Friday, February 21, 2014

System Issues...

ENIAC circa 1946
...take 4...

Apparently our computer system has morphed into a sentient being that hates my guts, so tonight we took HAL down and changed the disk controller board.  So far, so good, but time will tell...the witching hour has been between 1 am and 2 am, approximately an hour from now.  Can you say pins and needles?


A shout out to an etsy seller...we bought these very cool, vintage wall hanging cats from Fleaosophy and I highly recommend her shop...here are the cats in our living room:






















Visit her shop on etsy...you won't be disappointed.

Later, mcm fans...

Thursday, February 20, 2014

System Issues...

...are going to kill me...

Ok, so we're a little more advanced than that, but we're having major issues with a disk controller...too many 3 am wake up calls...as a matter of fact, as I write this it's 3:55 am and I'm just mopping up the third system reboot this week.  I should probably admit defeat and brew a pot of coffee at midnight while waiting for the clarion call.


An upcycled percolator lamp from BenclifDesigns  He has many very cool light fixtures on his site...you should check it out.

If this new and exciting routine we've settled into doesn't do me in before then, we're going to solve it with a system failover event this weekend...big fun.

In spite of these unpleasant circumstances, I generally like the middle of the night.  In a previous life I used to drive back and forth between Michigan and Maine, a 1,000 mile, 18 hour trip.  I'd always do it in one stretch, and my favorite part of the journey was from about 11 pm until 5 am...traffic was light, and for the most part it was just me and truckers counting the white lines as they zoomed by mile after mile.  On a clear night the stars would fill up my windshield and I'd mentally write that bestseller or solve my relational problems while sipping a large coffee and enjoying a Dunkin' Donuts cruller.


So Mr. Bob Adams of www.RonsonRepair.com has been working his magic on my Ronson lighters again...he serviced both my Junior Bartender and Maltese Falcon lighters:

Junior Barrtender lighter
He did a superb job of fixing the touch tip mechanism, and straightening and painting the base...here it is in action:


Here's the Maltese Falcon he repaired:

...and here's a video of it working:




In what appears to be a losing effort to drag this blog back into a mid century modern aesthetic I claim to adore (and in truth, I really do), here's a favorite item that stretches the definition the other way:

My Weltron 2005: radio, 8 track, record player
This was made around 1969 / 1970, and realistically, that's post-mcm...but it has that cool, atomic, space age vibe that was prevalent in the 50's and 60's, so I'm including it here.  A short video of it playing a CRC 45:




I'm home now, it's almost 5 am...as Yukon Cornelius once opined, let's get some shuteye!