Dice and No Dice

I wanted to post this picture of the translucent dice our friends gave us for Christmas. Actually it is a second set of dice they gave us - the first set was so tiny they got lost in the wrinkles of my palm... Anyway, these are really cool looking. And they will be joining us on our cruise.

Speaking of, we had a cruise planning party last night at a friend's house. All 33 of us there. We ate a lot and talked a lot and had a couple of computers going researching places to go on our excursions. The general consensus, after consulting Google Earth, books, online reviews, and personal experiences, is to hire our own island transportation to go places we want to see/do instead of using the Royal Caribbean sponsored excursions. All that planning and activity almost distracted me from watching the Patriots win again. Almost...

I got up this morning and did my usual stumble into the computer room only to be greeted by a high pitched whining noise and the computer and monitor powered off. That is one way to jump start your morning. Without caffeine. Turned out my battery backup system malfunctioned. It had saved my skin many, many times after power bumps and outages. Years ago I lost a hard drive during a bad storm when the power kept coming back, going out, coming back, etc. in rapid succession. With the UPS battery backup, the batteries kick in and keeps the power supply 'smooth.' If the power goes out completely, the batteries will keep my computer on for about a half hour, then software will shut down the computer before the batteries die. So I had to go out and buy a new battery backup today. Got that installed and all is good.