---

Hello Spring??

Here's a fine how-dee-doo: my bulbs I planted last fall are coming up just fine to the tune of about 3 inches high and along comes a snowstorm and buries them in six inches of snow. Bummer. A lot of it is melted now, and I am confident that the little shoots will prevail against the blue cold nasties, but they sure look pathetic against all that snow.

To top it off, the snow turned into freezing drizzle hardly better than an over-active fog which then coated the whole shebang with ice. My cars look like popsicles, hard outside and crunchy inside.

My eldest cat (19 years old) has decided that he has to test my hearing aids several times a day. He will sneak in behind me while I am concentrating on something at the computer and then let out with a ferocious YOW! This never fails to levitate me from my seat, turn me around in mid-air, and yell "Damn! Put a sock in it!" He then looks at me like I have paid him a compliment and does it again. So we then start YOWing at each other until my wife gets into the act and tells the both of us to knock it off or she'll give us a 'time-out'.

Went out to dinner tonight with friends. Been a long time since we've done that. A very good Italian Ristoraunte. I had a huge plate of spaghetti with garlic & oil, smothered in cheese and mushrooms. Mixed in was a great Italian sausage. I over-ate, but loved every bit of it.

 

Current mood: Full (burp)


We are at the Beta stage!

Hullo. We have entered the Beta testing stage of our little virtual railroad. This means that we have chosen several people with varying computer complexes to run our railroad and let us know what is not up to snuff. This is a very trying process as it means loading, changing, and reloading the railroad many times during a testing session. The load time on my computer is around 2 minutes - for some people longer, some people shorter.

The whole route runs, from end to end, just over 6 hours with a train observing all the speed limit signs and running automatically from start to finish. This includes 6 zig-zags and three loops. The time taken is a lot less than the actual train, but, then we only stop at stations for around 30 seconds. You gotta be agile to get on/off our train.

The scenery is spectacular and all of it created by our members. Just a very few items included are built-in to the game - mostly terrain textures. On our web site (www.darjeelingtrainz.com) we have a load of pictures if anyone is interested. This is the culmination of over two years work and we think it is worth every hour of it. To get to the, just follow the animated red arrow.

 

Current mood: Happy

Is it springtime already?

Even though the groundhog saw his shadow, he didn't do it here in Ohio. It appears that little green thingies have sprung out of the ground and are growing next to my front porch. They are about two inches long now and rising fast. Just outside my computer room window is my rose bush and it has buds on it now. Not very many, but buds nonetheless.

Cold weather appears every once in a while, just tonight it is supposed to go down into the single digits, but I don't think it will. The weather patterns just aren't right. Winds are coming more from the west than the north.

I watched the Superbowl again. Each year I vow to never watch it again because of all the hype and hoopla around it, but I always end up watching. This time I'm kind of glad I did. The severely underdog Giants unseated the New England Patriots nicely from their golden throne. It was inevitible as the Pats played terribly. The just never got their offense going until the waning moments of the fourth quarter; and, then not too well. The Giants defense was awesome as they crunched their way into the Pats offense and sacked the QB many times.

For those watching the progress of our little virtual version of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railroad - take a look at the last post under The DHR. We are almost out of the woods with this one.

Later.