Friday Update

It was really nerve-wracking driving home last night through the Altamont pass. I was driving a manual transmission truck, and the traffic in the two left lanes (the fast lanes!) came to a complete halt going up the grade. I was able to down-shift and up-shift and more or less keep moving up the hill, but the big semi trucks were whizzing by, at high speed on my right. Poor visibility and the weird traffic congestion, when I was trying not to stop on the uphill slope, worked my last nerve.

This morning, I woke up early, and played with my new day/night security camera. I connected it to a little analog tv/vcr that I had squirreled away, and I'm quite happy with the setup. Final installation will take hours, mounting the camera outside under the roof eaves, and then running the cable through the crawlspace attic, and into the back bedroom.

Bad Technical Skills

I think I broke a motherboard fiddling around, trying to attach a CPU cooler. After I finished it wouldn't boot anymore. There's no obvious damage, but I mistakenly took it apart further than was indicated, and possibly cracked some tiny circuit board leads. My fastest computer is out of service. I could buy an exact replacement board, and re-use the old memory and CPU. Live and learn.

Editor's note: Our hero fiddled some more,and finally re-seated the memory, and that brought his computer out of the fugue state. He's very happy to have it back. He improved it with the new smart CPU cooler, and then upgraded the dvd burner. It's cool beans, at least for him.