Well, I suppose winter is finally here, even though the actual equinox doesn’t occur for a couple of weeks yet.  We had our first snowfall yesterday, accumulating somewhere between 3 and 4 inches, and the temps last night dropped down to a frigid zero degrees.  On the up side, that meant that when I got up to feed the horses this morning, the landscape outside was decked out in a half-inch of frost that stood out on branches, bushes, and high-tensile fenceline in a gorgeous manner.  Wish I’d had my camera – and enough light that it would have it worthwhile.

Ok, I’m done.  Can we have Spring back now?

So, very early this past Friday morning, a major thunderstorm rolls through my area.  A very loud SNAP wakes me just in time to notice the power die throughout the house for about 5 seconds.  Now, since we have horses, whenever one of these thunder-busters rolls through, I like to check the weather report from Weather Underground and see what we’re facing.  Only – no Internet.  Turns out, that snap that woke me up was a lightning strike, either on my house or close enough nearby to fry my DSL modem.  So from there, I end up going back to bed to listen to the storm for the next two hours until I have to get up to run my morning horse feed.

Fortunately, my ISP (TDS) was willing and able to ship me off a new DSL modem immediately – it’s supposed to arrive this afternoon, and I should be back in business in short order.  But then, Friday evening, I go to fire up my 360 to play a little bit offline – and nothin’.  No power going to my console whatsoever, despite the fact that the power brick is lit up light it ought to be.  Now, why didn’t I have my equipment surge protected, you might ask?  Well, I did.  My best theory is that the electric surge actually came down through the phone line, hit the DSL modem, bounced through the network cable, and smacked my 360.  No problem, though – I still have my 360 under a 2-year product replacement plan from Best Buy.  So, I ran it back there on Saturday, one of their Geek Squad guys plugged it in, verified the no-power issues, and told me to grab another.  Piece of cake.  (BTW – Best Buy won’t let you upgrade from a 360 to an elite on a product replacement.  I asked about that.)

I get the 360 home, set it up, turn it on to verify that it works (since I can’t actually set up until my new DSL modem arrives) – and get terrible video.  The image is very faded, very blurry.  I’m thinking maybe I got a bad 360.  So I run it upstairs to test it on my other (and far older) TV.  Thing of it is, neither of my TVs have component inputs – I have to use an RF modulator to hook everything up.  When I tested it on my second TV, the screen was even worse, confirming my fears that the 360 was bad.  I was on the phone with a friend at the time, though, and he suggested bypassing the RF modulator by running the component cable through my VCR.  This I tried – and got the clearest picture I think I’ve ever had with my 360.  Turns out, my RF modulator had already been going bad, and the power spike finished the job.  In the process of testing everything, though, I also noticed that the bottom 3 inches of my TV screen are slightly discolored and distorted.  So the spike also managed to do some slight damage to the tubes in my TV. 

Fortunately, the modem, 360, and RF modulator have all been replaced at no cost to me, and the TV is still functional enough for use.  So, I’m hoping that as of this evening when my modem arrives, I’ll be back in business.  I was bummed that I had to miss out on my regularly scheduled Halo night on Friday, but I’m at least pleased that this cost me nothing but a minor inconvenience to replace everything.

And that’s my interesting weekend.

Where the heck is all the spring weather?  We had a couple of weeks there at the end of March with absolutely gorgeous days and record highs.  I had high hopes that we’d seen the end of winter’s grip.  But now we’re back into February- and March-like weather, and it’s kind of depressing.  I’m starting to think that our planet really has no idea what season it’s supposed to be in.  I just wish that warm weather would get here and stay here.  I’m tired of having to bundle of with my heavy coat and gloves to go outside and work.  April’s already half-gone and we’ve not yet seen a day this month that looks or feels all that nice.  Next week holds some promise of better things, but I’ve gotten where I won’t believe it until it actually happens. 

Maybe May will actually warm spring weather.