Monthly Archives: October 2004

Lunar Eclipse; Foggy Mornings

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It’s foggy … again. Every morning for the last many, many days it’s been very foggy. I can’t recall this type of weather happening in past years, that we’ve been here.

The fog is very thick. You can see ahead of it, but not by that much. Like the houses behind ours [about half-an-acre to an acre away] are shrouded in fog, visible, but fog encased. I can see on our deck, that’s 10 feet of non-fog, then in the yard it just schoomps-up right away. The thing is, it’s not super thick at ground level right in front of you, as I described above. So visibility is alright in daytime, but not by much. Some areas, I’m sure, it’s thicker in.

So every day it’s the silent cloud-like morning until later when it starts to burn off … so that by Noon, it’s mostly gone, but at least until 10am it’s fairly thick.

It’s eerie.

Last night was eerie too, but expected and enjoyed. The Lunar Eclipse was in full view from our deck, and the skies cooperated nicely with very few clouds. Earlier in the day we had a “mostly cloudy” forcast. So I was happy to see mosty clear skies after dark.

The children all wanted to see it happen, but only Victoria saw it with me and Frank. Russell had fallen asleep, and had assured us beforehand that he wanted to see it, so we should wake him up if he falls asleep.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Frank tried to awake him, and told me he couldn’t wake Russell up. So I went into the house and tried to arouse Russell. I got him to wake up pretty fast and he followed me out to see the moon starting to show Earth’s shadow on the lower portion of it. Russell didn’t seem to want to be there, but accepted the plied into his hands binoculars, he put them up to his eyes then grunted responses to my questions, little affirmative words as well were his responses. I figured he was too tired, so off to bed he went again.

Frank was downstairs then, and saw Russell run by. He though Russell was getting something to go back out on the deck with. On Frank’s way out a few minutes later he went to turn a light off, and saw Russell huddled under the covers in bed, sound asleep.

Taking that scenario, adding my waking him and bringing him outside, and adding into it how Frank couldn’t wake Russell at all before that, we do think he was sleep walking.

This morning we asked him questions about it, and he has no recall of the Lunar Eclipse, of even waking up last night.

Russell was really the eerie portion of the October 27, 2004 Lunar Eclipse. He had bloodshot eyes, dull expressions, very “zombie-like”.

Victoria was bouncing around full of energy the whole night. She was more than ready to see the moon get dark.

In the past she’s missed the meteorite showers that she knows Russell has seen some of, and she wasn’t about to miss this fun touted lunar event. She enjoyed it.

The part we all enjoyed the most was the top edge of light that lingered, you could nearly feel that you were on top of the moon looking over the edge to the back side. Binocular views were spectacular.

We live in such scientific days. We don’t fear these events, as peoples of older times did. FWIW.

Cutie Cat

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Here’s the latest cutie cat in our midst:

He’s much cleaned up-like now, but the camera is in “tempermental mode” again. He’s what I have hopes of getting “fixed” soon. He is very sweet, very, very, sweet. He started hanging around nearly two weeks ago, or more, and was injured looking. His nose, you can see the darkness in the photo, was all crusty scabby in bigger and smaller areas, as well well as an older injury on his side that looks like it is healing, but was nasty and untreated. Beyond that I was feeding him after a day or so of him hanging around, and Foster, our cat I HAD to boot outside, was becoming a bothersome creature, as the visitor kitty was seemingly more “at home” and Foster acting as “visitor”.

I sat down with the new kitty one day last week and saw some pinkish color on a front paw, and upon further investigation found that his right-paw-left-claw [thumb] was declawed … freshly in a wounded way … ugh. Poor thing. So that sealed my thought process, and in he came.

He a gentle boy, perfect candidate for grown-up male cat to be neutered and house-catted. If we can get him checked out at the vet soon-ish, he’ll be fixed up and introduced, eventually, to our current-foursome of Princess, Strider, Dixie, and Scarlet.

His name is Vivaldi.

He’s gentle, but oh so catty, needing attention, and singing and performing to get it. But his name isn’t for those reasons. It’s because of something else. My love of Vivaldi music and … any guesses?

Vivaldi is a pale tabby-pattern on top, actually a bit paler than the wonderful picture of him portrays. His front feet are white socks, his back feet are white short boots, and his tummy is all white. He has a beautiful white bib too. His nose is pink and his chin and such are white. White whiskers as well.

I gave Vivaldi a bath after I got him inside. He didn’t like it much, but neither did he fight me. He sure looked a ton better since that bath! He’s a beauty, I estimate him to be not very old, but grown-up.

Voting 2004 Election

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Map of Peroutka’s up-to-dateballot access

We are considering “voting early” as we can do that in our state the week before the election … that is THIS week, but not the day of or day before the “actual” day of election voting. We will be looking into it tomorrow or so.

For me I prefer not to have to go into the Public local elementary school to vote …

That old political saying goes: “Vote Early and Often”

We just might do part of that for the first time, “Early” :)

We have verified that Peroutka is a valid Write-In in GA. Check out your Sec. of State website to find out who is Write-In valid, and what other voting options you may have. Searching in Yahoo or Google will pull up the info you’d be looking for. Some of the links for GA are below.

Georgia Secretary of State :: Elections :: Voter Information

Georgia Advance Voting Locations PDF

I used to believe that Voting Day was the day to vote and that’s it, with Absentee ballots the only exception. I have changed my tune due to so many things: one of which is, I don’t believe the day is sacred in and of itself, and my true blue political heart has grown-up a lot the past 4 years: disenchantment with government as a whole, big parties as one, and my life long belief in Limited Government coming to realize the futileness of achieving that through D. or R. and the need for grass-roots to grow to bring about the change, and that takes years. Great fertilizers are what we need. Not chemically made ones, but natural — like the natural real dung of animals. Yes, that’s what we need politically.

I’ll vote for Peroutka, and so will some others. Others will vote for B. of the Libertarians, and others for the several+ other so-called “Third Parties”. Most people of the U.S. that vote will do so for either of the two nasties on the extreme sides of the Big Tent.

In what ever way it turns out, K or B will be elected, and fraud will be called out very likely, horrid days ahead. I hope for a broad range of poopy stuff to develop so as to fertilize the Grass-Roots-Growth.

Burn-out from TOO much fertilizer is possible. But then the possibility of a few good outlying areas of wonderfully healthy grass spreading into the decimated area is a grand idea for the future.

We vote for Peroutka as in Honoring God with our vote. No candidate is perfect. No voter is either. No man is perfect, but the God Man, Jesus Christ was perfect. He is perfect. He always will be so. We live for Him, under Him. Our vote counts as obedience does.

More Computer Upgrades

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We did get a new MoBo (MotherBoard), an ABIT NF7-S, nice, but won’t work … due to … I think …. the Power Supply.

The PSU, as it will be called from here on out, is what came with the ATX Case we already had. I was only upgrading the MoBo, but new that new Memory was needed evencually, but what we had would work alright for now. I had a clue that the power wasn’t all it was snuffed up to be and should be replaced, but that task of choice is a harder one, it’s quite a hard choice, and since it’s step by step as can do upgrading, the puder is on hold until we can get a new PSU for it.

Well, this is probably the reason for other bad stuff on that puter with the old MoBo, and also that MoBo was holding us back anyhow. This new MoBo screams at me after being turned on for just a few seconds. It started to boot, I can get into BIOS, but then it shuts off singing an alarm. There is also a CMOS checksum error on boot-up, but that’s just that BIOS needs to be set-up still. I can’t stay in BIOS long enought to get anything done. Fine anyhow, as PSU is important.

I knew that before, but am MORE aware of HOW VERY VERY important it is to have a GOOD PSU installed.

It’s a tale to tell, that my VAIO [the laptop] problems are all related to the Coke Spill of July 2003, but other than that it has ran like a dream … where as the ‘puter we built from a case kit [came with case, MoBo, PSU, Floppy, etc. only] has had problems of BSD [those wonderful Windows Blue Screen of Death errors] over and over that I could not get rid of, so just “re-install Windows” every so often was the temporary fix that has lasted oh so long.

Live and learn. I’m glad for upgrading the MoBo of the desktop, makes me very aware of WHAT is so very importent, to get a GOOD PSU, brand name, good warrantee, and rated well in tests. [Sigh] It’ll be nice to day we have this Desktop running nicely. PSU, 3200 memory, just to start with.

So here is what I have now on the desktop system:

Abit NF7-S [rev.2] -MoBo
Athlon XP 2100+ -Processor
ThermalTake TR2-something-or-other -Fan & Heatsink w/external speed control
512 mb K-byte PC2100 -Memory
Radeon 7500 64mb -AGP video card
TDK CD-Rom R/RW 40x12x42B
plain jane floppy drive [which I've never really used, I can't recall I have!]

Once we can get a PSU, the next thing will be Memory, and that’ll be branded as Corsair.

It will be that the desktop is not running at all until a PSU is obtained, since I can’t boot up long enough to get into Windows at all, and can only go fiddle in BIOS for a few or up to maybe 30 seconds of looking before being shut down. I’m done with the trying of booting-up since I know it’s not a problem that will go away without PSU replacement, and I have my hopes up that that is exactly what is the problem and nothing more. I’m 90% sure it’s the PSU, as we did take the first MoBo purchased back to the store and exact-exchanged it, and the second board does the same thing exactly, and the reading I’ve done on ABIT’s usa forum has shown me that the PSU is more than likely the culprit of the troubles.

A really good PSU is relative to about $100 more or less. I want to be sure to get something “stylish” since we do plan on having a new case one day, or at least opening this present case up and putting a window in it’s side. So I want to find a good fan that is BLUE or had BLUE LED light in it … I’ve seen two such kinds, but I digress. Whatever we get, when we get it, needs to work right, and look right. The more expensive fans are mostly styled nicely, it’s not that we’ll look for an expensive one, just that the higher powered PSU’s are usually more expensive and the more expensive ones style their PSU’s nicely, but the two things: expense and style, are not the reasons to by any certain fan, it must meet spec’s that we require first, then the style is considered, then price. For the cheap ones USUALLY are not as well rated … it comes with the territory of “You get what you pay for”. $50 and up is the price range I’d look for a PSU in, relative to what I could afford to spend at that time. Like right now, can’t afford to do it at all. :) Well, that’s really a :(