World's Largest Garage Sale

Last Saturday Now & Forever bought some space at the "world's largest garage sale."  I'm sure the garage sale as a whole was a success but we learned a valuable lesson.  While we had some nice items for sale (frames, cookie tins, folios, etc.) they really weren't in the price range of things that people normally go to buy at a garage sale.  These were all new items and most of them kind of pricey for a garage sale.  We didn't sell anything but we did get a couple leads.

Here are the handful of shots I took.

Steve

If they ever learn to do brain transplants...

Watch out!   If they do, the slightest thing out of place could turn you into a whole new person, or worse off, you could appear dead!    It turns out that my motherboard wasn't dead after all.  I found out that it's sensitive to how well you've installed the heatsink against the CPU.  If it isn't snug and tight it just shuts itself off (at least with this brand).  So, it's running now.  The CPU seems to get too hot more often but it does run.  I may have to look into a new cooler/heatsink.

Can you imagine, in the distant future, if they've learned to do brain transplants, or if they just want to take it out to fix something, if they don't put it back in just right, you could keel over dead every time you try to get going in the morning. 

Steve

DOA - Trying To Revive By Hooking Up Life Support

Well, the new motherboard was dead on arrival.  After installing it I turned it on and it started to go through POST.  It would run for maybe 10 seconds or less and then just stop, just like it was shut down.  It never reached the point of finding the OS.  So what you see here is an attempt to ressucitate it.  Actually, more accurately, it's an attempt to stay one step ahead of tech support.  I just know they're going to ask me to (among other things) try a different power supply.  Well, I did (below).  It made no difference.

Anyway, being without my main computer is getting kind of old.  All the other computers on the network back up to this one, so right now I have no current backups.  I pray that God will protect everything until this one gets back online.  After this one gets back online God won't have to protect things anymore...(just kidding.)  What I should really be doing is thanking God more often that he has kept things together for as long as He did. 

Moral of the story?  Don't put your faith in anything that can break down.  Hmmm, that doesn't leave too many options does it?

Steve

A New Way Of Life

A while back I mentioned that we were getting some new puppies.  Well, we did, and life has not been the same since.  They are very cute and fun to be around.  However one of my "stipulations" in getting the puppies is that I would be able to obedience train them.  That has proven to be a real challenge.  We purchased some group classes from The Dog House near us.  It is owned and run by Tom Rose.  Anyway, I've been through the classes once before about 15 years ago so I'm familiar with the techniques.  The personalities of these two puppies however has made it necessary to ask a lot of questions.  Until I get some answers things will be going slower than I hoped.

I will say that Lucy is shaping up to be an ideal student.  She's only 9 weeks old and she already walks on a leash (not quite a loose leash yet but she's getting there), knows "sit", and "down".  She makes her mistakes but she's very willing.  Linus on the other hand is turning out to be my problem student.  He walks on a leash but only where he wants to go.  If I try to get him to go where I want he complains big time.

Here are some shots of our new family members. 

And Its Guts Were Just Laying There...

It was horrible.  I had to take its nervous system out of its body and then just leave the guts laying there.  Yechhhh!!!!   I feel so...so...

lost without my computer.    I hope they get the motherboard repaired soon.  This is about the only disadvantage I can think of in building your own computer, especially when you can't afford to have a spare motherboard laying around.  I'm glad I had my data backed up to another computer.

Steve