Lots of Snow Shovelling

Today is only half over (2pm) and I'm already tired from snow shovelling. The overnight medium dense snowfall of about 15cm (the weather office will probably call it 20, but I just count the stuff I see on the ground) took over two hours of hard work to pile up on the lawn. A nice giant mountain with a ramp type of pile. I had to skip the gang's weekly lunch at Lone Star and put off going to work. I sure like that part-time sabbatical flexibility.

And some TV Repairs

After the first snow shovelling outing, I took our intermittently malfunctioning TV set back to the repair place, this time fitting it more carefully into the front seat so it wouldn't gouge holes in the door arm rest (mom was upset at that). The driving was interesting, nice and slippery (especially going around corners). Fortunately front wheel drive works well when backing over a snow bank into a driveway. Also, all the recent snow shovelling has strengthened my arms enough to make it easier to carry the big box than the previous time.

Brian: what do white streaks along most scan lines, stronger at the right, mean? They aren't there most of the time until, blip, the screen is full of them (usually after a channel change, after a few hours of operation, happening more often as something inside degrades). Also, the vertical retrace was showing up as a visible zig-zag line after the previous repair attempt (mind you, a visible vertical retrace is better than the no power situation that was the result of ignoring the streaks for too long).

More Shovelling and Babylon 5

Next up was some more snow shovelling. A neighbour pointed out that another neighbour had just gotten a new snow blower and had an old one for sale. I turned down the offer and kept on shovelling.

At about noon, I got too tired and stopped to watch this morning's Babylon-5 episode, using a CBM 1701 monitor and a portable stereo. There was a big space battle between all three sides, that ended with the bad guys and the other ex-good-guys being convinced that their time in this galaxy was over. It was good enough to be a season finale. Vir even got to wave goodbye to the evil agent's head on a pike, like he had wanted to for so long. Still, next week the B5 people have to deal with Earth and the psi-corps grab for power. There's also one more season of shows planned by the author.

After that break, was another hour of snow shovelling. I finally finished, and stopped to write this. It's still snowing outside, but I won't bother telling you what I'm going to do with that snow. I think I'll take tomorrow off too...

- Alex

P.S. The book of the month is Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep. Really good science fiction, Mote in God's eye quality. Very good alien races and future cultures. Good writing and characterization too. Don't read the reviews in the front, they spoil one of the surprises (there are so many that it only spoils the first 30 pages).