Oh, and the new Netgear eight-port switch failed in the same way the earlier switch did, something I have to get on the phone and straighten out. A power surge? Do these switches fail this often? Life out here on the electronic frontier.

Still, I did skip out on that second episode of Inspector Lewis last night and got to bed at a decent hour, although it took me a while to settle in, skimming through the new Rolling Stone and this week's New Yorker before turning out the light. Up this morning with the alarm feeling pretty good. Cross our fingers.

The sun is out, we'll set out soon to take pictures.

Later. A short walk over to the lake with a long lens on the camera (we seem to have set a pattern here) to take but one or two pictures as, although it was sunny, there was also a cold breeze that demanded a sweater under the light jacket. Still, the first walk of the day, we'll get out again before the morning is over.

Later still. It's the Chinese Lunar New Year today and the Friday a farmers market is up and running on 9th Street between Broadway and Washington, neither which was on my mind as I got off the downtown bus at the City Center. Empty headed, you might say, but not unusual.

Anyway, a bit chilly in just a light jacket other than in the direct sun, making the same mistake I'd made earlier, so a walk through the building shaded City Center and then on to 9th Street where I came upon the market, walked through the market (no pictures) and on to the Asian Cultural Center coming upon red firecracker paper littering the sidewalk. Oh, right. Today. Lunar New Year. Photographs?

An ice cream cone inside the Cultural Center (the owner nods to me now when I enter), fireworks suddenly exploding just outside the shop by the fountain as I was settling the tab. An opportunity missed. OK. Followed the perpetrator out to his car where he'd parked it on the street and watched along with a small crowd of people as he prepared for his next set of detonations.

This short trip downtown had by this time extended itself over a couple of hours, an enjoyable couple of hours (he asked me to place the cardboard box out in the middle of the street for him where he then set off the fireworks), but then returned finally running to catch a bus home to the apartment. Some of the pictures weren't framed as well as I wanted, the result of not quite yet getting down this new focusing process, but we'll get it under control. Takes time to internalize the new sequence, not unlike practicing to learn a new chord change on the guitar.

Evening. I did talk earlier to Netgear support and they suggested I strip the switch down to one connection to see if that would work and, if it did, add additional devices (hard drive, wireless unit, Roku box) one at a time to see if the problem was with a connected device or if the various connections together were drawing too much power.

And so I did and it worked with just the wireless unit attached and worked again after adding one of the external hard drives, so that's something I'll play with more tomorrow. Interesting. Haven't run into anything like this before. Always good to find something new to fiddle with.

I watched an episode of New Tricks about an bunch of old fart British cold case detectives at seven although I'm not sure I want to admit it. At least I got in some guitar.

There's a Sherlock Holmes episode at ten, I'm assuming it's one of the new Benedict Cumberbatch episodes, although it doesn't say in the schedule. Maybe I'll stay up, maybe I won't. I want to get some sleep tonight as, if I don't, I'll probably pay a price.