Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Beef Breeds We had a good Christmas. Nothing too exciting. We relaxed. I definately ate too much though. This week I will have to starve myself. I am looking at projects this year, the barn/house projects as well as animal projects. I know I can't do everything I want, so we will have to weigh the choices.

Helpful movie quotes Unformatted, you will have to figure out some of the commentary versus the quotations. The Rooster (foggy) woke up dead the other day. He was kinda old. He was eating a lot in his new home and he was put in a hen house with three virgin hens. He seemed to have fallen from his roost in the night. I like that saying "woke up dead." I think it typifies information. There is always a paradox, a catch 22, a chicken-egg situation, when talking about information. How do you describe information without information? A meta language? Perhaps, however a meta language does not seem to have conversational capabilities.

Jim McQueen sent me this vintage footage digitized from an old 8 mm film. He says that his brother Scott is in the clip and that the clip is a > Bathtub Race held in Berkshire in the 1970s.

Tioga County NY It is official. I am now a member of the Tioga County NY planning board. The Berkshire town board took a vote and voted me in as the Town's appointment to the county board. You never know where things are going. This will be different and fun.

I have committed my weekend almost entirely to computers. I bought a new one. I bought a dell 8400 3.2 GHz with a gig a ram and and 160 g HD. I decided as part of this effort I would review my computer situation and get as many of them working as possible and networked. It all takes time, especially for me cause I don't call tech support much and I enjoy figuring stuff out. I have 4 computers working at this writing which is 4 more than at the beginning of the weekend. This exercise has been a great time for me to reflect on the computers in my personal life. I remember the feeling when I bought my SX 64 that I worked on today. I bought it from COMB for about $650. It must have been 1985. I was elated at the power and enjoyed having the gadget tremendously. Then I got my first PC. I pieced together parts starting with a 40 meg drive that was flakey from work. I scrounged other components over time and I bought a case from Jamco and pieced together parts and software fo...

It has been a pretty strange week in a lot of ways. Not in anyway that I can put my finger on specifically, but strange nevertheless. I skidded a few trees out of the woods for firewood Saturday. I got some pretty nice ashwood. My little articulated Holder C500 tractor is awesome for getting in and out of the forest. The articulation really helps get around trees. I got the logs from down in a revine, so the tractor was put to the test. I didn't get stuck, but I did need to disconnect the logs and attach them again from another angle a couple of times. I used the 4-wheel dif lock a few times too. The wood split up nice with an axe and I put the cord wood up for use this winter. We have been burning quite a bit of wood since it hasn't been that cold. I have a ton of coal out in the barn. My main computer has given me fits. I spent about 6 hours on Sunday trying to get it back. I think the CD ROM drive or adapter failed which won't allow me to do a reinstall off the s...