News
19 June 2010
Summer draws nigh! I pulled my EVGA 730a quadcore from its poly case and placed it in a more traditional alien one. I then built a Windows XP pc in the poly, using some spare parts lying about here, including an Intel mobo with a Pentium IV processor, to take to school in the fall for the sake of the students. The poly looks cool, but there are major drawbacks. First, 9 phillips screws must be removed to open the side of the case, versus two thumb screws on the alien model. Second, the mobo is mounted directly to the poly case, which makes changes of optical drives etc. in and out of bays a major nuisance. You cannot get to the screws without first dismounting the mobo and that is a major pain. Finally, the poly allows for no common ground and that really worries me at times, especially during thunder storms. I could run ground straps from one hardware piece to another to another, but that too is a pain. I also removed the Ultrafan that cools the processor. It’s a great cooler, but is so large that it covers half of the DDR2 RAM sticks. I installed a more standard AM2 socket cpu fan . I also doubled the dual-channel RAM to 8 GB . I’m running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate, so the memory zips far faster than it could otherwise. There’s also a 32-bit Windows XP O/S installed on a dedicated HD, and of course it has a virtual XP pc as well. I had to pull the Ultrafan twice in the past and still things weren’t right, due to a defective stick. Should I need to get at the RAM again, I want to do so with ease, even if that means my processor runs a few degrees hotter than 28C. I dread removing, re-greasing, and remounting the processor fan. It’s just asking for trouble.
Only one more week until school ends. Once it ends I’ll be taking my granddaughter, Maya, fishing for the first time. She’s only three, so cane poles are in order. The week after that Doughtry Long and I teach a poetry course for teachers at Rider University for the National Writing Project. Off and on until the end of July I offer technology support for The National Writing Project at Rider University, primarily teaching teachers how to use our site blog and E-Anthology, the official interactive blog of the the NWP summer institutes.
Work continues on my novel. I hope to finish it this summer, but who knows. Most ideas come to me when I rise in the morning, so most of my serious writing is done then. All in all, the novel has its plot form and it is only the details that I am adding and revising and revising and revising. Things are moving along.
Sunday afternoons I continue hosting the sessions at Dublin Square in Bordentown. The management asked me if I would like to do the same on Saturdays once their Cherry Hill Dublin Square opens in July, but I had to decline. I need one day at home to keep my sanity.
Speaking of home, we’ve cleared the front lawn of forsythia and other shrubs and soon the Arbor Barber will remove the two white pines that have outlived their usefulness. Both are well over 80 feet high, unstable, and a danger to both us and the general population. No immediate plans to remove the 40-foot holly trees. We plan to install a 4-ft high wooden fence along the peak of the rise edge to provide some privacy and relief from traffic noise. It will run 40 feet from the brick steps to the left end of the property, then head back another 16 feet near the border of the neighbor’s driveway. The house will still remain visible from the road, which is scheduled for a major downsizing in 2012. The township is assuming maintenance of the road, converting the Whitehead Road traffic light intersection into a round about, narrowing the road, adding a grass median and lowering the speed limit to 35 MPH. The aim is to restore a sense of community to the Slackwood/Colonial Lakelands neighborhood.
We will not travel to Ireland this summer, as we did last, but instead do some camping and, as usual, make good use of our season passes to Sesame Place. Come the fall we’ll be off to Disneyworld for a week-long stay at The Contemporary Resort. This is the boy’s first trip to the resort.