Not much to say. Looks like most of the ice is finally gone from the lakes. Still see "snow" in the forecast for the next few days.

Gas is still at 3.469 as of this morning.

One of my long time favorite Computer Columnist's, Fred Langa, is retiring from the computer business and turning over a new leaf. Read his blog at Fred Langa: What comes next?.

Just discovered that the Archive links and the Calendar links aren't working correctly. Don't know why or when, haven't checked them recently. I ran the upgrade to 2.5.1 and afterwards started checking things and noticed they didn't work. Restored to 2.5 and they still do not work. 'Spose it may have happened when I upgraded to 2.5? All the posts are actually there, just the links don't work. Will have to find time to work on it.

Edit:  Was searching Wordpress "Calendar Archive 404" using their default search engine and couldn't find anything.  Did a custom search of the website using Google and the same keywords and got a solution first hit.  Remind me why I love Google.   Permalinks issue.

Last Thursday went to Northern Lights Community School's Presentation Night where the students and faculty get to show off. Saw some pretty good Science Fair projects, but the highlight was the school band playing a few numbers. They did very well, especially considering that most of the students just started playing their instrument 8 months ago.

Here's a shot of the band playing "Smoke on the Water", Matt is playing the bass runs on a Bass Clarinet.

As of now (Sunday evening) most of the snow and sleet have melted.  This morning it was very icy out until the sun warmed things up enough to melt.  Lots of standing water right now.

Oops

Matt pointed out to me this evening that there was no www.hartshorn.org website. I told him "yes there is", and proceeded to open the page up on my PC.  I then realized that at home and at work my primary browser is Firefox, while for many other folks the primary browser is Internet Exploder. Sure enough, I tried to open the website in IE and got a blank page. Turns out I had a misplaced html tag in my code; Firefox could handle it but IE couldn't. I still have a few more errors to correct, but the website is accessible again.

Weather today has been different. No snow as of 10PM, but about 2 inches of sleet covering everything making for hazardous travel of all types. Just a trip out the front door can be an adventure. Now the NWS is predicting 5-9 inches of snow overnight and another 2-4 Saturday. Hope not.

Winter Storm Warning

If there is one thing I've learned since moving to MN 18 years ago, it is that the weather here is unpredictable.  Case in point:  This morning the 6:08am NWS point forecast for southern Itasca County said

“Snow.  High near 37.  Breezy, with a north wind 10 to 15 mph.  Winds could gust as high as 35 mph.  Chance of precipitation is 90%.  Little or no accumulation expected.”

Then the 7:15am NWS point forecast said

"Winter Storm Warning. Snow accumulations of 8 to 14 inches is expected this afternoon through tonight across Koochiching…Itasca…and northern Cass Counties.  A light rain and snow mix is possible this morning…then look for the precipitation to intensify and become all snow this afternoon.  The snow will be heaviest tonight…and may linger into Saturday morning.”

If we get more than 4 inches we ain't going nowhere.  I will need to keep a close eye on the weather today.  Of course, we were supposed to see 3 inches of rain yesterday, I would be surprised if we got as much as a half inch, the storm went to the north and the south of us.

Well, the rain ain't here yet, but it's sitting just off to the west.  Watched lightning in the distance ahead of me all the way into work this morning.  Now they are talking +6 inches of snow Friday afternoon and more thru Saturday.  Hope they are wrong.

Gas went to 3.499 yesterday afternoon, most of the stations have backed down to 3.469 by this morning.

Been doing a bit of digging on SAN, NAS, iSCSI, and similar. I'm trying to move the servers at the network from a whole bunch of disparate boxes with DAS to blades with iSCSI connect to a SAN, and Management doesn't understand the need. I am trying to learn enough about the subject so that I can explain it to the non-technical types in such a way that they can understand what I'm trying to accomplish.

The weather yesterday afternoon and this morning is beautiful, might have made it to 60 yesterday and it's mid 40's this morning and clear. Forecast is for all hell to break loose tonight with 3-4 inches of rain expected tomorrow and then heavy snow on Friday into Saturday.

I was hoping to take the W-6 out and plow the 10 acre field Saturday; with this forecast doesn't look too likely. I want to get that field plowed and seeded for hay soon. We paid $8 a bale for SMALL square bales of clover hay, $7 for a large square bale of timothy hay before that. No more square bales within 50 miles that we know of right now. 1200 lb round bales are going for $150 now. The pasture is starting to green, but it will be at least a couple of weeks before we can put the animals out on it.

Guy I bought the W-6 from lost the gas cap a couple of years ago. He duct-taped a tuna can over the opening to keep dirt out. I went to the local Fleet & Farm store to get a new gas cap, I mean, how hard can it be to get one of these, it's the same on a Farmall and other IH tractors. Couldn't find one, not even a listing for one in the Stant book. So, I went searching the web for a gas cap to buy. Still couldn't find one. finally, I found http://ihgascap.com/index.aspx. If your equipment manufactured by International Harvester meets certain requirements they will send you a new gas cap for free. Seems the old ones could be hazardous to the health. My W-6 qualifies, I've got one on order, we'll see what happens.

Scrap metal is pushing $200 a ton, lots of folks out looking to pickup scrap cars and metal. And a year ago I had a terrible time getting my scrap pile hauled away (that I didn't want hauled away).

Gas still at 3.399 this morning, filled both vans.

Received coupons for A-D TV converter boxes, went to wally-world to buy a couple. Coupons are for $40 off, converters sell for $50. Our store is sold out and not likely to get more before they move to the new super store in 2 weeks.

To work!

Gas still at 3.399 this am, expect it to rise again today with crude prices posting record $118/bbl price this morning.

Weather yesterday afternoon was beautiful, saw 72 degrees on one public thermometer, then had showers and t-storms during the night, .5 inch rain reported.

My head cold is finally starting to let up.

W-6

Hadn't planned it that way, but we brought the W-6 home this weekend.

Put some work into it, oil and filter change, grease job, new muffler, $30, pair of used car tires for the front $50. New 3 rib tractor tires are $110 each plus mounting, and the ones that came on it are badly shot, I still can't beleive we drove it home with tires that bad and made it. Runs good, if a little rich, tried to adjust the carb but nothing happened when I moved the needle. Guess I will have to tear down the carb and rebuild it, kit is $35. Other than that it runs like a top.

Pretty good cold or bad allergies last few days, miserable. Went out at noon yesterday 4/17 to get some Claritin-D and noted that some gas stations were at 3.319 and some at 3.399, so I stopped and filled, up, wasn't planning on doing it until after work. By the time I got off work all were at 3.399.

Very little snow left, mostly some ice where the snow got plowed up in the shade.  Ice starting to break up on lakes.

Working late tonight.  Bit windy here.  Gas dropped to 3.219 yesterday, then jumped to 3.349 today.

Just doin' a quiet day at home today, messing with Wordpress themes and CSS.  Nice temps outside, mid 50's I think, but it is very sunny, and all that fresh snow means you need welding goggles if you want to see what you are doing out there.

Happy 24+23 Birthday Sis, and Happy One Month Birthday Phillip!

Major Redesign

Well, I've just completed the major phase of a total redesign of the website moving from frames to CSS. Quite the adventure.

The blizzard was a lot of noise in my opinion. Weather spotters say we got nearly a foot of snow, the deepest drift I can find here on the farm is not quite a foot deep. Drove to town yesterday evening (before dark) for entertainment, roads were fine. I think we got about 2 inches of snow. LOTS of wind, though, gusts to 50 mph. Some trees down in the area (not in my yard). Duluth did get hit pretty hard, but not us.

Thanks to Style Master CSS Editor for Windows and Mac OS X for their wonderful tutorials on CSS. I've been wanting to get a handle on CSS for quite a while, and their tutorials are clear and concise with good explanations of the mechanics, good enough that I could do some basic work. I will probably wind up buying their software to do the maintenance here, and I also want to integrate this blog into the look and feel of the rest of the website, and I think that Style Master will make it a lot easier.

Another Snow Day

All the schools are closed today.  Blizzard Conditions outside.  Not much snow, buts lots of blowing and drifting.  I'm not going anywhere today, and probably not tomorrow either.

Filled up both vans yesterday. 3.229 still.

Plow truck came by at 9:15 AM, followed it out to road so Matt could go to school and I could go to work.

Still no plow (8 AM), the neighbor (a County Commish) is livid, her Caddy can't get out the driveway.  Nearly 20 hours since the worst of the snow passed.  School buses can't get down the road, but school is in session today.  Ridiculous.  If I had a truck big enough to plow the road I would do it, legal or no.  If they would just skim a couple of feet off the top it would help.  The road is going to be a mess by the time it all melts in.

Just walked out to the road (6 AM), hasn't been plowed yet. We'll have to see what happens; neither of my vans can handle that much snow so it will either have to get plowed or melt down a bit before I can get out.

Matt & I (mostly Matt) got the drive cleared about to the road. I say about because you can't tell where the road is. A couple of 4x4 pickups and a few snowmobiles are all we've seen go down the road, no snowplows. The snow at the road is about 2 feet higher than the bumper of the van, we aren't going to go anywhere until sometime after the snowplow goes by.

Looking across the yard at the garage it looks as though the snow is drifted up nearly to the eaves. Not exactly worth the effort to swim across the snow to verify it.

I hopefully have the speedometer on Vger fixed. I think that the cable came partly unscrewed at the tranny end, allowing the other end to partially disengage from the speedometer. Took everything apart, cleaned and lubed and put it back together. Driving up and back on the driveway it looks normal, can't really tell until I can get out on the road.

Just waiting for the snowplow to come by now.

Weather: SNOWWW!!!!!!. Wow. Started snowing about 10pm Sat, woke up this morning to about 6 inches of heavy wet snow. It's about 12 inches now, and still coming down hard. And it is wet and heavy. Doubt I will be able to make it to work Monday, the plow went by about 4pm and piled the snow at the end of the driveway about three feet deep, and it is still coming down.

Saturday was warm and sunny, temps over 50, I was working outside in t-shirt. Broke out the lawn tractor, got it running, and mowed some of the tall winter-kill grass around the yard. 30 degrees and a foot of snow is a huge change from 55 degrees and sunny, in one day.

Hard to tell in these photos from my cell phone, but in the top photo the drift is nearly as deep as the trash cans are tall. In the lower photo, I tried to see if I could force the Gladiator thru the snow down the driveway, but the snow packs so much under it that it got stuck after about 30 feet, took me a bit of shoveling to get it unstuck again. Although stuck is a relative word, It ain't leaving the driveway until we can dig it out, drifts in the driveway (can't see them in photos, but they are there!) are deeper than drift by house.

Computer: Brought the new laptop home to play with. Ran into a roadblock with XP, the HD Audio requires the KB888111 patch from M$ to work. The patch is a special download from Support. Found a few copies of it floating around the web but they didn't seem to work. Supposedly (haven't checked) the KB888111 patch is supposed to be included in SP3, so I will put the XP version of the Vaio on hold until after I get that slipstreamed.

Got Vista Enterprise working on the Vaio just fine now. Took a bit of tweaking to get everything working the way I thought it should. I used the Backup utility in Vista to create a baseline backup so I don't need to do that work all over again. Even blew it away and restored it, worked great. I'm now working from that restored baseline image.

I'm working toward installing a few of my pet programs (Firefox, VPC, FTP Commander, IZArc, Irfanview,etc), then I will make a working backup.

Cars: Last night Matt and I went and bought 5 8-hole, 8-spoke, 15" rims for the '65 F250. On the way there the speedometer on Vger quit working. By the time we got home it was after dark and it was starting to get cold and drizzly, so haven't yet had a chance to investigate the problem. And Vger was working so well.

Been too busy last couple of days.

Gas: jumped to 3.249 on 4/3, today at 3.229. The discount store is at 3.199, we'll see if everyone else follows them down or if the discount store moves up.

Finally got my new work laptop yesterday. My 5 yr old HP died I think in January. I've been shopping around a lot, I had a specific set of requirements in mind:

1. 17" widescreen

2. 200+ GB HD

3. 4GB RAM

4. Vista

5. Blu-Ray Burner

6. USB/SD/Express/PCCard support

7. Discrete Video Ram

Sounds pretty simple, eh? I found laptops that met one or two of the requirements but to get than a couple in one laptop the price was going to go over $3000. When everyone else's laptop costs under $1000 these days that is a tough one to justify. So, I kept looking. Finally found a Sony Vaio at newegg.com, a VGN-AR750E/B. 3g ram, 300g HD (two slow SATA drives), 17", Blu-Ray burner from $2000, and talked the boss into it. Arrived 4/3.

Of course, what I wanted and spec'd was a workstation laptop, what I got is a gaming laptop. Comes with Vista Home Premium on it. I'm using Vista Business on my desktop, but I have an XP Pro Desktop machine on my desk also because so few of our apps run on Vista. So, I created the install disk images and burned those to DVD, then I wiped the drive and installed Vista Enterprise on it. DL'd the drivers from the Sony website. When I was done I only had about half the devices working, and verrry unstable.

So, my current trial is installing XP Pro on the laptop. Of course, Sony provides NO XP drivers (why should they?), so this has been an exercise. I still have 4 devices flagged in device manager, but the keyboard has just quit working for crying out loud.

I decided to give XP Pro a shot, because I would need to run a virtual XP machine on the laptop anyways just to function, and one of the reasons I need a laptop is so that I can tshoot wireless issues, and a lot of those tools don't run on Vista yet.

I used NLite (www.nliteos.com) to add the Intel 82801 Matrix RAID drivers to an XP image, works sweet. I fought for nearly two hours trying to manually add the drivers, then I remebered NLite. What a lifesaver. First time out the gate it worked. Very nice.

Just uninstalled the Synaptic touchpad software and got the keyboard back. hmmm.

Well, let's go on to the NVDIA 8600M GT video card. Of course, NVIDIA does not supply drivers for laptop video so I have to go looking elsewhere. The display is actually working with good color and resolution, but I'm getting some resource conflicts that are, I think, keeping me from fixing other problems. I'm checking out www.laptopvideo2go.com right now for some drivers. Downloaded a set I found recommended on an nvidia user forum specifically for this card from the laptopvideo2go website, but it said it couldn't find any drivers for my hardware, so I'm trying to download a different one now.

I must say that this is a smoking machine running XP Pro right now, but it isn't fair to compare it with it's original Vista Home premium install because as it comes out of the box from Sony it has several items set to run at startup, including a home entertainment center. It does have Blu-Ray, ya know.

I went into Add/Remove hardware and forced the nvidia software to install as an 8600 GT, looks ok so far.

Now I just have Audio and modem drivers left to do. getting closer.

Better get moving, supposed to bring home dinner tonight.