The good news today is that Linda got another $15,000 grant today for the SEA program! That makes $40,000 this week! You go Girl!

On the home front – I temporarily got the two computers networked together, sharing an internet connection, and connected one to the home stereo so I could stream Sirius, shoutcast stations, or songs stored on the PC to the home stereo. But in running the cables permanently through the house, problems began.

Claire first crawled in a crawl space to help connect the two computers via ethernet. Here she is at the back of the crawl space looking for the ethernet cable to drag out.

This is not a fun space to be in – after I put the insulation under the floor years ago, I swore I wouldn’t go back in there. Now that I have three kids of various sizes, it thought it would be good to use them! I thought Martin would be a good size to squeeze in, but Claire volunteered for the “home spelunking.”

Here she is after completing the mission. Notice the cobwebs, headlamp, flushed cheeks (and yellow cable dangling from crawl space)!

After all this, things started to fall apart – we found that the cable was damaged in pulling through and ripped open and some of the wires severed, and the cable to connect the the computer to the stereo was still not long enough! So we went from a functioning network and music server to nothing.

On top of it all, my new digital camera stopped working. Evidently, all the reviews that highly recommended it, neglected to mention the E18 error that is evidently so prevalent that a couple of law firms are considering class-action suits against Canon. I just can’t win. My Nikon digital camera (both of them) and now my Canon, both had the problem where the lens retract/extend breaks. I sent it back as it is still under warranty. I’ll have to rely on the kindness of Claire and use hers until the camera is returned/I get a new one.