I'm Acting All Goofy & Tingly....
I had the audacity to finally say something about the cantankerous behavior of my hand-me down corporate laptop I received when I took my new job back in October.
They offered me a high powered desktop CAD workstation but being the vagabond that I am I wanted to be able to run out the door with my computer under my arm on a moment's notice and I would need a wheelbarrow or a large backpack when attempting that maneuver with the first option.
So now six months later I've realized that the happy little laptop had become an angry beast working under the load of AutoCAD 12 and the RISA finite element software I run every day not to mention the Excel and other Microsoft Office products I tend to fire up and operate.
So any way...my boss and the IT department nerds got together and the results of their efforts arrived at my desk first thing yesterday morning...
a brand new HP Z400 CAD Workstation with...get this...
a 3+ Ghz Intel Xenon Quad Core Processor
12 Gigs of RAM
NIVDA Quattro Graphics card with 1 Gig RAM
500 Gig Hard Drive
Needless to say things are smoking...almost catching on fire...in my office these days.
AND?
They let me keep the old laptop also.
Now this crusty old grumpy engineer is a bit less grumpy this morning, and that said it's time to hit the showers and head to the office I guess.
Regards Y'all...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
My Yard & Garden Have Taken Command...
I've Traded My Entire Personal Life For Some Magic Beans?
So I had really big plans for last weekend...you know?
A page long list of projects which have been festering on the sidelines/back burner for the past few months since the weather turned nice and in some zombie like catatonic fit I started buying power lawn equipment.
Right now I can't walk into a grocery store or a movie theater or a fast food restarurant not to mention a Lowe's or Home Depot without coming home with a plant or some sort of lawn equipment.
If they are not actually selling plants in the retail establishment I'm afraid that I'm likely to dig something up and put it in a bucket and bring it home with me to plant in my own yard.
The same goes for letting me come over to your house to visit, so you better do an inventory before I back out of your driveway or your Lace Leafed Weeping Japanese Maple tree or some Knockout Roses or Azaleas might just come up missing.
And then there is my affinity for things with gas powered engines on them...so-called "power lawn equipment."
I love the crap, but in my old age much of that kind of stuff ends up hurting me and making it hard to do things like walk or even get out of bed after even a brief encounter outside my front or back door.
I actually tried to avoid ownership of such torturous infernal contraptions found in the "power lawn equipment" isles of life, but things just haven't worked out and I hate to admit that it's nobody's fault but my own in the end.
You see, in the process of moving out here to the "Turbo Pup Compound West" (or TUPUCOW--pronounced "too poo cow"-- for short) I gave away my crappy old lawnmower and two weed eaters I had bought at a yard sale in Knoxtown.
I really wasn't crazy...just lazy...and besides, the carburator seals on the old lawnmower had been eaten by the government subsidized ethanol poisoned gasoline I put in it, and I had only gotten around to making one of the two weedeaters operate over the past two or three growing seasons.
Rather than actually use my crappy old lawn equipment historically I'd been paying a guy to take care of the yard pretty much since we moved away from our little Island to Knoxtown in early 2007.
So any way, when we were moving out here to Tulsa I had the idea that either:
A. I'd hire a local kid or landscape contractor to handle the yard or...
B. Since the yard wasthe size of a postage stamp tiny I'd break down and buy some new tools and do it myself if push came to shove (excuse the pun.)
Well, upon arrival we learned that the going rate in East Tulsa/Broken Arrow to hire a pimple faced teen to mow and trim/edge a yard which required the burningone mililiter a half ounce of two or three ounces of gasoline in one or more internal combustion engines was the same as the cost of mowing a half acre in Knoxtown...
FORTY DOLLARS!!!
I thought about it for a few months through the winter, then when things warmed up over the past couple of months I've slowly added a push mower (not self propelled), a weed eater, and a wimpy electric leaf blower to the fleet of devices sitting around in my garage.
...Oh...and a little garden wagon with a polymer (plastic) bed is out there also....
Getting back to the original point of my story this evening, the way things are growing this season so far I have to cut the grass at LEAST once a week and the weed eater chores will probably soon move from 10 days or 2 week intervals down to every week.
And then there is this year's edition of the manditory vegetable garden which I have slowly been adding to since the first tomato plant went in Easter weekend.
Right now I have a half dozen variates of tomatoes and a similar number of peppers growing, and there are Yellow and Zuccini squash and eggplant and cucumbers and watermelons and cantaloupe and pumpkins...
...and on top of all of that?
Last weekend in a fit of gardening insanity I bought another six tomato plant varieties and some more red bell pepper plants and yet another variety of eggplant for good measure.
And needless to say all of this gardening and other yard work is severely limiting my time available to work on the model airplane's which can be found languishing all lonesome in my garage shop area.
That said, I guess that it is time to stop complaining and get some sleep in anticipation of another day on the treadmill.
Y'all have a LOVELY week now...
Regard's Y'all...
So I had really big plans for last weekend...you know?
A page long list of projects which have been festering on the sidelines/back burner for the past few months since the weather turned nice and in some zombie like catatonic fit I started buying power lawn equipment.
Right now I can't walk into a grocery store or a movie theater or a fast food restarurant not to mention a Lowe's or Home Depot without coming home with a plant or some sort of lawn equipment.
If they are not actually selling plants in the retail establishment I'm afraid that I'm likely to dig something up and put it in a bucket and bring it home with me to plant in my own yard.
The same goes for letting me come over to your house to visit, so you better do an inventory before I back out of your driveway or your Lace Leafed Weeping Japanese Maple tree or some Knockout Roses or Azaleas might just come up missing.
And then there is my affinity for things with gas powered engines on them...so-called "power lawn equipment."
I love the crap, but in my old age much of that kind of stuff ends up hurting me and making it hard to do things like walk or even get out of bed after even a brief encounter outside my front or back door.
I actually tried to avoid ownership of such torturous infernal contraptions found in the "power lawn equipment" isles of life, but things just haven't worked out and I hate to admit that it's nobody's fault but my own in the end.
You see, in the process of moving out here to the "Turbo Pup Compound West" (or TUPUCOW--pronounced "too poo cow"-- for short) I gave away my crappy old lawnmower and two weed eaters I had bought at a yard sale in Knoxtown.
I really wasn't crazy...just lazy...and besides, the carburator seals on the old lawnmower had been eaten by the government subsidized ethanol poisoned gasoline I put in it, and I had only gotten around to making one of the two weedeaters operate over the past two or three growing seasons.
Rather than actually use my crappy old lawn equipment historically I'd been paying a guy to take care of the yard pretty much since we moved away from our little Island to Knoxtown in early 2007.
So any way, when we were moving out here to Tulsa I had the idea that either:
A. I'd hire a local kid or landscape contractor to handle the yard or...
B. Since the yard was
Well, upon arrival we learned that the going rate in East Tulsa/Broken Arrow to hire a pimple faced teen to mow and trim/edge a yard which required the burning
FORTY DOLLARS!!!
I thought about it for a few months through the winter, then when things warmed up over the past couple of months I've slowly added a push mower (not self propelled), a weed eater, and a wimpy electric leaf blower to the fleet of devices sitting around in my garage.
...Oh...and a little garden wagon with a polymer (plastic) bed is out there also....
Getting back to the original point of my story this evening, the way things are growing this season so far I have to cut the grass at LEAST once a week and the weed eater chores will probably soon move from 10 days or 2 week intervals down to every week.
And then there is this year's edition of the manditory vegetable garden which I have slowly been adding to since the first tomato plant went in Easter weekend.
Right now I have a half dozen variates of tomatoes and a similar number of peppers growing, and there are Yellow and Zuccini squash and eggplant and cucumbers and watermelons and cantaloupe and pumpkins...
...and on top of all of that?
Last weekend in a fit of gardening insanity I bought another six tomato plant varieties and some more red bell pepper plants and yet another variety of eggplant for good measure.
And needless to say all of this gardening and other yard work is severely limiting my time available to work on the model airplane's which can be found languishing all lonesome in my garage shop area.
That said, I guess that it is time to stop complaining and get some sleep in anticipation of another day on the treadmill.
Y'all have a LOVELY week now...
Regard's Y'all...
