January 25, 2006 – More Success and Home Spelunking

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.
claire spelunk

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.”

claire spelunk

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.

January 24, 2006 – Internet Radio

OK, the world is changing faster than I can keep up. I have a sister who is a “terrestial dj” and I just activated my Sirius Radio subscription (you’ll find me most often on channels 09 the Pulse, 18 Spectrum, 22, First Wave, 30 Coffeehouse, 65 Outlaw Country, with lesser times on 16 the Vault, 08 Eighties hits, and 10 Springsteen all the time).

Now I’ve been turned onto Shoutcast.com where there are hundreds of stations streaming over the internet commercial free. I ask myself, how can local stations survive (other than those which really do provide local news, obituaries, weather, etc). I believe the big conglomerates (Clear Channel, Cumulus) will not be able to survive against satellite radio and will not be able to gain economies of scale out of groups of locally-based stations.

But then, how does satellite radio compete against the 100’s if not thousands of free internet radio stations. It will be interesting to see what shakes out.

January 23, 2006 – Success!

Today Linda was informed that two small grants totaling about $25,000 for the Sustainable and Entrepreneurial Ag program were funded by the Leopold Center! One to plan for the college farm, the other to research an incubator kitchen on campus. It means Linda will have some time to devote to the planning and research of the farm operations/layout. It sounds like fun!

January 22, 2006 – Which Window?

As we are in the midst of attic building, we are soon to decide on windows for the new dormer. To help us think, I made some crude drawings of some possible arrangements of the windows.
dormer1
dormer2
Mind, you, I haven’t had these estimated by the window company yet, but I’m leaning towards #2 or #7.

The first floor has the big windows with the prairie style grid as shown in the top of #5. The 2nd story are all plain double hung like #7. So now, I’m leaning towards the group that has elements of both #2 or the plain #7. The story goes on, I’m sure.