Running Bear's March 2023 Coffee Shop

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Evening all,

Rare late day as I left early to get the granddaughter from school. Still watching stuff from home. Weather supposed to get near freezing overnight with a possibility of the white stuff during the pre-dawn hours. No real accumulation expected. 1 more project completed at the office, so tomorrow should be quiet.

ctclibby: 10Mb in a home network is decent, especially when the equipment is really cheap and dependable. I actually killed our last one last year when we upgraded to 1Gb switches at the office. Printers handle the 1Gb stuff so it was no longer needed, and I don't usually drag that stuff home anymore unless I can use it now. My dual monitors at home are cast offs from work.
Patrick: All the switches here are Gig - have 2 older printers that will do 100Meg ( HP and Brother ) and the wife's new HP is a Gig device. 10Meg to the plotter is nothing as plot size is not THAT big so waiting a few extra seconds is no big deal. The 750C does not even have a USB port, serial and centronics only. Any yes, found a centronics cable the other day believe it or not and will use it if the Jet Direct don't workie.

As a side note, all the extra ...um... junk came from the boxes and boxes of crap when we closed the computer store in 2000. Can't believe I actually hauled that stuff from Snohomish/Everett, Wa to here when we moved in '04. Started throwing stuff away 10 years ago after cherry picking stuff I knew I would ( might ) use. I finally had to buy a couple of PCIe video cards! Next on the dump list is a box of memory. There has got to be somewhere around 100 DIMM's. Some old, some new, some REALLY old. Still have some '486's and a couple of Pentium Pro's ( processor only ) of which I need to decide: trash or eBay.

Except for the 2 servers, I use dual monitors on all my machines - don't know how to deal with stuff without them. Even the wife is liking dual. She is the hard core don't try to change stuff type...

Later
 


Good Morning All, from a soggy SFW estate. Currently cloudy and 45°, the last of the rain moved east around 0330 this morning. All together in the last 15 hours, I received nearly 3" of precipitation. It could be more since sometimes it was coming down sideways and missing the gauge. Most fell in the main event around 3:00 pm yesterday, with a second event around 6:00 last evening. Overnight we had another 0.25". That should be it until Tuesday or Wednesday next week. Surprisingly there were no power outages here, although there are over 270,000 without power in the Dallas/Ft worth area immediately south. 75 mph winds were reported at the DFW International Airport and across that area. Per the Weather Underground station around the corner, the highest winds here were 40 mph around the 6 pm event. Since the temperature over the weekend will be in the upper 70's/low 80's, there will be mowing required next week. The winter ryegrass is already plentiful.
Thank you Mother Nature for washing off the car from Monday night's dust storm!
Note my footprints in the yard heading out near the train shed.
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I have posted before about my "black gumbo" clay soil. This was hard as a rock yesterday morning! This is not the primary route to the train shed, the main line is a much more stable surface covered with Bermuda grass.

Today will be the delayed grocery/beer trek into the big city. Yesterday we attended the high school orchestra competition where our grandson plays cello. He was indistinguishable from the other five cello players. His school came in first in the competition. For this event, they were required to use real sheet music instead of their tablets that they usually use. It had to do with kids from some of the other competing schools couldn't all afford tablets, which I think is fair. His school is in an upper middle class zip code.

I am loving the piano videos that y'all have been posting, especially the Boogie Woogie Queen!

I did get to the train shed yesterday afternoon for a bit between rain surges. I didn't really do much other than run some trains around. It's hard to get motivated for any real modeling when it is stormy outside, due to the possibility of power failures. In actuality, they have been happening with much less frequency in the last couple of years.
What can I post from the archives? Since I posted a cat and dog that I added to the trailer the other day, maybe cats and dogs. they are just as important to me in setting a scene on the layout.
Taunting the dogs at the tenement apartments.
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Mouse patrol at the feed store.
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Hanging out with the girls at the boarding house.
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Snoozing on a barrel on the loading dock behind the bar.
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Just being a cat at the country store.
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Mouse patrol at a different feed store.
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Hanging on the porch with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Cyrus.
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Tom O - Interesting job for your son in San Antonio. Bats are cool creatures and are quite interesting.
Joe - Great news from the Cardiologist.
Louis - Seeing you playing the cello must have been a real sight.

Everyone have a great day and an equally great weekend
 
Morning all,

Trying to finish some minor jobs up before the weekend. Should be fairly nice for the weekend. Supposed to be 72° on Sunday. It was raining on my way into the office this morning, but I ran out of it by the time I got to the office. Sunny and 60° for the high later on. I may try to get the peach tree limbs cut and hauled later. I really whacked them back around the first of the year, but left the branches as it got too cold to cut them up. Hopefully I didn't whack them enough to kill them, but 25 feet up is a bit high to pick a peach. Most of the bigger pieces I'll cut to use in the BBQ as peach wood imparts a nice flavor to pork and chicken. I'll tackle the apple trees when I see how much survived from the dieback they suffered last fall. I think 2 are completely gone and the 3rd about 50%. Haven't been good producers, so it may be time to get new and different trees.
 
Good morning everyone

looks like mostly rain now. Storm system must of edged a more south. We were right on the snow rain line. Maybe will switch to snow later but we shall see. Temperature won’t get out of the 30s so it will be a cold raw day. Good day to head to the basement and play with trains.

Everyone have a great Friday.
 
Good morning. Got out of bed at 8:01 this morning. Normal is 5:30 to 6:30 but it has taken me 8 full retirement years not to get out of bed at 4:45. Still it feels as though much of the day is gone.

This week’s snow storm of the decade is nowhere on the radar. I see even Mike (migalyto)is writing he’s maybe on the edge and he’s about 130 driving miles south of me into Illinois. To be able to be 50/50 on your job and still get paid just amazes me with all the tech out there. Is that why China sent the weather balloon?

The sister is coming in with our son and his girlfriend in his new plane for one of his businesses. The air charter biz was to have 3 planes flying 10/1/2022 but the production of the planes was delayed. He now has 2 of the 3 planes, cancelled the third and has been in the legal system since November. Not pretty but he is insistent he will win. Monday he flies up to Duluth for another hearing.

Willie, that lots of water! If we tried to build a diversion pike/berm when we purchased the property in 2015 we‘d still be in court. That sort of stuff up here in the Liberal state of Dane County, Wi. takes years and legal wrangling. We have a wooden boardwalk crossing a “ protected wetland” installed prior to Terry buying the property from the bankruptcy courts that thankfully was purchased that way. We thought it was a swamp as that is what the survey maps indicated. Because we purchased from a government branch the local courts ruled in our favor that they knew it shouldn’t have been there and should have removed it.

Trains, I installed new speakers, decoder buddy boards and tested 3 locomotives yesterday. Today, I will play with the CV’s which is something I detest. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the train room yesterday until about 8PM. Unusual for me to spend more than 60 minutes in there after dinner but last night I there till 11:30. Time certainly flies when I am there.

This morning, I will spend time ( at least 45 minutes) in my chair under the lights. The sun has disappeared this week, so I need the SAD (seasonal affective disorder) treatment. I will be twisting some wire armatures together.
 
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YAY - Sunshine next two days - yuesterday was beautiful - temp 28f to 56.
Today will be 33f to 62 and clear.

Willie - Don't mind the rain at all -- it's just that we went mostly 7 days solid overcast with drizzle interrupted with a 10 - 15 min hard rain, repeat, repeat, repeat. As I stated - it has been 30 years since that kind of weather here. Maybe that is a cycle? The dogs even balked at going out and we had to force them out the door! They would look at us and say,"I'm not going out there - YOU GO!"

CURT - Sure wish you could ship some of that 84 degree temp out here. I'm convinced that my "bride" is going to freeze me out with her hot flashes .. I haven't been this cold since I left Colorado.

GEORGE - Loved the piano playing! Mom forced me to take lessons for 3+ years and I have two left hands! Never could play anything except tp memorize the piece. I love listening to BW music and other good piano players. All I wanted at the time was to play baseball!
That gal was fab! -- Nice running gear on her as well!

Time for more coffee!
 
Well, howdy there internet peeps, and those building arcs to weather the great floods

It's Troy again.

Got almost all of my words in this morning... but I signed up for an online "convention" education event that runs all weekend. Looks like 10a to 5p today and tomorrow. and 10-3 on Sunday.

I'm having to flip the Zoom meeting between my laptop, and my phone, so I can get the laundry done, etc. Up and down two flights for that. Two flights for the bathroom breaks too... BTW, there's no WIFI in my bath at the back of the condo.

Anyone recommend a good wifi extender?

OK, back to laundry before the next session.
 


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