My Stuff

For the past couple of months I have noticed a vibration in the front suspension of the car at certain highway speeds.

Since I head up to Springfield MA next weekend for the train show I figured I would have it looked at before the trip.

It turned out to be the left side tie rod ends - both inner and outer.

Parts $146.00
Labor $115.00
Alignment $110.00
Balancing $ 80.00
Tax $ 38.50
-----------------------------
Grand Total $489.50

*sigh*

There is a house down there with a full outdoor ride on railroad up for sale fairly cheap.

Perlear is near Wilkesboro and about an hour north of Charlotte

I just had what amounted to a private 3D screening of the movie.  4:20PM on a rainy Monday afternoon is a pretty good time apparently.  There was one young kid and his Mom sitting quietly somewhere behind me, after they settled they were silent.

It is worth it!  If you have not yet seen this movie, do so!
There is enough in the movie that I wnat to see it at least twice more just to take in the details of the city and characters.

Five Stars, The Disney animators have set a VERY high bar for animation this time - and the movie runs close to two hours.

Wow.

Also, for the Jerry Andersen fans, Thunderbirds will be back with a whole new series on Amizon Prime.

My desktop PC is now pushin' up the daisies.  It was intermittently dying and rebooting and promptly forgetting which drive to boot from.
I finally ended up taking it in to MicroCenter and the tech who examined it said the mother board is shot.  He says he saw fried diodes on the back of the board.
The estimate to fix it would buy me a better replacement, so that is probably the route I will take.

It was a dual processor quad core (quad core dual processor? - whatever, it had eight) with maxed out memory, a heavy duty power supply and a pretty good graphics card.  I will probably be able to reuse the graphics card, but memory seems to change type every other week, so that will be "stored".  Heck, I'll probably keep the whole thing.

Before anyone suggests building my own, I do not have the expertise to choose the right parts to put something good together.  I could assemble the parts myself, but I would be stuck if anything went wrong.  I'd rather get something assembled that works.

The trouble is my budget is a bit limited right now.

Hopefully I can use my existing boot drive directly, but even if I can't the drive is still good and I can get the stuff off of it.

For now I'm using an old (slow!) Mac mini with minimal extras.  It's OK, but I have gone too far down the PC path to switch over at this point.

Here's a link to a review with the specs of the PC.  I have upped the memory to 9GB and swapped the graphics card.
http://www.cnet.com/products/gateway-fx6800-01e/

I have a laptop running Windows 7 32bit.  It is dead and un-repairable with a motherboard issue that shuts it down within a minute or so of starting and then immeadiately you hit the power button.  I need to use a program on the C drive that can not easily be replaced. Call this "Machine 1"

I bought a second identical good laptop ("Machine 2") and installed the drives and memory cards from Machine 1 into Machine 2.

Machine 2 will boot up, but only into diagnostic mode.  Windows recognises the hardware change and will not start.
Several attempts at running the startup fix and various tries at starting from different restore points have not worked.

SO ...
1) Is there any way to get the software to recognise its new home and boot up?
2) Would swapping the CPU from Machine 1 into Machine 2 get the software to boot in Machine 2?
3) Is there another alternative?

http://rapidotrains.com/shuttlecraft/

There are 40 of these.  They were auctioned off.

I got one!

____________________

Good Morning and Congratulations: You are a successful bidder for one of
Rapido Trains nc. LRC Shuttlecraft in support of the Lung Association. Our
silent auction successfully raised over
$ 20,000.00 in memory of the late Leonard Nimoy. On behalf of Jason Shron,
President of Rapido Trains Inc., our team and the Lung Association thank
you for your generous bid.
...

Your LRC Shuttlecraft will come numbered (out of 40) and with a
certificate of authenticity. Only 40 numbered LRC shuttlecraft were made,
plus several production samples held at Rapido so you have a very rare and
hopefully special locomotive. ...

The second service for the SX4

Oil and Filter change $42.95 (should have been done at 37,500)
6 Year battery & installation: $169.95
(4) Goodyear Eagle LS Tires - P205/60R16: $489.00 (includes balancing etc)
Alignment: $99.95
Washer Fluid (1 gallon): $3.00

Parts total: $657.70 Labor Total: $147.95 Sales tax: $69.49 = Grand Total $885.14

I knew this was coming so I had the money reserved.

The tires and battery should be good for at least 5 years, probably longer.

Service etc at Port Tire & Auto Service Port Washington, NY

This is absolutely f..ing insane. Mom's Windows XP computer has been infected by this thing and every document, pdf, picture file and email has been encrypted.
They want $500 in BitCoins to decrypt them. AND the price goes up to $1000 if you wait.

Wonderful. We don't have the money. So far no one has found a way to decrypt the files either. The program can be removed, but even a System Restore will not bring back files.

We don't have backups either, although some of the files are available elsewhere, from friends or my brother.

*Sigh*

I found a neat little railroad switching puzzle online and it has a layer editor.

I put together a layout based on John Allen's "Timesaver" switching puzzle.

There are also a series of puzzles that lead you through how it all works and some other user created ones.

Enjoy!!

http://armor.ag/22cHZ

I will be attending the Amherst Railway Society Show this year (yay!) Jan 25-26
"Big E" Fairgrounds in Springfield MA
http://www.railroadhobbyshow.com/

I'll be loosely based around the NTRAK layout in the Better Living Center.