrick's Day Blizzard of 1997, which shut down the city and left me stranded at work (midnight shift) for several hours before the plows dug us out. I was the only person on my block with a snow-blower, so I was pretty popular for a while. :) Like the storm that just hit you folks, the weather was actually quite warm and pleasant - but those are the conditions you need to get a snowfall that size. At those "just below freezing" temperatures, you get the biggest, fluffiest snowflakes. Also the wettest and heaviest, so I hope no one is having problems with collapsed roofs or fallen trees... :/
Maybe certain Teddy Bears will be a little more careful before challenging Mother Nature to "Bring it!" in the future... ;)