Weekend update, from a really skewed frame of reference...
The weekend itself consisted of a bunch of stuff Saturday that I don't remember, followed by taking the kids to The Mouse on Sunday and Monday. We stayed at what passes for low-budget on the Mouse property, the "Pop Century Resort". The canned music on the bus ride from said $100-a-night hotel to Epcot provided me the first opportunity since i was a teenager to cringe at the assault on my eardrums that is that hideous Disco Star Wars thing. Photos of the extravaganza will go up various places later.
Taxes are done. Yay for TurboTax. Yay for eFiling, I guess (saved a stamp and a drive to the Post Office tonight). Boo hiss what were you THINKING for the 16th Amendment.
And last night was part one of of a two part two day shopping marathon to select new appliances for acquisition Friday, pursuant to all sorts of sales, rebates and stuff. We're in the hunt (and have apparently narrowed down the selection for (according to suemac :-) ) ) a washer and dryer and a dishwasher. The jury's still out on a water heater. I want a tankless gas unit with variable output that can eventually function as a standby/auxilliary for a solar hot water system. Tankless water heaters are spiffy and efficient, but brutally expensive compared to a conventional tank heater, so I only wanna have to do this once.
I've got my new workstation built and OSed. Now it's time to move the 30 or 40 gigs that represent my life and all its splendour over to the new machine.
I've also accumulated all the parts I need (except some minor hardware - string ferrules for the back, strap buttons and such) for my Telecaster project. I snagged a rough-cut body blank off eBay from a guy who salvaged some planks from a 100+ year old barn teardown and roughed out a dozen bodies to sell. It's a neat piece of wood, in honor of which I'm going to dub the guitar the Barncaster. :-)
Grumble - I got paged a couple times last night 'cause the op on duty didn't remember that Telecomm has their own emergency response oncall list. Groan. Between that and the constant sinus crud and coughing, sleep is notable by its lack.
Oh, and time to start doing some stuff with my replacement Tandy 102. There's this spiffy gizmo called REX, which is a flash card and some glue logic that lets it mimic a dozen or so ROM images, so all the cool aftermarket OSes and software for the Tandy can be just a couple of keystrokes away. RAM backups, too. Slick.
Taxes are done. Yay for TurboTax. Yay for eFiling, I guess (saved a stamp and a drive to the Post Office tonight). Boo hiss what were you THINKING for the 16th Amendment.
And last night was part one of of a two part two day shopping marathon to select new appliances for acquisition Friday, pursuant to all sorts of sales, rebates and stuff. We're in the hunt (and have apparently narrowed down the selection for (according to suemac :-) ) ) a washer and dryer and a dishwasher. The jury's still out on a water heater. I want a tankless gas unit with variable output that can eventually function as a standby/auxilliary for a solar hot water system. Tankless water heaters are spiffy and efficient, but brutally expensive compared to a conventional tank heater, so I only wanna have to do this once.
I've got my new workstation built and OSed. Now it's time to move the 30 or 40 gigs that represent my life and all its splendour over to the new machine.
I've also accumulated all the parts I need (except some minor hardware - string ferrules for the back, strap buttons and such) for my Telecaster project. I snagged a rough-cut body blank off eBay from a guy who salvaged some planks from a 100+ year old barn teardown and roughed out a dozen bodies to sell. It's a neat piece of wood, in honor of which I'm going to dub the guitar the Barncaster. :-)
Grumble - I got paged a couple times last night 'cause the op on duty didn't remember that Telecomm has their own emergency response oncall list. Groan. Between that and the constant sinus crud and coughing, sleep is notable by its lack.
Oh, and time to start doing some stuff with my replacement Tandy 102. There's this spiffy gizmo called REX, which is a flash card and some glue logic that lets it mimic a dozen or so ROM images, so all the cool aftermarket OSes and software for the Tandy can be just a couple of keystrokes away. RAM backups, too. Slick.