December twenty-first, the winter solstice, the time of the shortest day and the deepest snowdrifts.

It's just as well that I wasn't planning to spend a lot of time out on the deck today. Even assuming I could *find* the deck. And that's assuming I could get to it somehow.

The city is tied up with a blizzard; the highways and the airport were shut down yesterday and aren't likely to be open again until sometime Friday. The finches don't seem to be having as much trouble getting around as the people in this town, so I think they all decided to come here for their solstice celebration. Good thing I just stocked up on birdseed the day before the snow hit. So it's not like I need to go anywhere myself. I've got plenty of food, heat, and...um...all the finches I could ever need.

it's a finch-tastic day!

And, of course, there's a few feet of snow in the middle of the treehouse, too. My own private collection of snowdrifts in case I don't feel like sharing.

Max the gargoyle seems to be suffering the worst of it. Even if he does have wings, too, he hasn't managed to shake the snow off like the birds have and the snow is getting precariously close to the top of the rock he's perched on.

He's never been a messy eater before, but he's got a fine snowbib on, just in case. Maybe that's just his way of saying that he wants lobster for dinner this time. I'll go check the fishtank, but I think my lobster supply is pretty low. Maybe he'll be okay with pizza again.

I'll let you know how dinner with Max goes. I suppose I should also go clear off the driveway, just so I'll be ready when the roads eventually do get plowed.

There's a few feet of snow out there and, as far as I've been able to tell, no particularly thin areas, but I've got my secret weapon ready to go: a trash can. I always see stores selling "snow shovels" which seem to be the most useless and flimsily-made devices for snow removal ever developed. Well, except for those little plastic sandwich picks that look like miniature swords and come in a variety of primary colors (or, I bet even silver and gold, though I don't actually have any of those in my own kitchen). Those are worse for clearing driveways than even the bizarre bent-handle "back friendly" snow shovels, though not by much.

A trash can, on the other hand--especially one of the large squarish ones--is actually capable of carrying a decent quantity of snow. The only disadvantage is that it's not so good for throwing (unless you're throwing the trashcan along *with* the snow), so you have to resort to dumping its contents off to the side or wherever it won't interfere with your future plans. Not that this puts the noble trashcan at a competitive disadvantage with respect to the inaptly-named "snow shovel" because those are equally unsuited for flinging. Especially the "back friendly" flavor. For flinging, I have an old coal scoop--like a regular square-nosed shovel, but a fair bit larger.

Not that you really needed (or wanted) to hear about my snow-moving habits or radical anti-snow-shovel views, but like most household chores, talking about doing them is a fair sight easier than actually buckling down and doing them, especially with the way the wind's been blowing today.

But that's about all there is to say about that. 'Spose I'll get started with the snow.

...um...right after I go check for lobster again. There could be some there now. It could happen.

(or should that be "Fish and Chips"? - you decide)

There's a wide variety of servers running out here at the treehouse, some of which have been running continuously, 24/7 for the better part of ten years. You can chalk that up to laziness or, if you're feeling more generous, to the often-repeated (but surprisingly rarely observed in computer science) maxim, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But when it is broke, then I suppose I do have to fix it after all, and one of those aforementioned running-continuously-for-the-better-part-of-a-decade servers did a minor hiccup the other day. Fortunately, it was only minor, thanks to the miracle of RAID-5, which is what pretty much every server runs out here, the only exception being the DNS machines, and there are enough of those to provide their own redundancy. So, when a drive goes bad, as drives are wont to do, the server keeps on running as usual. Eventually you swap the errant drive with a better behaved replacement, and the server regenerates the data that should be on it from the other drives in the system.

Somethings amiss (or a-missing) with my hard drive

a closer look

Drive failures aren't *that* unusual, but this one was a little more interesting. The observant reader (at least the observant reader who is excessively familiar with moderately obsolete hard drives) will notice the problem right off: there's a chip actually missing from the PC board on the hard drive to the right. That's pretty much always a bad sign. ...which leads us to the next mystery: "so what happened to the missing chip?"

It hadn't gotten far--it had just launched itself forth into a small trip through cyber-space that ended on top of another hard drive in the array. Which wouldn't by itself be all that interesting, except for the trails of smoke and burn marks around it.

Ah! Here it is!

Ouch! That'll leave a mark!

What I thought was remarkable--and the reason I felt inspired to write this entry you're reading (in the unlikely event that you still are)--is that this little chip must have flown through space and still been fuming and fulminating after it landed to leave an outline like this. That's a lot of pent-up energy for a little IC to be releasing after running quietly for years and years. Either that or after the chip was thrown to its death, a team of miniaturized computer forensics gnomes drew this crude outline around its plastic-and-silicon body with a piece of charcoal.

Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Computer Science Investigations, when we'll be having a volunteer test laptop batteries by letting them charge while they're in his lap.

here's a graphic closeup of the dead body for those of you who are into these things

Sorry if these pictures offend the more sensitive viewers out there.