I may not be smart…

…but you can’t fault my persistence.  I have managed to break my main PC again.  The exact same cause: once again, I decided to try putting my machine in standby after an update.  And once again, when the machine came out of standby, it horrendously corrupted my ATI SATA RAID array (of Western Digital Raptor drives).  Exactly the same steps, exactly the same results.

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Visiting

The last couple of days I’ve been visiting with family.  That is, when I’m not playing new games on my XBox 360. 

My brother Ron, his wife Jessie, and their daughter Rebecca were passing through while on a vacation.  We spent the afternoon with the whole local clan at my Sister’s place on Saturday: Judy fed us salmon, and supplied Irene with her special wine.  On Monday Ron, Jessie, and ‘Becca came to our house for a few hours.  Rebecca played with our braver cats, and Iris met her first child.  She was apprehensive at first, but once we reminded Rebecca that cats aren’t fond of hugs, it was perfect.

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Vacation starts…

Today was my last day at work for a couple of weeks.  I still have work to do, but I am no longer on any kind of clock other than one meeting I’m supposed to call in to tomorrow morning.

I don’t take traditional vacations very often.  You know…the kind where you get on a plane/train/boat and go somewhere a long distance from home.  There are lots of reasons why this is the case.  Firstly, we have a house full of cats that are more our children or our demanding house guests than something so crass as a “pet”.  We can’t very well take them with us: most hotels frown on guests with six cats.  And it takes a lot of arranging to find someone trustworthy enough to care for them who has time to do so that just happens to correspond to when we want to take our vacation. 

Continue reading Vacation starts…