Epic 2-4 long weekend!

We’ve had GORGEOUS weather.

Here are our accomplishments:

• I was a judge at the Lion’s club multi-district Speakout event.
• We went out in the boat and caught 4 fish.  3 were baby perch, the size of large lures.  We tossed them back.  Then Jeff had a bigger pull on his line and it was a sucker! He tossed it back too. That was the first sucker fish I saw here. Or actually anywhere. Except for in the magazine I was just reading about them.
• I gained freckles and the very faint start of my 2012 tan.
• We had a fire and watched the stars and drank cold beer.
• I fed most of the blackflies with my blood.
• Jeff is smoking ribs today in his smoker. Probably enough ribs for most of the neighbourhood, but we’re not sharing It smells AMAZINGGGGGG!
• We got 3 sides of the shed painted with a nice cedar shade stain, but surprisingly ran out of stain.  Who knew it would take 2 full cans and we wouldn’t even finish the first coat?
• Jeff braved the hungry black flies and cut the grass.  We’ve been discussing buying a ride-on mower, but the price may be a little prohibitive.  That and we don’t have a massive lawn.  Jeff can do it in an hour, but it takes me probably 90 minutes.  We may go for a self-propelled instead so we don’t have to bend over and push this old one so hard.
• I tried the new Coors Light Iced T – at first I loved it. It tastes like light beer with a strong ice tea after taste. Then I thought I’d rather just have the beer without the iced tea taste.  I bet it’s refreshing on a hot summer day. I’d drink it again.

Alright, here are some photos. If you want to hear about my power supply woes, stay tuned after the photos.

Mandatory annual self portrait in the boat

This is the life

My first fish in 2012

2 loons

I love this!

We caught 3 of these little perch

Sucker!

Such a calm night.

My boat captain

First coat going on

Oh come on! Don't take my picture!

Kansas City sloppy ribs (my fav!)

Lonestar dry ribs

The Power Supply Situation

Unfortunately computer problems will always plague me, especially on long weekends and holidays. My big new desktop computer powerhouse was on when we went fishing yesterday, but it was off when we got home. Uh-oh. I think the power supply is shot because I can’t get a single LED on it, or inside it, to fire up. I changed the cords and tried a different wall outlet, but it is dead. So I was up late last night researching power supplies and ordered a new one. This one was a Seasonic and only had a year warranty, which is up in January. The new one I ordered is a Corsair and has a SEVEN year warranty. That is impressive!

So I’ve rigged up my little 13″ laptop to one of my big 24″ monitors. It is working, but the resolution is so big I feel like I should sit across the room. It’ll allow me to do basic things for a few days, but I’m going to be dying for it to be shipped, and delivered! Then I’ll have to rewire everything with the new power cords I guess. I’ve never had to replace a power supply before.

But I suspect I know why it died.

My UPS died a few weeks ago. That is UPS for uninterruptible power supply. It’s a box you plug of your most important electronics into and it keeps the power clean and steady to your electronics, and allows them to power down gently when the power goes out, rather than a hard off.

As I read more about UPS’s, I discovered that the one I used was okay, but not for high quality power supplies (of the active PFC (power factor correction) variety) like I have in my big desktop computer. I was supposed to be using a more expensive UPS that outputs a pure sine wave of power and the one I had was outputting a simulated sine wave.

So power supply will be replaced first.  The UPS I require is pricey.  APC does have a buy back program and they’ll take my old one and recycle it with a discount for the new one, so I might go that route.

So, bottom line, the webcam showing the view from my window will be offline until my computer is fixed later this week.

(and if a new power supply doesn’t fix the problem, then I’ll be kinda miserable.)