Do we owe the favor of this particular post.
For the second time in the last couple months I’ve had to take apart Trouble apart to dust out the insides because the power supply fan was getting noisy. I’ve got to get a dust filter going for Trouble’s fans, this is crazy! Every time I disassemble and then put Trouble pack together, I always forget to reconnect power to something, and then rebundle all the cables. Last time it was a CD drive and the graphics card I forgot. The drive I figured out immediately, but the card puzzled me for awhile: the only manifestation of problems would be when I played a game that used it, which would cause the system to shut down automatically as the card tried to pull too much power through the motherboard PCI connection. Not cool. This time, I forgot the second hard drive, causing the thing to fail on me randomly after a bit of usage. So I took it all apart looking for problems, unplugged everything and swapped power supplies to fix it, and then forgot to plug in BOTH hard drives! Didn’t even get the courtesy of the system telling me it had a kernel panic, just a flat demand for a boot CD. So, this weekend I put some kind of dust control solution on.
Also, in speculation I’ve for the most part gotten gold down, and have now started simulated trades on S&P 500 futures contracts, which seem to adhere to the same sorts of rules as gold. Since those futures don’t require quite as much margin as crude oil, I might diversify into those first before oil. Besides, there’s something to be said for predicting the S&P 500, eh? 
Right now, I am happy but pissed. Happy that I predicted the gold market upswing starting around the 14th of Feb., pissed because I planned to get in on Monday, Feb. 18, and didn’t realize that was Presidents Day which the CBOT observes. I haven’t been so annoyed at myself since that time at BTSR when I lost a cache of Jones Soda I’d hidden in the creek bed to a flash flood. To remedy that, I just spent the last hour finding and then entering onto my master calendar all observed holidays for the CBOT. This won’t catch me blindsided again. The next major date is March 7-8, and at this point I might just end up sitting it out till then. I’ve missed both major retracements at this point, and that date is only a couple weeks away now. Besides, the gold price is just hovering at around 950 these past couple days. I don’t rightly know what it’s going to do. Should be dumping it now with near 45 points of profit if I’d gotten in on Monday as I had planned, drat it…
I went backpacking with Dad and the local Scout Troop last weekend. Twas’ fun, but it created maintenance issues and reminded me of other longer term maintenance issues I have with other gear, so I’ll spend the weekend resolving those issues. Like my main hat: haven’t washed it in months, but I haven’t noticed because I have many hats. And the sleeping bag, although kept mostly clean through preventative measures, should really be washed on principle alone simply because it hasn’t been yet. The Stormies really should get another oiling too…
The only other thing of note is BTSR… Still uncertain, but I might see enough old time staffers in the High Adventure area to justify my going back. Rumor surrounding the kitchen is solidifying into fact though: the veteran kitchen staff don’t seem to have applied to come back, meaning the whole kitchen might be raw recruits, and the camp director has sent us a friendly email encouraging staff apps. from veterans which stated that he’s already filled base camp to capacity for the year, and High Adventure is continuing to fill. Again, the trade off here is getting to tell the story and have the memories vs. putting up with the management doing ungood things like packing the place… If the kitchen is new and strained with mouths to feed, some kind of alternate food arrangement would be required, and the jury’s out on that for now. People tell me they’ve walked into camp with their apps. in hand on occasion, and I might put off the decision till then, although I’d hope to know more about what’s happening in my life before then.
Anyway, time to knock off tonight. Cheers!