January 2014

January 11, 2014

The Rule of Threes

When I told Kid Matt I was running out of storage space on my computer because photos and videos are BIG files, he offered to help me upgrade my old computer. Of course, like any construction project. It is subject to the Rule of Threes: it is going to take three times as much money as was budgeted; it’s going to take three times as long as projected, and it’s going to take at least three trips to the store for every component involved.

The project meant I needed a larger computer case, a different motherboard, a bigger power supply, a new RAID card and some extra drives.

He ordered the case and power supply through Amazon prime and specified the free two-day shipping so we’d get it Friday for a weekend installation.

TWO big boxes arrived

When we got the tracking info, we saw they were promising delivery next week, not Friday. Matt called Amazon to complain, and they said they’d place a new order and give us overnight shipping so we’d get it when we needed it. As it turned out TWO big computer boxes arrived on Friday. The tracking info must have been wrong. The power supply arrived on time from a different vendor.

Matt wanted to go for a bike ride on Saturday, so he asked if we could start playing Friday night instead of doing a Saturday build. Sooner is always better when it comes to new toys, so I assured him Friday night was good.

Looking down inside the new box before most of the stuff went in was looking down on a futuristic city out of a science fiction thriller.

This is only going to take 45 minutes

Matt said building the hardware piece shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes – “45 minutes, tops.” Restoring the programs and data was going to be the long part.

After about an hour, we (meaning him) had enough pieces/parts together that we could fire it up to see if it was going to boot. The fans started spinning and a red LED next to the CPU lit up, then everything went quiet. Time after time after time.

Matt started frogging (swapping) components into different slots, trying different video cards, trying different RAM. No joy.

Three or four hours later into our 45-minute (“tops”) project, he swapped out the brand-new super-duper power supply with one out of an old computer. It worked. The power supply was defective.

The RAID controller won’t work

The magic thing that was going to make more efficient and safer use of my data drives was a new-fangled RAID controller. That sounds like an electronic moat drawbridge to keep invaders out, but Matt assured me that I didn’t have to know what it was or how it worked. I just needed to know that I was going to see my internal storage space effectively double, from four drives and 3 terabytes to six drives and six terabytes of mirrored stuff. He did some kind of crazy math thing where he said that four times two terabytes equals six terabytes of usable storage, but my eyes glazed over like they did in Grace Williams’ math class, and I just nodded from time to time like I understood what he was saying.

Magic wands and ritual sacrifices

The only problem was the computer didn’t recognize the RAID card, no matter how may times he waved a magic wand at it. He was muttering something about ritual sacrifices when I headed him off before he saw the grilled chicken I was planning to snack on.

He actually pulled out the docs at one point, that’s how desperate he was. Finally, at 4:30 a.m., I jerked awake and realized that I had fallen asleep with my chin on my chest. It was time for a nap.

When I got up at 5:30 a.m., he was gone. He figured out that he wasn’t much more awake than I was, so he left for home at 4:45 a.m..

More fans than Elvis

We (he) took another crack at it late this afternoon. He took an approach that was going to take longer than the quick fix we had tried last night, but it was going to be better in the long run. It will be doing some software gyrations tonight while we sleep, then we’ll finish it up in about 30 minutes (“45, tops”) Sunday.

Let me tell you, this new box has more fans that Elvis Presley and is twice as cool. To assure you that they are running, they are lit with purplish LEDs that are supposed to comfort the inner geek.

Thanks to Wife Lila for documenting the event. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Thanks to you readers for using the big Click Here button when you shop Amazon. That helped pay for some of the new equipment.

January 10, 2014

Getting Ready for the Dance

Here are a few photos I found later that go along with a post I did on Decorating the Gym back in 2012. I held back on them because they were pretty scratched up and nor particularly sharp. I needed some quick content today, though, because I’m planning to do a computer upgrade this evening and I needed to get everything shut down so I could do a backup.

(Thanks, by the way, for all you folks who click on the Click Here button to do your Amazon shopping. That helped made the upgrade possible. I was running low on disk space for all these photos.)

Sackman and Towse

Miss Kathryn Sackman, left, American History teacher, and Miss Lucy Ellen Towse, physical education instructor, discuss what acts of tomfoolery the students are contemplating.

When I look at those ceramic tile walls, I can’t help but remember the way sounds reverberated off them. It was a curious mix of bouncing balls, yells, the squeak of rubber tennis shoe soles on slick floors, punctuated by bleats from the coaches’ whistles. I file it away with the unique sound of silverware hitting thick china plates and the buzz of milk shake mixers at the Woolworths’ lunch counter.

Other decorating photos

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your left and right arrow keys to move through the gallery.

January 9, 2014

Mississippi River Ice

The Mississippi River never iced over enough for me to shoot people and cars crossing over to Illinois, but I have taken pictures of floating ice before. These photos were taken in the mid-1960s.

Walking across the river

Fred Lynch posted a Frony photo from 1936 showing people and a bike on the river, but he said it didn’t run, possibly because the paper didn’t want to encourage such behavior.

The ice floes were a little thicker when I shot the river in 2000.

January 8, 2014

1940-ish Snow Storm

I was looking through scans from Mother’s college scrapbook when I saw what must have been the snowstorm of 1940 or thereabouts. This shows the terraces south and east of Academic Hall. Click on the photos to make them larger. I looked but didn’t see anybody sledding down the hill.

Albert or Leming Hall?

This might be Leming Hall, but I’m going to let someone else make the call. A Missourian story said Albert Hall and Leming Hall were almost identical in appearance and layout. Another picture in the scrapbook labeled Albert Hall, taken at a different time, showed steps leading up to screened-in porch.

A Frony photo showing a city crew putting cinders on Normal Avenue in front of Leming Hall shows a screened-in porch and no columns.

A photo from 1960 showing students moving out of Albert Hall before it was razed shows the columns and no porch. Maybe the screening was taken down in the winter, which would explain the difference.

Unknown location

I don’t know where this photo was taken, but considering how much snow there is, I have to think it was taken around the SEMO campus. I can’t imagine Mother would have been able to make it back home to Advance given the condition of roads back then.