v e r y c o l d m o r n i n g

That certainly was a nice low temp this morning....officially 18.86 degrees at 6:41AM. Good thing is the sun came out and turned things around. Spend 2 cool morning hours at the GrubShack sitting by the fire. Came back to the Field Lab at 11 and cleared a path and a spot for my steel delivery. Put off coming back inside for as long as I could because the sun felt so good. Finally faced up the the reality of going back to the computer to figure out the camera/telescope/computer fiasco. Something was going on that was not very plug and play (not that I'm surprised). Reloaded the software after thoroughly reading the manual but still couldn't get the computer to recognize the camera. Thought I had done my best to formally introduce them too. Was one step away from calling in the IT guy from the UK to save the day. Just about ready to cry uncle when a bird decided to come in the house. Got him to back out the door by going outside and scaring him away from window he kept banging his head on.

The bird incident was quickly followed by yet another opportunity to take a break from the snafu - when my once'a'year neighbor came by on his way out to visit his 460 acres of mountain. Nice to see him again and I set up an appointment to come out to his camp so he can show me the easy way to the top of Panther Mountain. He was pleased to see all the progress here since his last trip but it made me very aware of how little has happened in the past month.

Right after they went on their way, I shot back inside determined to accomplish something today. Did some searching online and soon found that the problem was with windows Vista. Seems the computer was not finding the correct driver for the camera. Tried a very simple suggestion for a backwards fix. One try and VOILA! ....camera on - problem solved. Now on to the next step..... to actually photograph something. Wonder what will not work next? 39,66,18,0