Here are some pictures [in the same album, but in daylight] from this morning once the sun was up. I’ll still be going to the store later to get my film developed. And now, I get to shovel the driveway! Yee-haw! Hey – I’ve never done that before, so it’s kind of exciting. Mike, you’ll forgive my naive excitement over something you most likely came to dread growing up, but I can’t help it. Snow is still such a novelty to me that it’s all so exciting – even shovelling.
Out into the snow I go!
2012-01-08 23:29:25
Here it is: the first big snow of the year. Yes, I know it’s 3am, but I’m still awake and you can get some great pictures at night if you have the right camera – not to mention the fact that with all the snow outside, it looks almost bright even so late at night. I’ll have some better ones tomorrow when I develop my latest roll of film [hopefully my last]. It started snowing around 1pm and hasn’t stopped yet. I can see about a foot of snow on the ground in places and the streets are covered. They have cancelled church so I will be sleeping late – a good thing, since I’m up at 3am! The first few pictures are from my pocket digital and I will have some better quality shots from my film tomorrow.
I mentioned above that I will be developing my last roll of film. That’s not entirely accurate as I will still need film for specialty shots such as infrared and other things. But, I have just ordered my new professional digital camera. I’ve been saving up money from my bonuses at work and just received a portion of my inheritance from my grandmother [Thanks, Grandma! And, no, it’s not junk! – She knows what I mean… :-)] so we put in an order for a Canon EOS 5D. That’s 12.8 Megapixels of wonderous digital photography. No more film scanning, nor low-res picture taking on a camera without manual control.
Now, I just have to wait. And as Inigo Montoya says: “I hate waiting.”
Last night, the snows never came. They had said that it would be snowing heavliy by midnight, but they were wrong. It waited 12 hours. Now, they’re saying that it will snow even longer than they thought bringing us maybe 12″ of snow. It has been snowing since 1pm EST and hasn’t stopped. It’s coming down pretty heavilly, too. And of course, there are the idiots here who think that because of a little snow, the world is going to end and they must make a last-ditch mad rush to the grocery store to buy any food that they think they’ll lack in the dreadful few hours in which they might not be able to leave their homes.
Okay – I’m being a little sarcastic, but I’m not kidding. These people here PANIC when it snows. Even when it snows just a little, there are shortages at the grocery stores. What’s poor Texas boy to do when those who have lived with snow all their lives run in a state of insanity when a few flakes fall from the sky? Well, laugh at them, I suppose!
I’ve just updated my photo gallery software to the newest version for security purposes. I don’t think you’ll notice anything, but if you do, please let me know. And, no, I didn’t go to the 2.x version. I went to the latest release of 1.x which is 1.5.2-pl2.
Of course, I’m just putting this up here because my sister tells me I don’t post enough anymore. I guess that staying home and not travelling has taken a toll on my web verbosity…
Thanks, Mandy!
Some days, I just don’t feel like riding. Like today, for example. Today, I didn’t want to suit up when I knew that it wouldn’t get above freezing where I’m working. Something about that just sends shivers down my spine today. So I stole the car.
Maybe that’s becasue I don’t have heated hand grips. Or, maybe it’s because yesterday, Laura gave me some hand warmers – you know: the kind you put in your gloves for skiing? Well, they worked… for about 10 minutes. Then, they died. So – I was forced to ride in sub-30 degree wind at freeway speeds [making a wind chill of who knows what… UPDATE: I just did the math. The wind chill for an average wind speed of 70mph and average temperature of 25 degrees is -14. Ow.] with quickly depleated hand warming inserts. Now: these are supposed to be good for 7 hours or so. But, Laura told me these were old and she said she wasn’t sure how well they’d work. I can’t blame her, she warned me.
I blame the warmers. They failed.
So, after that ride of frost both ways yesterday, I really did not feel like braving the wind chill today. Tomorrow, I might try again – after all: Laura just bought me a new batch of hand warmers. Maybe these won’t quit on me so soon…
2012-01-08 23:29:25
I was all set to go to work tomorrow with my customer and have a nice meeting, solve problems, and otherwise do good consulting work when I get a “Dear Jeff” letter… well, not quite. They have just moved on to another phase of the project and will not need me for a while yet. This totally messes up my schedule.
Now, I’m going to have to go work for a different customer with a good friend of mine… Bad thing is: I have to be at work at 5AM! Yeouch! Not sure how that’s gonig to feel, but I’m sure it’s not good. At least that will only be for a couple of days. Then, next week I’ll get to go to a training class in Dallas for a few days. I’ll be visiting my old friends the Priddys [for those of you who know them] whom I haven’t seen for about a year.
After that? Well, I’ll probably be back at some old customer locations and back riding the bike on long road trips in the mountains… Yes!
I have been ever-not-so-patiently waiting on Cingular to put out their new WIndows Mobile 5 smartphone self-labeled as the Cingular 8100 [which is the non-camera variant of the 8125 and is a rebranded HTC Wizard]. First rumors put the release date at mid November… which has come and gone. Then, it was “end of December”. Again: come and gone. Same thing with the next rumored release date of Janurary 20th [or 21st as I was told by a different Cingular rep].
So, my quest for a Pocket PC Smartphone has been frustrated at almost every turn. I could just go and buy an unlocked one, I suppose, but I don’t want to drop $650 [that’s way over the allowed expense for the company’s reimbursal allowance for smartphones] a big chunk of which would come out of my pocket.
Each time I’ve called, I’ve gotten a different answer from: “It’s a what? Never heard of it…” to: “Oh – yeah. That’ll be out real soon. Just keep checking back.”. So, I wait. And wait.
I’m somewhat confused with the weather here. Last year when I was here, January was bitter cold and icy. This year, it’s somewhat like Spring. Not that I’m complaining – I’m about to take a leisurely ride on my motorcycle just to enjoy the weather. I did that yesterday, too.
However – it does seem a bit strange to me. I’m hoping that February doesn’t rebound with a vengeance and hit us with 20 below temperatures…
In the mean time, it’s two wheels for me! [not that I really stopped riding… it’s just much more comfortable now…]
I have compelted Phase 1 of the LAN Upgrade project. For those of you who don’t know [which would be most], I have come up with a plan to update the hardware and software of my home LAN [by LAN, I’m loosly referring to computers, networking equipment, and other accessories] in order to bring it into the next generation of technologies.
The Phased Approach
For Phase 1, I upgraded all my wired machines to 1GB from 100MB [this was a network upgrade for those of you who aren’t familiar with technologies – 10x faster than before]. That included a new GB switch to replace my old, reliable Netgear, new GB network cards for two of my machines, and a new KVM [again: for those that don’t know, this device allows me to use one keyboard, monitor and mouse to controll up to 8 machines at once]. I know, the KVM isn’t “network” gear, but it’s part of the overall purpose for this upgrade. My old KVM was putting not-so-faint lines on the screen and was interfereing with digital photo editing and generally giving me a bad picture.
And that brings us around to the core reason for the total upgrade: Digital Photography. I am running out of file storage space on my current server and was looking for a way to make the entire LAN more capable. Phase 1 was networking capacity and usability – it’ll be much quicker to access that file store now. Phase 2 will be a new file server – but one made with current technologies, not one that is a year or so behind. It will have about 1.2 TB of storage. That’s Tera Bytes… 1000 Giga Bytes, 1,000,000 MB, … you get the picture. Lots of space. This server will be built on a dual core x64 processor. Phase 3 will add a second dual-core processor and lots more RAM. I will then move the email processing to that box and re-task the current email server.
Yep, it will be lots of fun! Cost? Well, let’s just say that there’s a financial reason for the phased approach. Phase 1 was fairly inexpensive, but I’ll have to save a bit for Phase 2. Phase 3 might be far out enoug that the extra processor will be much ceaper than it is now.
This week, I’ve been in Seattle, Washington for an anual internal Microsoft training event. It’s been quite informative, but there are some things I don’t like… Such as the fact that I haven’t seen the sky for a week; nor the sun. It’s been overcast and rainy all week long and I have been inside a convention center during most of the daylight hours, anyway.
It’s not all bad, though. I’m learning a few cool things about newer Microsoft technologies and passing a few exams to update my certifications.
I just know that I’ve been here too long and want to go home to be with Laura. I miss her!
::: jeffphillips.org ::: 