Buying the Ballot Box

No, this has nothing to do with mundane politics, nor is it an allusion to voter fraud. It is indeed the subject of purchasing a ballot box.

( Conrunning neepery about ballot boxes )

Big thanks to Costume-Con 26 for funding a bit of fannish infrastructure that (assuming we act responsibly) can be used for a long time to come.

Hitting the Weather Jackpot

Last night, Lisa got back from the video show in Portland just a few minutes before the lunar eclipse got to totality. She ran over to her father's house where I was still pounding away at the keyboard not paying much attention to time and briefly told me to come outside. I did so, and eventually found her in the dark field with the camera set up on a tripod taking pictures of the eclipse.

As I say in the subject line, we hit the weather jackpot here. Instead of typical Oregon winter weather (clouds, rain), we had a beautiful clear sky, temperatures about 5 C, no wind. Really wonderful conditions, although if I'd realized I'd be standing out in the cold that long, I would have put on another pair of socks and my sweater.

We stuck around for the entire hour of totality while Lisa tried various settings on the camera. We haven't downloaded the photos to my computer yet, but at least on the preview, some of the photos looked pretty good. In other cases, the exposure time was so long that the moon's image is blurred by movement.

About fifteen minutes after totality ended, the cold got to us and we packed things up and went back to the trailer to warm up. Determining that after a day of being on her feet at a trade show and an evening of taking eclipse photos, she wasn't feeling much like making dinner, we walked over to the Chinese restaurant here in Mehama and got take-out food. (Yes, Mehama is a tiny postage stamp hamlet in the Oregon countryside, and yes, it has a Chinese restaurant.) We got back home just as the last bit of the moon was coming out of eclipse.

That has got to be the best view I've ever had of a lunar eclipse. And in Oregon, in the winter, no less! Wow!

Toughing it Out

The replacement power supply for the Toughbook CF-27 arrived today. After lunch, Lisa plugged it in and the power light came on, which was a good sign.

( Bringing the Computer Back to Life )

The Toughbook is now accessible! Mind you, it's not the most usable machine we've had, as it's a Mark 1 with only a Pentium MMX 266 processor, 128MB RAM, and a whopping 4 GB (yes, that's f-o-u-r) hard drive, most of which is carrying the OS. But Lisa is happy with it.

Now she wants a CD-ROM drive for the thing. Unfortunately, it's a highly proprietary type of drive, so replacements are in the >$100 range.