Yea, yea, yea

That above, produced this below…

yea, yea, yea…broken record…more snow.

Even Karl has had enough.

I have high hopes for April, mid-April that is. In the meantime, I can’t promise much in the way of variety.

Actually, this last storm wasn’t much of a storm at my house. The snow that has been falling overnight for the last several nights has been gone before noon as temperatures have barely hit freezing at night and are reaching 40 during the day. The local weather shows high wind in the valley, but my house is in a wind shadow once again and it is quiet. News reports list snow from 6 to 12 inches in Missoula (100 miles south) and south. Location, location, location!

More visitors

While working this afternoon 3 or 4 birds flew into the sunroom/office windows in fairly short succession. While not completely unheard of for a bird to hit one of the windows, it doesn’t happen all that often. After the 3rd or 4th hit, I started looking around.

The yard was full of these guys – not a sharp photo as they don’t sit still! Despite the fact that I have a recent edition of Peterson Field Guides: Western Birds, I have not yet identified a bird correctly on this blog. But, going out on a limb (hee!), I think these are finches, specifically White-winged Crossbill Finches. I await correction… They are tiny – about nuthatch size although the more rounded shape of a gold finch, smaller than a junco.

I’m not a bird watcher per se although I love watching the birds of prey and hummingbirds and it has been interesting to see birds on their migration spring and fall.

Bob was interested.

That is a tail in mid-thwap.

Visitors

Karl was inside when a small herd of white-tailed deer visited yesterday afternoon. They eat the mossy stuff on the downed branches in the yard and woods. If Karl is not out to keep them away, they come right to the house and I will look up from working to see…

I think these were last year’s fawns – still small and hanging together.

Mr. Buck getting a start on this year’s antlers. I’d love to find his shed! I know they shed early in the year and I have not yet found any in my walks in the woods…maybe this year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Karl studiously avoided looking at me AND outside at the deer. Once the deer are acknowledged, he must do something about them and I think he sometimes doesn’t feel like it so he comtemplates his toes instead.

A bit of the glow

A bit of alpenglow from last evening.

…And yes, that is a snow squall moving in from stage left. We had snow off and on all day but at my house, it melted between squalls and ended the day with just a dusting before it fell below the freezing mark.

AcerBaby

AcerBaby …. you sing that like Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt, 1953)… Anyway, fair warning, this is a technology post because I R a technology professional and general gadget afficiando.

My story, and I’m sticking to it, is that my backup laptop computer was having fits keeping up with my production laptop – not enough oomph and it has a loud and annoying fan. I didn’t want to get a new production machine. Not only is my current one fine, but Vista v2.0 aka Windows 7 or whatever they decide to call it is due sometime not too far off and I want to make sure to get something configured ok for that. I had been pricing inexpensive laptops for a backup machine and suddenly found out about “netbooks”. They have been around for a bit, but first I knew of them was several weeks ago. They are $500-$700 less than the “inexpensive” backup laptops I was pricing.

Called netbooks as the original idea was a very small laptop or a very large PDA – something for email and internet. But now, the netbooks are full fledged laptops in a very small footprint. After reading, and looking and dithering ad nauseum, I ordered an Acer Aspire One 10 inch with a 2 gb RAM upgrade. It comes with a 160 gb hard drive, Wi-fi, RJ45 (hard wire network connection), a multi-function card reader. No CD/DVD. It runs on an Atom processor which is fast, but low power consumption and low heat. The 6 cell battery reputed to go 8-10 hours. It will drive an external monitor.

Many are tired of hauling around 15 and 17 inch laptops – I would be one. I often take mine when on errands during “office hours” so I can check in.

As of today, the Acer, aka AcerBaby (it is sooooo cute!) is fully loaded with everything I run on my production machine. The screen is bright and clear, albeit small. It jumps on the internet via my USB aircard or available wi-fi. Its footprint is smaller than a sheet of paper at about 10 x 7 x 1. It fits in my messenger bag styled purse. It is much easier to type on than a Blackberry or iPhone AND I can do anything on it that I can on my office machine. I am happy.

Sitting on a sheet of paper above for size reference.

AcerBaby!