Back to the grind

I survived Fandemonium. I ran a few games and had a lot of fun. Overall I don't think it was a good this year. Need to get out to GameStorm in Vancouver and see how it is. I think a convention that focuses on gaming as opposed to Fandom would be better. Saw a lot of crazy costumes at the con though.

On the home front things are hopping again. About a month ago the mower that mom gave us 10 years ago died.

It was a great mower. I had taken it to the shop twice over 2 years and it cut the lawn several times. Last month I mowed the front and sides and moved to the back yard. Made 2 swipes with the mower and heard a "pop" and the mower died. I thought I might have hit something but then I looked down and noticed a pool of oil on the deck and something shiny. A closer look revealed this:

Note the silver object in the lower left. That is a piece of the connecting rod. Also not the large hole in the block. I then realized that this mower would never run again. So I started watching Craigslist. Just missed on 2 good looking deals by about 30 minutes. Last week KnitTech and I were driving home from work and I saw a mower in front of the local pawnshop. We figured we could check it out the next day (I forgot that the next day was Friday and that I wouldn't be coming home with her). While at work I received a call from her but couldn't answer since I was on the phone with a customer. When made it to school I gave her a call and was informed that she had stopped by the pawn shop and picked up the mower.

Yep, Mr Anti-environmentalist has gone green with his lawn car. That is an electric mower. I used it for the first time today (that is why its dirty currently) and was surprised at how nice it mowed and how quiet it is. I can actually hear my podcasts while mowing (WOOT). It was a bit hard getting used to dragging an extension cord around behind me but once I got the hang of planning where I was going to be it was really easy. I also discovered that 1 cord is not quite long enough and had to add another. We are considering zero-scaping our front yard to become even more eco-friendly. Although since I'm lazy that may not happen.

The other big project going on here at the house is the server upgrade. Our little server has been trying to lose a fan for awhile. After a lot of trials I managed to get ahold of a good used desktop that supported SATA straight off the motherboard. Now when it gets done I'll have a server with more processing power than my laptop. Also once it is done I have another lesser box that will become a MythDora box and we can leap from the 1980s to the 21st century and retire our VCR.