Need a new graphics card

(Yeah, I know I haven’t been posting much. Mostly because the sort of stuff that’s bugging me right now doesn’t need to be shared with the entire web.)

I did the Ultimate Boot CD diagnostics that I wrote about in this previous post. And DFT said nothing was wrong with the drive, several memory and CPU testers found nothing wrong with either of them. And of course, I still have that message about the video card. So I’m thinking it’s almost certainly the video card.

I have an old ATI of some form or another in my desk drawer at work (I tried to give it to somebody there but he decided he wanted something with a driver disk and a manual). I think I’ll bung that in and give it a try, see if the system manages to stay up. If it does, I’ll try the old disk as well, to see if the problems with it were just a matter of needing a chkdisk or scandisk after all those power cycles. If that’s the case, I need to buy a decent but cheap AGP video card. My only two criteria are that it must be cheap (I think I mentioned that already) and it must give a decent frame rate in Half Life 2.

I feel better about that decision

Friday I agonized over the weather decision. Today the TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) is calling for fairly strong gusty winds – nothing I haven’t dealt with before, but not conducive to passenger comfort – and the FA (Area Forecast) is mentioning widely scattered thunderstorms. The surface analysis map shows a not too wide or strong line of showers approaching, but a strong occluded front and a very low Low right behind it, so who knows what might be popping up during the day. So yeah, I probably wouldn’t have been happy with myself if I’d flown Vicki up here, knowing we’d be dealing with all that turbulence on the way home.

Yesterday and early this morning there was a lot of wind shear in the forecast – David Megginson comments on it (in context of Watertown’s forecast, which was similar to Rochester’s) over on his blog. It appears that whatever weather mechanism was making strong winds just above the ground yesterday is extending down to the ground today.

I hate weather decision making

Once again, I’ve got something to be at in Canada at a certain time. Once again, Vicki gets off work so late that she can only make it if we fly. And this time, as a twist, if we’re not going to fly we have to leave before the afternoon forecasts come out.

My main source of weather information are the surface forecast charts at AOPA on-line. Up until this morning, today was looking like snow showers all day, and Sunday was looking like a terrible mess of rain and snow. But now it’s showing clear for Sunday. And today’s TAF is currently calling for clouds that are just around freezing level, but high enough that I could be comfortable flying under them VFR. But unfortunately, the non-aviation weather sites (weather.com and accuweather.com) don’t quite agree with the rosiness – they’re saying Sunday will be mostly cloudy, a moderate probability of precipitation, and strong gusty winds.

I hate making decisions when it’s murky and uncertain like this. Many is the time I’ve driven home under clear skies saying to myself “I could have flown this”, but a dozen of those are counter balanced by one experience like my trip home from KBAF last month. So I think we’re going to drive again this time. Dammit.