Category: Chatter

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Choices, Choices. . .

Since I have used and really appreciated a Huskvarna machine in the past (OK, so it was my Wonder Woman’s super capable Huskvarna sewing machine, still. . . ), I am strongly leaning that way for my next chainsaw purchase, but for homeowner use, on a small lot, should the significant price differential between a Husky and, say, a Poulan be a factor in choosing between them? Keep in mind, I will likely also be using a chainsaw mill for much of my use of the new chainsaw (means replacing whatever crosscut chain comes with it with a ripping chain, of course).

This isn’t an immediate concern, since we are awaiting a place in the local reliable tree guy’s schedule to poll some trees and take down others.

Oh, and Stihl is right out of the running, since, though we actually have a local dealer, the prices for Stihls at the local dealer are even more than comparable Huskvarnas. *smh* Apparently one just cannot get the “street prices” HUskys are available for with a Stihl. (Or. . . maybe not. I just noticed the local dealer is having a sale through Fathers Day. . . Hmmm. . . Nah, the only ones at “reduced prices” are unsuitable for my needs.)

Also been needing a small chipper-shredder for a while, now. And then there’re the upgrades I need to make in my charcoal making process. . . and. . . and. . .

Looks like I’ll be too busy for a while to even think about shuffling off this mortal coil. ?

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“…like the ice storm of 2007… “

That’s the comment from an email from the desk of the county’s school superintendent that caught my eye. I hope not, since I have procrastinated getting our stand of sycamores trimmed back, and the deadfalls (well, they were dead after they were pulled down from the trees) from the last ice storm are still “in process,” getting cut up for different lil (and not so little) furniture projects. Oh, and then there’s the whole deadfalls taking-out-POTS-line and spiking through storage shed roof thing. Some of ’em last time were bigger in diameter than my thighs. Much bigger. The lil being without power for a few weeks (and water much of that time) wasn’t a patch on the cleanup.

At least the electric company has been vigorously and regularly trimming trees since the last power outage. Now, instead of ice on the lines AND massive chunks of lines downed by trees, it’s only iced lines that are a potential issue. Much better.

Looking forward to cleanup. *sigh* Oh. Well. I need the exercise.

On another note, neither of our children were living here at the time of the last major ice storm. Lovely Daughter was living 35 miles south and Son&Heir 35 miles north (still in college). This time, both are working down south. Roads Not Good. Lovely Daughter has a place to stay for the evening. Son&Heir does too, but he’s waffling about staying/coming back when he gets off around 10:00. We strongly recommended staying over. Strongly. I’ve slid a car off the road on black ice (traveling under 30mph… more than 30 years ago), under better conditions than he’d be driving in. Our neighborhood streets are solid ice, now, and WILL NOT be scraped/sanded until at least tomorrow, so sliding off the road (and into a neighbor’s front room) on the way down the hill to a sharp hairpin onto our street’s not out of range of the possible. We’ve had a couple of cars slide off the road that’s up a 15′ 80-degree hill above our street slide off the street and down into our front yard in years past, so it’s not inconceiveable. Don’t want to get a call to come collect him out of a bar ditch.

Oh, well. He’s living here, but he’s his own adult and can make his own decisions.

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Under the Tree at TWC

Notalotta outrageous gifting going on @twc this year. Biggest deals: My Wonder Woman okayed the purchase of a new (VERY inexpensive–cheaper than WallyWorld 17″-ers; gottalove Amazon.com) 22″ Acer LCD screen for my “old eyes computing,” Son&Heir and I exchanged (used) Xboxes (originals) for conversion to media servers–a fun lil project–and Lovely Daughter got a very nice new coat.

No biggies. Some other lil things.

Oh, one (very inexpensive) “biggie”–for a couple of years now, my Wonder Woman’s been kinda limping along with her otherwise exceptionally nice Toshiba Satellite A105 running on 512MB of memory. It was a compromise at the time of purchase, but memory prices have tumbled since then, so now it’s doing very nicely indeed with 4GB of memory. Which reminds me of a tip for those of y’all running 32-bit Windows with more than 3GB of RAM. Since 32-bit Windows doesn’t really see more than 3GB (oh, M$ claims it can see up to 4, but they can just pull the other one), it has to be tricked into seeing more. And even with (legitimate) trickery, it can still be a tad stinky about the 32-bit limits. But if you are one of those folks who added more RAM to a 32-bit Windows installation than the OS can see, here’s a workaround that at least partially works:

Enable DEP.

Yep. “Data Execution Prevention” is a M$ method of providing at least some OS protection against some malware. It’s not all that effective, so some folks don’t even bother to have it enabled. But the interesting thing about DEP is that enabling it also enables Physical Address Extension (PAE), “a feature of x86 processors that lets 32-bit operating systems overcome the 4GB memory limit.”1

To enable DEP, simply go to Control Panel>System>Performance>Advanced>Settings>DEP and enable it… if it’s available on your hardware.

If PAE is not enabled on your system, you can do a teensy lil hack to enable it using Notepad (or some other PLAIN TEXT editor):

* Step 1. Choose Start, Run.
* Step 2. Type notepad c:\boot.ini and press Enter.
* Step 3. Under the [operating systems] heading, look for a line that contains the /noexecute switch, which turns software DEP. For example, it may be /noexecute=optin, /noexecute=optout, or /noexecute=always on. Place the cursor directly after that switch and type a space followed by /pae.

Save the file and reboot.

This neat lil trick is from Windows Secrets Newsletter. But be warned: if you’re not comfotable editing system files like boot.ini, leave it for your friendly local techie to do, ‘K?

OK, that lil diversion was all in aid of saying simply that my Wonder Woman’s lil Toshiba needed nothing in order to recognize and use the memory but a reboot and wipeout of a bum “System Restore Point” that wanted to insist she still had 512MB. (“System Restore” is a utility whose time has come… for being eliminated. Piece of junk, IMO.)

Looking at our laid back gift giving this year, I must admit it’s little different from other recent years since the kids gained adulthood. As a family, we have MORE than enough “stuff” and need very, very little. It’s nice to simply reflect on the Reason for Christmas apart from all the shopping and wrapping and all the other material effluvia.

But I will admit that it’s nice to see my Wonder Woman taking more pleasure in her computer use, Lovely Daughter dressing warmly (and stylishly) and Son&Heir having fun approaching his XBox/computer hacks. (OK, OK, we’re doing software mods/hacks rather than hardware hacks at this time. If the hardware hacks become necessary to get the performance we want, then we’ll look at that. Well, a couple of small hardware hacks to controller cables, but those’re trivial.)