So what does it all mean? NH Primary that is

Well, it certainly puts more air into Romney's balloon. And that's a good thing. So says Captain Obvious.
Just as good, it takes a lot of air out of Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. Both of whom would IMHO be disastrous GOP candidates, easily beaten by Obama.
Too bad Ron Paul is still flying fairly high. The TV pundits all dismiss Paul saying "he could never get the nomination." I hope they are right, but I don't see what makes the pundits so sure. This is a democracy, votes are votes, and Paul has a goodly number of them. He sure has a lot of yard signs out up here.
The opposition started whacking Romney about his days at Bain Capital. Bain is venture capital/private equity and their business was investing in shaky companies hoping to turn a flake into a winner. Sometimes Bain won it's bets and sometimes it lost them. Romney should be saying something like, "At Bain we financed this winner and that winner and this other winner and today they are all in business, employing this many people, people who would be out looking for work if we hadn't financed the company that employs them today. Sure we had some losers that didn't work out, but our winners employ far more people than the losers laid off. "

The NH primary day finally arrives

So I got up and rolled down three mile hill to vote. Town Hall was open for business, polls open. I faced 30 choices for Republican president, most of whom I had never heard of. Chatted with a number of friends and acquaintances about the surprising lack of poll watchers. There was nobody out in front waving signs for any candidate. Possibly the so-so weather (30 degrees and threatening snow) drove them off, or perhaps the great excitement with this primary exists mostly in the minds of the newsies. Or perhaps we voters aren't really very fond of any candidate, certainly not fond enough to stand out in the cold all day.

Fix for Microsoft and/or Windows update.

If Windows or Microsoft update stops working, it may be that wuaueng.dll has been "deactivated".
You can "re activate" same by typing this command into the Run window on the Start menu:

%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\WUAUENG.DLL

It works for me. I found this gem on the Microsoft Web site here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-windows_update/windows-update-error-number0x80070424/95998d7e-9e38-4599-a6cd-fd201447fa92

Broadband dies

Yesterday I powered up trusty desktop and oops, "Network Cable disconnected" said Windows, and sure enough, no Internet. I looked in the rats nest of cables behind the computer, and the network cable was plugged in and the green LED was glowing. Huh? How come Windows says the cable is unplugged when the LED says it is plugged in?
So I wiggled some cables and started up the hardware troubleshooter program and bingo, the cable became connected, Internet returned, and I could read my email. This lasted for about an hour and then that pesky cable popped out and the Internet went away.
After a while the urge to get on line became irresistible. Maybe it's something wrong with trusty disktop? I pulled antique laptop out of its carry case, unpacked, unrolled, and plugged in the power pack and the mouse, and booted antique up. She was unable to find the house wireless router signal. Argh. Must be something wrong with the broadband.
Maybe that flaky router is finally dying? Router will lock up and refuse to connect until it gets "reset" actually I pull his plug out of the wall for the count of ten, then plug him in again. And, believe it or not, I have a spare router, just lying around the house. So I swap out the router, see the new router's LEDS light up, and go back up stairs to my computer farm. No luck. No Internet.
Well maybe Comcast is down? That happens now and then. So the rest of the day goes by, I go to bed, and next morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, I try for Internet. No dice. Windows still thinks the cable is unplugged. Just to be sure I look at the cable again, it's plugged in, but the LED that was glowing green the day before is out. I inspect the router, and notice, the router ain't showing any lights either. I check the wall wart that powers the router and AHAH, it ain't giving out 12 volts like it ought to. It's showing a measly 2.46 volts DC on my new-to-me B&K DMM.
I rummage in my junk box, and wonder of wonders, I have another 12 volt wall wart, and it still works. And the plug matches! So I put the backup wall wart to work, and lo and behold, Internet returns.
Anyhow, that's why no post on Saturday. (Is that a Harry Potter line?)

Polyanna rides again

Yesterday we had Obama and Panetta on TV talking about the defense budget. To listen to them, you would never think that they were planning to cut same. They talked about adequacy of the armed forces, leanness and meanness, retention of veterans, upward and onward. Sounded like everything was going to get better and better.
No talk about how much defense we were giving up. Like how many combat soldiers, tanks, aircraft, and Navy ships the US would have this coming year. For extra credit they could tell us how many we had last year. Nor did they mention the number of dollars involved. Chalk this up partly to the general innumeracy of the chattering classes, and largely to a desire to conceal the size of the armed forces under Obama's new regime.
Citizens who bothered to listen to this drivel learned nothing worth learning.

Science Fiction Project canceled

USAF's Airborne Laser project, a Boeing 747 filled with a multi megawatt chemical laser was supposed to by able to zap enemy ICBM's as they cleared the silo. It was supposed to have enough range to loiter over South Korea and zap North Korean missiles launching out of North Korea.
The project has been going for 16 years, and has consumed $5 billion. Which is a lot of money for a single aircraft. In testing, a few missiles were zapped out of the air, and more were tracked.
Lets hope we obtained $5 billion worth of technological advancements, 'cause we certainly did not obtain a working weapon system for all that spending.

Innumeracy by the newsie's

Was up early and on the road by 5:30 AM this morning. The car radio was full of Iowa caucus stories. At 5:30 we heard that Romney "won" by 8 votes. And that Santorum was number 2 with just about as many votes as Romney. It wasn't until 8:30 that NHPR finally broke down and told us how many votes Ron Paul got. Three hours of listening to reporter's drivel before we get a real number.
Then, at least twice, I hear some pundit say "Well, Iowa is full of evangelical voters but New Hampshire is different." Yeah right. Come up my way and I'll show you a humungous bunch of very conservative voters.