Hurricane Bill?

Huh? I know this is the casual age where we all can call each other by first names or nicknames or "hey dude", but how can I respect a hurricane named "Bill". In fact this one is playing out exactly as expected due to lack of respect, "Hey dude, Bill's making some big surf up Long Island, let's go".

How about, "William's pounding the northeast with ten to twelve foot swells." Now that's the way a storm should work, not like "hey, Bill's coming over, you want to hang?".

On the home front, Ramadan has begun. All you good christians think that means the moslem crowd will be all pius and fasting and stuff. Wrong. What it really means is that after the sun goes down there will be party, party, party. To my mind it can't be much of a party without booze, but the ladies just love it. They all dress up to impress each other, brag about their kids, talk about who's gained weight, or maybe they're pregnant or blah, da blah.

On the trailing edge front that I live on, I've gotten interested in electronics and learned enough to begin to actually make or fix a few things. While trying to make a digital clock, I've realized that my power supply has a problem. I have been able to figure out what might fix it, so I need a couple of parts. Two 2200 uf 50v radial lead electrolytic capacitors and one 100 uf 35v cap too. Of course I'm not sure that will fix everything, but when I opened up the supply and found a melted part, at least it's a good try to replace it.

But, these days, going to the electronics store doesn't mean capacitors. It means big TV's, PC's, games and all kinds of crap. I could have bought a million bucks worth of those things and never learned anything. The local Fry's does have some components so I went to have a look. Sure enough there was the slot on the shelf for what I needed, but empty. I pawed through a couple boxes of stuff waiting to be put back on the racks, but I didn't find anything, I guess there's no incentive for the staff to actually have things available.

I can order online, but it's not the same to me. I want to rush over to the store, smile at the clerk and rush back home and make something work. If I need to go back, then I can trade a joke and get the next part. That makes me happy, not filling in web forms.