Smokin!

A good morning. Not too cold and the skies are fair. Inside the house it’s fair as well, with the wood stove keeping us warm through the night. But… whenever you open the door to add more wood, the smoke pours out. The house now has a distinctive “woodsy” aroma. And last night the smoke alarm went off just after I put in the nights supply of wood. So there I was, standing in the hallway and waving my hand at the plastic box that holds the door bell chimes…in the belief that that was the smoke alarm and some moving air would silence it. It didn’t. I hadn’t looked directly over my head where the real alarm was located. Luckily, I have someone who watches over me and she was able to point out the obvious difference between chimes and alarms. Duh!

I’m sure that the smoky conditions are caused by a lack of draft which is caused by a constricted stack which is caused by a creosote buildup; all of which means that I need to call a chimney sweep this spring. That’s not something to be taken lightly as a few of the roof tiles were broken by a chimney sweep who was working for the previous owner of this house. I don’t want that to happen again. The tile roof was definitely a selling point for me when we bought this house; a solid roof over our heads with little chance of ever wearing out in our lifetimes. But solid means unbroken…

On a different subject; because my computer is getting old; (Arriving in November of 2003 – Ancient!) I’ve been trying to make sure that all of my data is backed up and that has become a real chore. I bought the computer with 2 hard drives with a combined capacity of 120GB, plus I added a third drive, a stand alone Seagate with 250GB capacity. Now, I am pretty good at organizing computer files and folders, but with this much capacity it’s like having a closet that is far too large; where is everything? And I have duplicates; boy, do I ever! I save them here and then I save them there as if I had a real plan at one time. Simple is better and I need to get back to having one set of data on one hard drive and a copy on another.

I want to build a computer this year and so I have begun doing some comparison shopping as I look at the basics; the case and the motherboard. And I have already found it to be quite challenging. There are hundreds of motherboards available and each has a different set of specs and a different chip set. Which one is best? I tried various on-line sources and came up with Tiger Direct and Overstock as my choices for supplying the parts for building a new computer, but they don’t have much in the way of tutorials. And the on-line tutorials are loaded down with advertising. I think I need to find a good book on the subject.