good things

[JHawkNH]

Enjoy your trip.

I will be heading to Japan at the end of May. Just as it is finally getting warm her in Minnesota.
I really need to plan out my travel seasons better.

[oldwrench]

well I'm off for the other side of the world in the morning. It's a long ride, about 22hours of flying time, not counting layover time at the airports.
I wanted to get another chapter of 5 minutes posted before I left, but I ran out of time. I'll be thinking of the story while I'm gone. I won't have my computer so I won't be able to write any.

The stupidcold has moved away...... just in time for me to leave. It was -25F a couple days ago, it's going to get above freezing tomorrow. It was the coldest here in Minneapolis that it has been in 20 years.

Last year, The highest temp recorded in Minneapolis was 98 degrees and the lowest -13, that's a range of 111 degrees F. I bet most of you don't have that wide a temp swing over a year.

[oldwrench]

Im in Myanmar with the slowest internet since the days of the handset telephone modem. I cant say this has been my best trip it took over fifty hours to get here. Wewete a day late and the second day I came doun with a fever. I hope things improve. Ive seen enough temples and paodas to last my lifetime. I guess I really fail to understand Buddism.. Have to go. Ill write again if I can

[JHawkNH]

That sucks. Hope the rest of the trip goes better.

[oldwrench]

Thailand is much better. More organized and more interesting. We are at a tent camp on the river Kwai for two nights. Get to see the famous bridge and railroad. Lots of sad history here.
Might get to send more later.

[oldwrench]

I'm back, and have a cat laying on my hands. Lucy is a needy cat right now. I'm a bit jet lagged so I'm not feeling well at the moment. I hope to get back to moving again soon. I have a bunch of pictures, even a couple kitties. Lots of Buddhas and temples. I'll post some later, need sleep now.

[JHawkNH]

Sleep well, I look forward to the pics.

[oldwrench]

my new computer is assembled and running. I just got it running today and installed the windows7 pro OS. Now I have to find all those programs I need for doing anything useful with it. Things like viewers, editors, office apps.

It should be a pretty good running system.... specs

AMD A10-5800 quad core 3.8ghz APU, with on chip ati video.
Asus board, F2 A85V pro
8gig Kingston DDR3 ram
ADATA 60 gb SSD for the c-drive.
Corsair 480 watt power supply
Rosewill Galaxy V gamer's case
I'm going to put the new 1tb Seagate drive from my old system into this one.
Windows 7 pro, I didn't want windows 8, too many bad reviews and I don't have a touch screen.

It's going to be nice to have a new and faster computer to play with.

[oldwrench]

correction that's a Galaxy 3 black gamer's case. It's a bit of overkill, but with the rebate it's only 29 dollars. It has up front usb 2 and 3 ports and audio ports. bottom mount power supply. There's a space for the ssd and 4 hard drives. three optical drive bays. It comes with three 120mm fans, front back and top, the front fan is lit by blue leds. The Asus board comes with a utility that controls the fans, and set on automatic, it slows or shuts off the fans causing another of the utilities to keep flagging warnings of foo low of fan rpm. It's too much cooling for the AMD A10-5800, since it was aimed at gamers with dual video cards and overclocked cpus. Four big fans,(counting the 120mm fan in the power supply is a bit much, maybe I should unplug a couple.

[oldwrench]

We may finally be turning the corner on the cold weather. We were only 15 degrees below average today. We might get up to average temps by next week. We have had 50 days with a below 0 F reading this winter, fifth most on record. We have had 41 days (so far) with measurable snowfall, the most on record for one winter. If there is global warming, it isn't around here. This is the coldest and snowiest winter since the 1870's.

That is the handles of my garden tiller sticking out of the snow, it's so deep even the engine is covered.

These two are of my deck on the back of the house, notice how deep it is on the table, and that's just what didn't blow off.

For the last two weeks, we've had a whole flock of Robins in our back yard. They usually stay down south till things are thawed out. They can't find any worms or bugs under all that snow. They stripped every berry off the hackberry trees in the yard and even the crab apples off the trees.