Snow Rollers and Ice Sculptures...

There have been some pretty strange happenings here in DaHo - Snow Rollers and Ice Sculptures...

First, the Snow Rollers... This requires a specific, but high, speed of wind and a specific type of snow to happen. The last time DaHo has had Snow Rollers was over 20 years ago, from what they said on the news. Basically, the wind makes its own snow balls, by rolling the snow along the ground, building up size until they get too heavy to continue rolling. In the picture below, you can see a pretty large one and a few smaller ones in our front yard. I first saw them when looking out the office window and seeing these balls. I first thought some local kids had been playing in the snow. I noticed the little trails leading up to them in the snow, but there were no footprints. Then, later on in the evening, they explained all about it on the news.

While we were out there taking these pictures, I noticed something very unusual on the side on the house. It was an Ice Sculpture. If you will notice in the picture just above the ice, there is a outdoor faucet. It is one of the special freeze-proof ones, where the actual valve mechanism is about a foot inside the wall. Anyway, it must have started leaking and created this large chunk of ice. There is a nice bush in the middle of it, which is probably going to be the worse for the wear as this thing starts melting. It must weigh 50 lbs. I am at a total loss as to how to deal with this. I guess its time to call the contractor for 'professional' guidance...



Over the past couple of days, it has been much warmer than it has been for weeks. A lot of the accumulated ground snow is melting and we now have large 'lakes' of water and ice all over the place. There was so much snow that it will probably take a while for it to all dry up.

We got this new little device - a true 'black box'. Its a Linksys DMA-2100 Media Center Extender. It basically, brings the Windows Vista Media Center desktop to a remote TV, over a wired, or wireless, network. I have wired network access to every room in DaHouse, so it was easy to hook up. I have seen these type of devices in the past couple of years and they really didn't work very well, but this new generation of hardware is very impressive. The main "standard" rating factor on such things is the "Wife Rating Factor" and Pam loves it, as now she can watch all the recorded TV shows from the living room PC in the bedroom, in addition to all the usual TV. Now, we can also listen to all our music, show all the pictures, and all the other Media Center functions that we have been using for years. Also, we can now finally get rid of that cable company DVR, which is a total pain to use. I setup the old Harmony Remote to work with all the bedroom hardware and it is pretty slick - I am impressed. The only 'issue' with it is the brightness of the blue LED power light on the box at night, when all the other light sources are off. Since it is truly a little black box, I just put a piece of black electrical tape over it and all is solved.

My pool has been good and bad - really good and bad... Last week, I played horrible, for me, but this week, I am doing great. Wednesday night I got two table runs and won all of my games, and had to play both Thursday and Friday night in the end of league tournament. I did well in both of those matches.

There is a new player in town. He moved here from Washington state and is very good. He has been winning all the Tuesday night 9-ball tournaments that I use to play in before the leagues. I cannot wait for the leagues to end to start playing those tournaments again and see how it goes. He is a challenge and its always good to play better players, as that is the only way you learn to get better...