Tesla's always been one of my favorite people in history. It's not too hard to see why.

Today, celebrate his life, forgive his nasty case of OCD, and thank him for having given us all AC current and electricity! Trust me, if you're reading this, you have him to thank in a distant way.

Also, anti-aircraft "death rays!" Sure, he never actually got to build them, but come on! That's archetypal mad science stuff right there. That, and all those lovely resonance devices he played with.

So, Happy Birthday, Niki!

*dances madly!*

After spending half a day tearing my four-year-old laptop apart, getting to the LCD screen, and taking out the little power inverter board, I finally got this thing working! Well... with a little help from the fam, and also after soldering and insulating an extension for the power wires to the backlight.

See, the problem was the power inverter for the monitor backlight, the little device that turns DC current into AC to power the fluorescent light in the back of the laptop. When that thing goes out, the laptop's backlight stops working. It'll turn on for a little while, then go out. The solution to that problem is either to replace the inverter board, to replace the backlight, or to just get a whole new LCD screen. Or, for that matter, to get a new laptop.

The inverter board cost me only about $20, including shipping, and got here ridiculously fast. The only problem with it was, it was the right part according to Dell, the manufacturer, but it wasn't the part that shipped in the laptop itself. The board is stubby and fat, where the original was long and skinny. So, we had to improvise a bit.

It seems to be working just fine, with the extensions in place, and properly grounded. Hopefully it'll stay that way for long enough, but I really need to get a new laptop someday, sooner rather than later. I'm working on it, but my cup doth not runneth over right now. This was well worth the effort.

Sorry I haven't updated this thing all that fast -- though people don't exactly read this thing religiously either. Or at least, I hope not...

I'm working on a lot of code and writing for work, and it's been pretty exhausting. Besides that, there's been a lot of coding for my own server, though it's all in testing for now (I'm very thorough about my code, and I don't want it breaking when people poke it). I should hopefully have something up soon, but it'll be invite-only until further notice. Once it's live, close friends need only ask.

But all this code work wears me out. I feel like I could use a vacation, maybe a hike somewhere... I could definitely do with meeting up with friends again. It's been a while since I could just set down and talk... or even take a walk, head out shopping, all that wonderful stuff. This weekend is (again) looking tight, but I wouldn't mind doing something like that soon.

For now, yeah, I'm alive. I'll be 'round soon enough.

Randall,

you are evil.

And we love you for it.

That is all.

<3

YES!

Guess where we just got legal marriage for all people? That's right!

Let's have three cheers for my home state of Maine!