The snow factor

     As you can see in these photos, we had a little snow. About 8+ inches to be close. It was nice to be able to hear the snow once again. Snow makes a very loud sound when it is coming down wet and heavy. It is a peaceful sound that will blanket the others sounds you normally hear in a community.

      We are lucky so far in that the river has not risen too terribly much. It is supposed to crest at MELDAHL DAM at about 48+ feet by the NOAA RiverWatch forecast. The normal flood stage of that damn is 51 feet so as the neighbors have been saying, "don't worry, the river won't even make the street in front of the house."

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OK, finally free telephone calling

     I am one of the biggest purveyors of free services on the net. I have always been frustrated that there was now easy to call people anywhere for free. (I am starting to sound like a 'Pocket Fishermen' commercial) Well, I stumbled across GrandCentral on the blogger website front end.

     All you have to do it mouse over and tap on the "Click me" button to call anyone Absolutly free! Even on a stinky dialup connection you can do this. All you need is a microphone and speakers.

     No, there is no 'catch' or fees later on. Google is the owner of this process / website and you know they want you to use their sites for free. Why? Because it makes them money, that is why!

     Whether you believe me or not is my problem. I like free stuff as much as the next guy and am always looking for things like this. There are some sites out there where they want you to download their application and install it on your machine. I don't like that because it gives someone I do not know access to my computer.

     The major advantage of this setup it that it is totally web based. Nothing to install or give access to your PC. When I tried it, I first took the time to call a dozen people I know in various states around the country. Hey, I even called my own house several times to test it out first. You could not tell I was on my PC when I called. OK, the only exception was that the call sounded better than a squeaky cell phone that sounds like you calling from the bottom of a well.

     Hey, you don't have to believe me. go to the GrandCentral website and look for yourself. Then, once you see what I am talking about, give me a call. You don't have to setup an account with them to call out, just receive calls (which is easy enough the kids fixed a setting I missed. Well, I have my cell around 99% of the time. That, and you know I barely sleep anyway. Give me a call on the link either on this post or in the left frame of our blog. It gives me a reason to think.

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Webconnect icon now available (again)!!!

I have realized that I didn't post the nice little icon I created for The CSX Webconnect for terminal (web) access to the CSX Mainframe. I really like this little icon. It is pretty close and at least it shows what your supposed to see in an icon. Well, actually it shows a graphical representation of the application your going to use.

If you like the icon, you can either e-mail me with a request for it or download the little jpg and convert it to an icon (if you know how to really do it. I can not upload items besides graphics to Blogger anymore. Thus, the problem.

Just send me an e-mail or instant message and I will get a copy of the icon to you (as well as a set of the instructions on how to use it). Shoot, I can probably do it myself from home if needed. It is not difficult.

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