The Little Things of Travel

So, I got my ipad for the California trip. One of the hardest thing about adding a new electronic device is suddenly having to figure out all those passwords you have Google remember for you. I decided setting up the ipad was a very good reason to change passwords I've used for years. Even if they are alpha-numeric, someone could, given enough time, crack them, so I needed to update. I'm not that paranoid, mind you, but we'll use the word "prudent". Yes, that's a good word.

The whole point of the ipad was to be able to update my World of Warcraft guild's web site and Facebook pages with photos and information from BlizzCon, the whole reason for going west in the first place. Some sites were easy to update to a new password. It was clear where I had to go and what I had to do. Other sites...

I have a Yahoo account. After I'd found my way onto the Internet with AOL, I quickly moved to ATT/Yahoo when upgrading my phone and Internet. It works adequate and has become my web address of choice for online shopping. But it seemed to need an act of some god and probably a sacrifice of a large number of small animals to get the password changed.

The other issue is that I access personal accounts during lunch at work, so there is my work computer which has access to all my passwords. Add a cell phone and it can be a headache and a half to change passwords, even when it's a good idea. No wonder people don't want to.

Once that was done, and I was only able to get the guild's Twitter account up and running (yes, my WoW guild has quite the social media presence) once I was in California, but everything worked on the ipad exactly as I wanted it to. (Passwords don't work if you write them down wrong, just an fyi there.) I took a large card and wrote all my important passwords on it. I keep it, usually, with the ipad. The card doesn't have my name on it so, even if someone were to steal the ipad, actually getting into the thing (which is password protected) and then finding one's way around, would be more hassle than it's worth. When not in use, I keep the ipad turned off and the card's by my computer. I recently cleaned all the cookies off my main system and had to type in all the passwords for frequently used sites. I have a planner, with all my passwords for places I've gone written in it, but it's a hodge podge of web sites and is on the list of things to clean up in an effort to find my Dunkin' Donuts password when I need to recharge my card; you know, important stuff.

Anyway, I got a hard back for the ipad, to protect it, but what I really needed was a case. If I just stick it in my carry-on, it could get scratched. Looking about, I found the following case from Incase.

I don't see this version on their web site anymore, unfortunately. It came in a variety of colors and I toyed between a royal blue and this color.

My ipad fits snugly inside. There's a layer of foam that goes over the screen and a small silica packet at the bottom of the case to absorb any moisture which might get in. The plastic zipper is crisp and I don't have a problem zipping or unzipping the case. It works wonderfully well and I keep the ipad in it when I'm not using it.

Another item I purchased was this purse, well, clutch, by definition.

The issue for me was I didn't want to be hauling my purse around BlizzCon. The purse is two and a half times the size of this and while it could stow pretty much anything I might want to carry, did I really WANT all that stuff with me? The reality was I wanted something about hand size which wouldn't get in the way. I got it from Target and they still have a few in the price I paid.

I had a difficult time deciding on color. Black goes with everything and the purple was kind of cool, but blue won in the end.

There are so many pockets in this thing. I can sort business into one pocket; receipts and bills and credit cards into another, and change into a third. In the main part of the clutch, there are two sections, which are big enough for my camera and my cell phone. I had to clean out the purse and decide what, exactly, needed to go with me; what was essential. The wrist strap is sturdy and the whole thing is just a bit over the size of my hand. All the time at BlizzCon and Disneyland, I could carry my life with me and know it was safe. It fits in the glove box or center well of the Jeep or under the seat, safely stowed from anyone looking inside.

My original purpose was to use this just for the vacation but I like it so much, it's my purse now. It fits neatly in the top drawer of my desk, now that the junk which was in there has been removed. I've whittled my carrying to just what I need and I'm finding I'm really okay with this.

Lastly, Liz mentioned in an email, we should do what we can to protect ourselves from the onslaught of germs. At the time, I hadn't gotten my flu shot; there hadn't been time to schedule it. Her comment, "If you haven't gotten a flu shot, I recommend it. 25,000 people in reasonably close quarters to each other can pass the crud very fast." Oh that's right. I'll be around people; me, with the compromised immune system. I don't think I've ever picked up the phone faster to call my doctor.

Liz also recommended hand sanitizer. I had some in the Jeep, but, over time, it seems to have dwindled to just a bit in the bottom of the container. Open the top left desk drawer and look what I have.

I happened to have a "few". Took the whole mess with me. These bottles were the perfect size to tuck into my new clutch. I didn't wind up using them as much as I probably could have, but I didn't shake hands with people. I stood next to them. I didn't meet anyone, other than costumed characters, at Disneyland, and I assume Chip and Dale have had their shots.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

SQUEEE!!!

Sometimes the stars align perfectly.

Back in August, I had a meltdown when, as I was headed to Rock Island, the Jeep malfunctioned. I know I need a newer car. I have a new car fund, but I also use it for those inevitable repairs to refresh the duct tape and baling twine which holds the Jeep together. Given what the beast was doing, or not doing (staying running) as the case may be, I had real feelings that Jeep repairs would take all of that meager account. I completely fell apart thinking about this, forgetting my cardinal rule to find gratitude in every day and slivers of happiness in every situation.

After the situation was diagnosed to not be as horrific as I had convinced myself it would be, I remembered that, in years past, even the $225 it took to fix the Jeep would have left me destitute. I had that. AND I would still have a bit left in the new car fund. There are things which need to be done but I am nowhere nearly as bad as I was 3 years ago.

So, it was back to saving for things for my vacation in November. I've been on the road again and those trips and the long days associated with them, have helped pad my BlizzCon and car fund. I've been able to cross off things that need to be purchased. BlizzCon ticket. Check. Air fare. Check. Ground transportation to hotel. Check. Material for shirts. Check. I still need to pay for Disneyland tickets and my part of the hotel room. I know how much I need to reserve for those items. That will leave money for food and souvenirs. It's 6 weeks away. I'm starting to get a bit nervous. I've never done anything like this before so there are nerves. I even ordered compression socks for the plane ride which will make me feel more comfortable and I won't show up in LA or back in Chicago with swollen ankles and feet.

The other thing I wanted to get, but it was not a need, was an ipad. In my head, if I had an ipad, I could upload photos from my camera to the ipad and then they could go into all the things I maintain; my Facebook page, my guild's web site and this blog. After a lot of discussion, a friend suggested an eyefi card for my camera. This is an SD card with wifi built in. You use wifi technology to upload your photos to cloud-based storage and then have access to them with other devices. It all sounds so high-tech and, if there's one thing I'm not, it's high-tech. The other option was an adapter for the ipad. With any wifi network, I can upload photos from anywhere to my storage. In buying an eyefi card, the price came with a year of free storage. That's the route I've taken.

But what about the ipad? It's not a priority. I could do without it. Yet, road trips for work provided money not expected. I could afford an ipad. Savings for me. Savings for the car and save for BlizzCon. Viola. A box came to work today.

I did a lot of research. I wound up buying a refurbished older model from a company called iTParts. Their prices were very reasonable and there was no shipping. Other places I looked wanted to charge me shipping and their return policies on refurbished equipment were the same as this company. For what I want to do, low price was the determining factor.

I had it shipped to the office because the last thing I want is a Priority Mail box containing an ipad stuck between my front and screen doors. It's a pretty nondescript box but look at the goodness contained therein. The sale came with a charger and ear buds.

The charger I expected. I don't know that I'll use the ipad to listen to music. I have so much music on CDs that hasn't been uploaded to my Mac and then I'd have to port it to the ipad. Not an impossibility for sure, but a huge time sink. Right now, I don't think I have that kind of time without sacrificing other things which are important to me. I could, if I desire, get Pandora or Spotify music streaming services on the ipad, since this is akin to an oversized cell phone. I just don't listen to music like that. They tend not to have what I like.

It needs a charge before it can be used, so I plugged it in.

Up pops the familiar Apple logo. And then came the greetings.

Bonjour to you.

What's happened here is that I have really entered the information age, in a huge way, no less. The SD card isn't here yet for me to try that out and get it synced with my computer and my ipad and get them synced with this cloud service. I'm always afraid I will explode something when I start messing around with electronic devices. My way more tech savvy friends have said I'll do fine and the world won't explode because I hit the red button instead of the blue button. (Extra points if you know THAT reference.)

So, here we are. I need to get a case. I'll get this one because there isn't a good World of Warcraft case available right now. In my mind's eye, I see a large selection of cases in various fabrics in a pile in my house. There are ipad case patterns and lord knows I have the fabric.

I'm really excited to be able to sit in the recliner in the living room, feet up, and updating my blog while I have a lap cat. That is the best part of this.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Palm-Sized Power

I've lived long enough to watch computers go from something only a research institution or college had to something we carry around in our pockets. We've reached the age where everyone has some computer with them and it's uncommon to go into a restaurant, for instance, and see a group of people talking where not one is on their cell phone. Connectivity is demanded. Computer capability is taken for granted. But I still marvel at what is out there.

I get asked what I want for Christmas and long after the list has gone out, there are "oh crap, I should have added this" moments. In this case, I realized I could actually use a thumb drive, an inexpensive external storage device that I would use to store photos.

I take so many screenshots from my World of Warcraft's guild adventures. At any given time, there are a couple dozen raw photos which need to be cropped. I dedicate an afternoon to uploading the cropped photos to our guild web site and find that I haven't made much of a dent in them. I admit that I screenshot everything, but we have a record of the years this guild has been in existence and all the crazy things we've done. That leads to thousands of photos.

And this doesn't count the personal photos. I document so much. There are thousands of photos in iPhoto on my computer. I've always taken photos but digital cameras make taking them more easy and cheap. After the fiasco in December 2012, when my hard drive died and I lost thousands of photos of the guild and my life, I've been even more aware of the need to have my photos backed up somewhere. In my mind's eye, a thumb drive would have ample storage for a minimal amount of money, but I didn't think to ask for one. Enter the after Christmas sales.

Years ago, I bought a small external hard drive to back things up. At the time, I think I paid around $100 for it. It was the size of what is called a "trade paperback" book. Those are the larger paperback books. Gradually, technology left that kind of storage behind and I never got around to replacing it with anything as I didn't need more storage than what was on my computer. I still have it and would like to try to access it as it probably has old photos on it I'd like to keep. At the office, we have an external hard drive for all our photos. It's a bit bigger than a deck of cards.

Because I bought my Blu Ray player and my TV from Best Buy, I had "Best Buy bucks" to use up. I figured I'd just get a thumb drive and that would be it, but my son-in-law pointed out the best bang for my real and imaginary bucks would be an external storage device. After plowing through pages of offerings and reading reviews on Apple sites, I chose this one.

This is a terrabyte of storage and was less than half what I paid for my first external hard drive. This size was unthinkable when I bought the first one. I wasn't quite prepared for the small size.

It's easily the same size as my cell phone. I opened up the instructions which were "Plug the cord into the drive and the other end into your computer". A couple years ago, I bought a hub, which has 4 slots. I wound up not needing it until now. My mouse and my camera's downloading cord are plugging into the 2 UBS slots in the Mac. I needed the hub to plug in the hard drive. The second I did that, the thing whirred to life. Instantly, up popped "Time Machine", Apple's automated software that backs up your entire computer, including the operating system. It provides a date and time stamp on every back up so, if you created something at noon on Friday, you can go back to that date and time and find the back up. Instant. I didn't even have to think about how to do it. My computer recognized the hard drive and started the system back up instantly. It takes no time at all to back up, now that the initial one has been done. Magic, I tell you.

I moved the folder containing processed guild photos to the external drive and then deleted it from my computer. In doing a system clean with the deletion, I regained 1.3 gigabytes of room. I haven't dented the storage capacity of the external hard drive.

When I talk to the 20 to 30-somethings in my guild about how marvelous this is, they give me a verbal pat on the head and send me on my way. I suppose, for them, the generation who has grown up with this sort of thing, my wonder is hilarious.

I think back to when our first home computer showed up. It wasn't very big and didn't have the processing speed of my cell phone, yet we were amazed that we could do all sorts of things with it. A lot is made about how we went to the moon with less computing power than people have in their cars. I held a terrabyte's worth of data storage in the palm of my hand and I wonder what I will be storing my photos on in 20 years. And also, what's the exponential term we'll be using for that kind of storage, quintillion-byte?

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Autumn Smells

It's that time of year when the smells inside the house are as luscious as the smells outside the house. I made applesauce this weekend. It's hard to look at all the heaping displays of apples in the grocery and not think sauce and pie so I had to give in.

I bought 6 large Cortland Apples, Cortlands don't need a lot of additions once cooked, plus they were on sale. Step one is to peel and core the apples. I don't know about you, but I tend to eat some of the peel as I work. There's goodness in that and it seems like a waste to add to the compost pile. But, I can't eat the peel from 6 apples so quite a bit went to compost. The squirrels will love it.

As I'm peeling, I'm dicing these into large chunks. Some recipes tell you to splash lemon juice onto the apple pieces to keep them from browning. It's usually a negligible amount, but I don't. I find that the ones at the bottom don't brown if you're working fairly steadily and covering them with a new layer. Once all the apples were chopped, I added a half cup of water to the dutch oven, put the heat on low, and covered it.

I set the timer for 20 minutes and came back to check on the apples. Cortlands are a softer apple so they cook down fairly quickly. I also like my homemade applesauce on the chunky side so this is about done, after 20 minutes. I set the timer for another 20 minutes. Oh the smell!

Done. I smashed up the bigger pieces that hadn't fallen apart but this is what the sauce looked like at 40 minutes. A taste and I added about a half teaspoon of plain white sugar. It was just enough to bring out the flavor of the apples. I really debated on adding cinnamon to these but decided they were perfect as is. I should go get more apples and make cinnamon flavor or get some red hots and make pink sauce.

The batch was divided into thirds and put in freezer bags. I have some other fruit to eat so I will save these for November. It took about an hour and a half to go from apple to sauce and my house smelled wonderful. Other kinds of apples will give you different flavors of sauce, some more tart than others and will require a longer cooking time. I'm not a fan of Granny Smith apples, although they are great for pies which need to be transported as they are a very firm apple. I love Gala and Fuji, and they will make wonderful sauce that doesn't need much additions. I had a recipe for apple pear sauce that I made many, many years ago, but I couldn't find it. So, the pears I bought I'll just eat without saucing. Gee, life is tough. Hmmm...here's a recipe for pears with chocolate sauce.

Beverage:  Dunkin Donuts tea

Deb

It Merits a Second Try

Not sure where I was cruising on the Internet highway when I stumbled upon a recipe for breakfast pizzas created by The Minimalist Baker. (Amazing food in this blog. You'll spend hours there. Trust me.) These are Apple Streuel Breakfast Pizzas and the recipe is dairy free. I wasn't going to buy the vegan butter and milk called for in the recipe so I just substituted regular butter and the 2% milk I have on hand. While the recipe is good, it's time intensive and I would make some changes to it for my tastes. Let's dive in.

First you need to peel, core and dice two apples. Then, you put the apples, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake to cook the apples.

What a wonderful fragrance this provides. Plus, you are only using the amount of butter called for in the recipe, not "well, I don't know if that's enough" that might happen if you sauteed the apples in a skillet.

Next comes the pizza dough. I used the smallest size of Pillsbury I could find and I chose whole wheat instead of white.

When I unrolled the dough, I had this rather large rectangle on my hands. The recipe calls for rolling it thin which would have increased the size. I merely patted it into a greased jelly roll pan. Their pizza dough recipe must make a smaller amount than the store bought. I'm on the fence about making the dough, but it's something I probably should try.

Once in the pan, you put your apple mixture on the dough. Here's where I'm going to have to make changes if I want to use store bought dough.

Nowhere nearly enough apples. This gets covered with a sugar, flour and butter streusel mixture.

Covered was a bit of a misnomer. It was more like smothered, given the amount of streusel mixture I made. I'm inclined to think that even with their dough recipe, there are still too few apples for the dough and streusel mixture. I want ingredients in my pizza, which is why I usually get double cheese. For me, I think doubling the apples will yield better coverage of the dough and less piles of streusel.

Another thing I will add the next time I make this, chopped walnuts. To me, streusel is not streusel unless it has nuts in it. But if you're allergic to nuts or serving this to people who are allergic to nuts, this is a great recipe.

Into the oven it goes for 12-15 minutes. I think making it on this dark cookie sheet overcooked the pizza a bit as the oven has been on for the last 30 minutes while I finished preparing the pizza for baking. It didn't need to heat up.

The end result. It tastes great and reheats very nicely. The recipe calls for a powdered sugar glaze to be drizzled over the pizza. I could have sworn I had powdered sugar, but, when I needed it, I couldn't find it. I'm not sure the pizza needs that, to be honest.

I think, with these tweaks, this will be something I can make when I have company. The labor intensive phase is peeling, coring and dicing the apples. The topping could be made ahead and kept in the fridge for assembly the next day. I loved the smell in the kitchen as this was baking. I cut it into 8 pieces. I'm not sure how it would freeze. What? Don't look at me like that. It's a great snack for evenings.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

This Vexes Me #19

"Don't get fancy. Have you cooked an apple pie? You don't know what you did wrong? Do this:  take two or three apples. Put them on a table. Study them."  --Paul Prudhomme, chef

I love apples. My favorite is Gala, but Fuji, shown here, and a Golden Delicious are good too. I haven't made a pie in years. I think about making homemade applesauce in the fall. With a good mix of apples, all you need is a dollop of cinnamon and no sugar. Drop it in a freezer container and then, come February, when all is frozen and there is the prospect of 10 inches of snow over the weekend, you can have warm applesauce instead of fake maple syrup on your pancakes.

So why does this vex me? See that little tag? Oh lordy do I hate those. When I buy fruit, I just want to rip all the tags off, march over to the guy in the produce department and slap all of them on him. They seem to meld with the skin of pears, particularly if the pears are getting ripe. I tend to buy pears under ripe so they will not rot in the fruit drawer before I eat them. Apple stickers are sort of easy to remove, but I can't tell you how many times I have pulled an apple out of the bin and begun slicing it only to see a sliver of a sticker on the peel of one of the slices. It vexes me to no end to have to then try to pry the small sliver off the piece and find the rest of it.

I realize that there isn't a better way to mark things like apples. You don't put them in plastic clamshell boxes like you do with berries and people want to pick their own apples off the pile. I can spend a good 10 minutes looking at the mountain of fruit and making my choices on which ones look best. And you can't expect your cashiers to be able to identify the 8 different varieties of apples you have, particularly when Gala and Fuji can look very similar but be much different in price.

Still it vexes me. I sliced this apple for my lunch today. I happened also to find the caramel apple dipping sauce on a recent trip. Oh my. While I'll happily sit down and eat two apples, sliced, add a dash of caramel to the slices and it's heaven...(cue the music) I'm in heaven/and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak/and I seem to find the happiness I seek/when it's caramel apples that I have to eat.

My apologies to Irving Berlin.

Beverage:  Rooibos tea

Deb

Absent

August has been very sparse in the posting department. I admit it. I've been a bit busy.

After a couple of years, I took a real vacation this month. I got back on Thursday.

My Jeep and I went to Virginia to see the daughter and the grand kitty. My time from the first of August through the 14th was spent, mainly, making sure I was prepared to go. Sometimes, it seems as if the preparations take longer than the actual vacation. Add to that events and a heavy work schedule and I was pretty convinced August 15th would dawn and I'd need to do a load of wash and dishes and sweep and clean litter boxes before I even set foot out of the house.

That wasn't the case, but blogging, well, sorry. That wasn't even on the beginning August preparation list. I'm lucky I got a dozen posts done before I left.

I'm back now. Yes, that's the mileage on the Jeep on Friday morning. When I left Virginia on the 22nd, I had driven 896.4 miles. That included the travel while visiting Carole; the three times I got lost and the two times I didn't. In all, I put over 1700 miles on the Jeep.

To the right, on my Mac's desktop, are folders of photos, 10 of them, to be precise. There are a lot of blog posts to come. I need to back up a bit and mention an event that happened before I left and then we'll get into the over 400 photos I took of my trip. No, not all of them will be posted here. While I love looking at vacation photos, I'm very aware that not everyone shares my like. "It's the mountains...again."

So, here we go with observations and events and excitement.

Beverage:  Yorkshire Gold tea

Deb

Quite the Difference

I promised a post about the difference between the new and the old computer. I've got things yet to learn but I'm fairly confident about my abilities to get around within the new software. I can't thank my guild mate, Chris Reid, enough for putting up with my "Huh?" I owe him cookies, at the very least.

So here is a screenshot of World of Warcraft as taken on the old computer.

It really doesn't look that bad. There are ships and mountains and the vague outline of a settlement in the distance. I've been places where this kind of haze and distance is normal.

Now, here I am at the same location on the new computer.

I almost don't know where to begin to compare. The distance alone is striking. Look at the grass. There are tall groups of grass and small ground flowers. There are more than just a couple huts from the town across the bay and the mountains have more form. Plus, there are more of them. You can see the shading of the sails on the horde ships and the sky is actually blue, not a generic orange.

Shadows. Look at the shadows. On the old computer, I had to turn shadow rendering off. The video card wasn't capable of playing the game and rendering shadows. I will be somewhere and see the shadows of birds flying over and think something's out to get me. You can't see it in these shots but water is incredibly different here. I can see to the bottom of some places I never saw before and, when I swim to the bottom and look up, I can see someone in the air above the lake. I saw raindrops hitting the ocean for the first time on Wednesday night. I just stood and watched a fake rain shower in a fake world.

The guild roams about the world and I'm seeing that world with all its bells and whistles and I am, to use a slightly overused cliche, blown away. There are places I haven't been yet because I haven't had time, which are as familiar to me as old slippers. I am trying to find a time to go there, to look, to see.

I took some criticism from a couple of well meaning friends about the purchase of a new computer when I do still have some financial things hanging in the winds. I am, thanks to learning to do without, better now than I have been in many years. I play WOW at night. It's my pastime. Some people watch TV. I play a computer game. My 7 year old computer was dying. I still have it. Chris suggested I hang onto it until it actually completely dies because there will come a time when I'll want another screen going while I'm in the game. I can see that. Because this is what I do, why not avail myself of good technology? Why not make what I do more enjoyable? I can and it's better to do it now than wait until the old screen goes dark and then have to scramble up the cash for something not as good. I understand their concern but I'm good now. I'll be good for a long time.

So, this shows you some of what I see with the new computer. I've seen monsters in the distance. I ran out of a building into a snowstorm. I've run out of this building countless times but never saw the snow.  I see the fish at the bottom of the river. I watched the clouds roll past mountain tops. We'll be running something familiar and I'll comment, with delight, at what I now see. Guild members just giggle. Best of all, it feels like a new game, fresh and exciting. This was worth every penny.

Beverage:  Lady Gray tea

Deb

Life, Version 10.8

I get teased, a lot, about my devotion to Apple products. Now, I don't own an iPhone. I have Android because that's what my company approved. I don't have an iPad. I've used my friend, Perry's, and if I won one or had someone give one to me, I'd probably use it, but it's not something I feel is vital to my existence. I'm more than connected enough.

But, after the great hard drive crash of December 2012 and the lines that were appearing in my computer screen, I realized I needed to replace my computer. At six, going on seven years of age, it was easily 150 in human years and was simply wearing out. I don't watch TV. I don't have cable. I play World of Warcraft. That's my pastime and a new computer will make the pastime more enjoyable.

When the tax refund was deposited in the bank account, I searched for the best computer deal for me. I don't need a lot of the bells and whistles found on some models. I don't do web site development. I don't compose music. I don't create graphics. I play a computer game. I write letters and I maintain this blog. So a lot of the programs and capabilities of certain computers won't even be touched by me. Why pay for them? I'd really like a CD/DvD drive so I don't have to buy an external one. iTunes does not have even a fifth of my jazz library. I want to be able to upload my music. I need to be able to upload photos from my camera. This really is what I use my computer for and anything else is superfluous to my life.

With the help of Matt, Jon and Chris, I found one. I had it delivered to the office because it required a signature and it would not sit on the front steps even if the UPS guy got a neighbor to sign for it. The UPS guy for our office has been coming here for at least 5 years. We love him to pieces. He's really good. I mentioned the computer was coming. Last Thursday, he stuck his head into my office and said, "Oh darn. No one is here. I guess I'll just have to take this home with me for safe keeping."

I practically tackled him in the hallway.

This new computer is 21 inches wide. I kind of wanted a lap top. I could load the game onto that and then take it wherever I was going. But you pay for that portability and, particularly with Apple, what I could afford was not really an upgrade to the screen size on which I play the game. That's a big consideration. So, I went with a desktop model. I also got a refurbished rather than brand new computer. I still have the same warranty since I purchased this from Apple.

It was a bit gangly getting it home.

For a minute, I didn't think it would fit in the Jeep.

Then, as I was driving the 2.5 miles home, I found myself saying, "I have my new computer here. Get out of the way." Funny how you'll tolerate some kinds of driving when it's just you and your lunch but add a thousand dollar piece of equipment and everyone's out to get you.

There was a guild event that night so I left the machine in the box in the living room. Chris had volunteered to help me get it set up and running and to teach me about some of the new things you can do with the new to me operating system (OS). This is rather important. Apple names their operating systems after cats. I had updated my OS about 4 years ago from "Leopard", which the computer had come with, to "Snow Leopard". "Mountain Lion", the newest version, was released last July. (I'm waiting for the "Domestic American Shorthair" version.) I need to learn what to do with this new OS. It's not like going from a word-based OS to the familiar icon-based OS, but the things I did, out of habit, probably won't be the same and I will have quite a few "where is..." moments. I felt setting things up was a task best left for the weekend. The box was 2 inches taller than the seat for the recliner.

My guild mates couldn't believe my restraint. "How can you not want to open it?" Chris convinced me to get going on the system migration. "The sooner you start, the sooner you can play," he said in that teasing voice when someone it holding the carrot just out of range. "Okay, fine."

Apple computers are ridiculously easy to set up. Step 1:  Open the box.

Step 2:  Prepare the space where the old computer will sit while you migrate everything to the new computer.

This was quite the job. Look at the dust. This is where the printer, that hasn't worked in 2 years, sat. It's going bye-bye when Wheaton has it's annual electronics turn in during April. I would like a new printer/scanner. I would write more letters if I could write and print them at home.

Step 3:  Move the old computer and put the new one in the old one's place.

Be sure to use the word, "Whoa" a lot during this process. At the time I was doing this, Chris had taken over my old computer and was reconfiguring my router for wireless connections.

Step 4:  Find the mouse, keyboard and power cables. Remove the cushion around the new computer and plug it into power. Remember to say, "Whoa" at least a half dozen times. Have a cat come find out what you're doing while you are under the desk trying to figure out if you really need all the power cords that are plugged into your multi-cord adapter.

Step 5: Turn the thing on and gasp at the sheer size of your screen now.

From this point, we started the data transfer process.

I remember doing that when I bought the one on the left. All my settings, folders, photos and World of Warcraft would be transferred, we hoped wirelessly, from left to right. Then, it would be a matter of sorting out what I needed and didn't need and migrating that to the new operating system.

In practice, it didn't work as seamlessly as we had hoped. I awakened on Friday to the same message that I had gone to bed with and that message was still on the screen when I got home from work on Friday. Chris determined that the computer on the left had gone to sleep during the overnight attempt to transfer data and this stopped the transfer but there isn't a way to tell me that. Thanks to my pack rat tendencies, I had another Ethernet cable and we hooked the two together. Transfer of all data took 45 minutes. Then, I could begin the weeding out of the stuff I really don't need. I've spent all weekend doing that and asking questions about where things go and how do I do what I used to do. Chris has been so patient with me.

It's been utterly amazing to work on this. The things I use most have been updated and will, eventually, become intuitive. I've learned so much in 3 days. I updated my web browser. Might as well do that. I'm taking a critical look at the things I had on the old system. For instance, I really don't use the address book or the calendar. As long as there is a calendar behind the computer, I simply need the time in the upper right corner.

For now, I'm keeping the old computer. I don't have an extended keyboard with the new one, but I really like the touch of it as compared to my old keyboard. The new machine came with a wireless mouse, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work properly in the game so we hooked up my Logitech mouse. The old Apple mice I have kicking around can go into the great bag of miscellaneous cables which will be recycled in April. I have no need of them anymore, not even as a back up.

I need to take a screenshot in the game. I found some places where I took screenshots on the old machine. You need to see what I can see now. It's a brand new game for me. I was with 2 guild members in a 5-man event last night. We ran through a building and out onto its patio. "Oh my gosh! It's snowing out here!" I had never seen the snowfall. My graphics had to be kept low so the game would run. I'm seeing distances and things I just never saw. I was happy with how the game played and looked; obviously because I am still playing it after 7 years. I just never saw some things because my computer couldn't handle it.

So, as Jon says, "Welcome to the 21st century." It's going to take me a few weeks to get back up to speed and to discover all the things I can do with this new system. You know how, sometimes, you just know you bought the right thing? This is it.

Here's to 6 more years of gaming.

Beverage:  water

Deb

Bwee Bop Boop. Connection to Reality Secured

"Now, with these guys; there's gonna be a lot of them. Just dps them down until their health turns green. Then they back up. After that, there's two more. Just dps them down, too. When they're done, we run up the stairs to the boss," said the guy who was leading the 5-man group running through a dungeon event in World of Warcraft on Monday night.

I knew the dungeon. I'd been in here before. I backed my character up a bit and took aim at the mean baddies attacking us. Twenty-five came at us. We knocked them all down. Then came the two larger mobs. The one started off with a flurry of punches and kicks. The other started to do his spinning attack. He spun...

and spun...

and spun...

and spun. I looked at my colleagues in this dungeon. I couldn't see Sprucemoose or Theudis. I could see Vervaine and she seemed to be stuck in an endless cycle of spell casting. Eromar stood off to the side, his character's left arm raised in perpetual healing stance. I realized my pet, a dinosaur named "Gimmzilla", was standing in one place, swaying back and forth. I was being disconnected from the game.

I play on a Mac. Apple computers are extremely stable in the internet gaming environment. Plus, my connection to the internet is extremely stable. It is very rare for me to be disconnected. It happens so one just gets out of the game and reloads. Even rarer is the need for me to shut down and restart. But, on Monday, my attempts to reconnect were met with nothing. I wound up completely shutting down, counting to 10, and restarting. Nothing. Then I noticed the modem/router. It's the top piece of equipment in the photo.

During the gaming session, I had become aware of a clicking noise. Unable to put my finger on what it was, I finally decided it was my office chair and that a little WD40 later in the week would fix that. As I was troubleshooting why I couldn't log back onto the internet, I noticed the power light on the modem would go red and then green. This color change was accompanied by a click. Now, I'm not a techie by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm fairly certain modems shouldn't "click", nor should their power light alternate red and green. That's when I noticed the DSL and Ethernet lights were not lit. This is definately not good.

I pushed the reset button on the back of the modem, plugged it in and no lights came on. Oh dear. I took the thing into the bathroom where I knew the outlet worked. Nothing. My heart sank. It sunk faster than a 2 ton stone in water. I was fairly certain the modem/router would have to be replaced. The piece that had died cost me $115 3-4 years ago. I couldn't even remember how long I'd had this. I did not have $115, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I shut down the Mac, picked up a magazine and spent the rest of the evening stewing over my options alternating with reading. The internet is important to me. It's become hugely important to be connected to it. But, I remember when a computer was a machine that took up a class room. I went to college when the only computer available for students to use was a machine in one room that was attached to a dot matrix printer. It played a really cool Star Trek game but you could only use it for 2 hours at a time and then, only from 6 a.m. to midnight as the building it was in was closed from midnight to 5:50 a.m.

I know how to survive without computers. Plus, I have internet access at the office. It's not like I'm totally cut off. I just wouldn't be online at night. I looked at the stack of magazines to my left. It's been whittled by 3/4. I can buy a new modem at the end of the month and, in the meantime, finish off the stack. It will be hard on weekends as I won't be able to stream Iowa Hawkeyes play-by-play, but I also have my phone and it's somewhat acceptable. I seldom access the internet via my phone, although I can. The resulting view is too small for my liking and my fat fingers can't type very well on the keypad. I can do this. Fifteen days. I can do this.

I posted, via this phone, a note to my WOW guild's Facebook page, apologizing for my sudden departure and explained what I thought was the problem. I also said that replacing the modem could be problematic. The next day, I was in the guild's web site chat room and was fairly ambushed by guys who work in computers for their various companies, all wanting to a) diagnose the problem and then b) find a solution for me. Several different modems were found online, all with prices around $40. Forty dollars I can handle. They all agreed that going to an AT&T store would result in my being sold something woefully overpriced and probably "a piece of *&^#", to use Squidchin's colorful language. He finally said, "Gimm, just go to the Micro Center over on Ogden. Take the old one in and they'll get you set up." Thoryn looked at their web site and found the bottom one. "That's what you need, Gimm. Print this page out and tell them, but have them verify everything."

Off I went. I walked into the store and when asked if I needed help, I said, "The guys in my WOW guild told me to come here, that you'd help me. This died last night." The salesman looked at me, smiled and said, "What server do you play on?" Inside I'm thinking, "Yes, SCORE! He understands!" He looked at the piece of paper and asked a couple of questions. "Yup, this is the one you want and even you can set it up." I did have to call AT&T because I had written down the wrong user name and password for the modem. The guy who helped me was very polite and efficient and I was back up and running in an hour.

A friend of mine has been having problems with her left wrist. It was in a velcro cast and she's taken steroids and anti-inflammatories. Nothing seemed to work. She finally went to the doctor who put the wrist and arm up to 3 inches above the elbow in a cast. She's to wear this for 5 weeks. He hopes complete immobilization will allow the tendon to heal. Prior to the visit, she was online looking at all the things it could be, from a simple sprain to bone cancer. She had worked herself into a huge worry and was actually scared of what the doctor could find.

How does this relate to my modem? While not to diminish her cast, she's left-handed so life is, shall we say, more "interesting", this is not nearly the worst thing the doctor could have done or told her the problem was. I sat in my chair on Monday night, carving out the worse-case scenario for the modem. I'd be offline at night for fifteen days until pay day and I could replace it. We both did the same thing. "What's the worst that could happen? Okay, let me mentally think that over so I'm prepared."

Make no mistake. There are times when you need to be prepared for anything. If you choose to drive in a blizzard, you need to consider what if you get stranded. Are you prepared for that? But in all situations, considering the worse case in everything will drive you batty. Yet I can do it time and time again. "I don't want to be blind sided by something I wasn't prepared for," I tell myself and friends who ask why I considered the worse case. The problem with the mind set is that it doesn't allow for those same friends to offer helpful advice. Never once, in my ruminations over hot tea and a magazine, did I consider that I know quite a few people who might have sound, sensible advice that would result in a solution that was inexpensive. I never thought of them. It was all about walking into the AT&T store and finding out that a replacement modem would be $157.93 and that I'd have to be on the phone for 90 minutes to get it set up. Worse case.

My friend in her cast and I realize we do this all the time. A little set back is not a "little" set back. It's a do or die, fight or flight chance for major decision making. I think it's because we've made decisions that have turned out to be not so great and which resulted in greater messes needing to be cleaned up. We missed one piece of information that, of course this is hindsight, was there and we discarded it. We didn't think everything through. What this does to us is slows down our decision making. It prevents us from clear headed analysis. I don't mean that every decision should be a quick, "Meh, this'll do," but I know I need to not make everything so grave. I know I need to not see everything as a worse case scenario.

I have endured and slogged through a lot in the past 15 years. This climb to where I am has given me skills I didn't have before. I get through things, events, problems, because I know I can. It may not be pretty, but I figure it out and go on. I look back at the modem event and realize I need a reality check here. This wasn't just about connecting back into the Internet so I could play the game. This was about connecting back into reality. Not everything is do or die and I have a large circle of friends who have a lot of information between them. I need to stop, breathe and ask.

Beverage:  Homemade Cherry Coke

Deb

The Theme for May

Ever since doing the alphabet title theme last year, I've been trying to come up with another month-long theme that I could stick to. I had this great idea I'd eat through the alphabet, trying new recipes. That lasted through "d", I think, where I crafted a deep-dish pizza. When I cook, it's really on a whim or whimsy so, some days, I come home and cereal it is. I don't want to put hamburger to sizzle or chicken to bake. Just let me sit in the recliner with a box of cereal and I'll be okay. But, I like the idea of a theme, something, beyond my usual observations, that binds a month together. I hadn't really thought of anything until this past weekend.

I took a bunch of photos of a failed new recipe which I have not posted, yet. I tend to do that. I'll take a bunch of photos and think, "This would make a great blog post". A day later, I look at them and the enthusiasm or what I was going to say has waned. They sit in my Flickr account, waiting for the chance to be on the blog. As I'm approaching my 3rd year of blogging, I have accumulated over 3500 photos in Flickr and many were taken and never used. It's time to haul those out and blog about them. Plus, you will be seeing some old family photos. The theme will be "Old Photos". I'll still blog about things I find interesting, cooking fiascoes and other timely topics, but you're going to see a variety of photos that never saw blogging daylight, until this month, and some photos from the past.

My first old photo. I don't think I've used this anywhere else. When you have over 1,200 blog posts, it can be kind of hard to remember or find the photo. This is my home computer set up. When I got the new chair assembled back in October of 2009, it raised me up higher than the old chair I had. That meant I was looking down and not across at the computer. Because I wear bifocals, the depth of field to play the game suddenly changed. I was constantly having to tilt my head to see correctly. I found my shoulders and neck would ache after a raiding session.

I don't have that problem in the office. I would like a taller chair, but that would mean a taller desk. Right, not gonna get that through the budget. At home, I would like a different computer desk. This one is nearly 10 years old and doesn't really work for me. I'd like something more compact. But buying a new desk means getting rid of the old one and that is not a simple "haul it out to the curb" process. The current desk would need to be disassembled to be removed from the room. You laugh but it is too wide to go through the doorways of my 1953-era house. So how to remedy the problem at hand? Raise the computer to a manageable height.

I searched my house for the proper item. I finally found it in Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. I'm quite surprised you can still get it from Amazon but for a hefty $72. I got mine in the sale bin at a Barnes and Noble for $15. It a wonderful critique of Shakespeare for those interested in such things. Plus, it's about 3 inches thick and that's just the right height to move the screen to my eye level. If I am curious about Asimov's take on Macbeth, I can just move the computer.

I like to think the Bard is with me at all times, resting comfortably, guiding my words when I sit at home staring at an image on the screen and wondering just what the heck I was going to say about this photo.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

This Mouse is Good

I bought my iMac back in 2007. That's a long time ago in computer years. It has served me very well. In another year or two, I am probably going to be forced to buy a new computer in order to keep up with the system requirements to play World of Warcraft. But until that happens, my computer and I are good friends.

In March or April of 2008 (I'll have to dig out the paperwork since I would have saved it.), I bought a gaming mouse. My original Apple mouse died and, because it was still under warranty, I was able to replace it free. The guy at the Apple store said, when I brought the dead mouse in, that Apple makes phenomenal products, but not gaming mice. He recommended I go to Fry's Electronics and ask one of their sales people which mouse they use. He recommended the Logitech mouse that I actually wound up getting, after looking at all of my options. It was expensive, but it was a great mouse. It was wireless, which, at the time, before I got a hub, I needed. It was rechargeable.

Lately, however, it's not been a great mouse. I know that rechargeable things don't last forever. It wasn't fully recharging or it would look fully recharged and then, when I'd go to use it, the charge would drop within the first 5 minutes, indicating that it wasn't charged at all. Then, the buttons wouldn't work and I'd find my WOW toon unable to move out of stuff that I shouldn't be standing in. I couldn't attack things or things that I'd target wouldn't stay targeted. It was getting incredibly frustrating to play. But, I can't afford a new mouse right now.

I dug out the old Apple mouse. After years of playing with a mouse designed for gaming, yeah, this isn't going to work. I started preparing myself to log on and just stay in the capital city, cleaning out the guild bank and learning to "play" the game's Auction House feature because my ability to do anything other than move via the keypad and click items was severely restricted. Enter my friends, specifically, Matt.

I was grousing to him about this stroke of bad luck. I had done a bit of research into gaming mice and was not real happy with the costs. Matt has a Mac and he asked a bunch of questions about my gaming style, what kind of mouse I used and why I was using a wireless mouse. Then he asked for my address. "What did you do?" "Nothing. I just want to send a Christmas card." And if I believe that, he has ocean-front property in Nebraska to sell me. I gave him my address and he said "Watch your door step and merry Christmas."

So, yesterday, we have a day full of rain. At times it was like god tipped over a bucket of water. Matt says the box is supposed to come. Oh...dear. I hope it comes later in the day and not earlier so it doesn't get soaked. I was delayed a bit in getting home but when I did, I found this. UPS had put my box in a nice plastic bag so it didn't get wet. I brought it inside and gave it a cat scan. 

Once I opened the box, Pilchard wasn't interested anymore. Mija was. The box is probably just a touch under cat size. I have not put it on the floor, yet to test my theory.

Here was the same mouse that I have known and loved these 4 years but WITH a cord. The dark black cord was to allow my hub to move closer to the edge of my desk so the mouse cord could reach. Oh man. No one has dusted back there in months! Setting up the new mouse required me to clean the back of the desk behind the computer. Yeah, some places I don't clean regularly.

Once that was done, I turned off the old mouse, plugged in the new mouse and, viola! It worked, first time, out of the box. I didn't need a degree in computer science to set it up.

It was great playing the game last night, moving, targeting, getting out of stuff and all those things you do when you play a computer game. I have the old mouse in its recharging cradle. Come Earth Day, I'll probably recycle it at the computer recycling place along with the very old printer I found in the basement. The Apple mouse that I have will go back in the box. It's no good for gaming but if something happened to this one, at least I could log into the computer and check email.

The kindness of my friends humbles me.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Afterward

I have never owned any other computer but Apple. My ex's company bought a Lisa for him to do his work on. He would, on occasion, bring it home. This was an amazing machine. I remember wishing and hoping we could, one day, have something like this in our home. I still think a program called "LisaList" is the best sorting program I have ever used. I could sort a list of items every way I could think of and any links between cells were preserved.

Our first home computer was a Macintosh IIsi. It cost us $2,500 but I taught myself desktop publishing on it. Carole wrote boatloads of papers on it. The first computer I purchased for myself was iMac. I remember being so proud of myself for being able to set it up by myself. That was one thing Apple took great pride in. Three cords to set up your computer; a power cord, a mouse cord and a keyboard cord.

My current Mac is old by computer standards. I got it in January of 2007. It's been upgraded once and can't be upgraded anymore. I'd love more bells and whistles but I'm happy with what I have.

As we mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, a comment from one of Carole's friends sticks with me about Jobs' impact on life. This friend hated the things Jobs and Apple created, but, without him, computer-ing, as we know it, would not be what it is. Apple forced people to think differently, how they consume information and entertainment.

Carole has never known a world without a desktop computer. Maybe we didn't have one in the house, but some of her friends did. She's never known a world where the processing of information relied solely on TV, radio and newspapers. It could be argued that this change was inevitable, that it was not Jobs' doing. After all, room size mainframe computers had been in use since before Jobs was born. But I think, because of him, computing is a fact of life now. The iPod and the iPhone changed the way we look at music distribution and the way we communicate with others.

In recent years, Jobs' gaunt visage at Apple events caused me to wonder about Apple's direction after him. When he stepped down in August, my gut said he wasn't coming back. I didn't realize the end of the Jobs' era would come so soon.

My gut also tells me that there are lists and flow charts and ideas still bearing the Steve Jobs stamp in the works in Cupertino, California. I think Apple will stumble a bit in the next year as it finds its footing without the visage that everyone recognized. But, I think he planned for this and his legacy will be felt for years to come.

I think about replacing my computer with one designed primarily to play World of Warcraft. Guild mates tout the wonderfulness of what they play on, which are not Apples. I couldn't, can't picture myself walking into Best Buy and getting an Alienware computer. As long as Apple sells computers, that's what I will buy. I think Steve Jobs' legacy is bringing computing, music and communication to the masses.

May he rest in peace.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

$4.06 Left

Normally, I wouldn't think of going to Starbucks as it's heavy on coffee beverages and I don't drink coffee. But the gift card Patt gave me for my birthday has sent me there quite frequently. I mentioned the good hot cocoa I had the first time I used it. Well, I've found something better than hot cocoa. I know you're shocked.

They currently have a Carmel Apple Spice drink. It is hot apple cider topped with whipped cream, drizzled with caramel. The Starbucks at the Target near me shook cinnamon over that. When I jokingly said, "Wow what else can you put on this, chocolate sprinkles?", they would have if they hadn't been out of them.

Oh my. It is wonderful. So, after a morning spent in and out of the cold, on the way back from the city yesterday, I stopped, ON PURPOSE, at the Starbucks near the office just to get one of these. They had chocolate chunk cookies available so I had to get one of those as I had not had my daily chocolate allotment yet.

Totaled up and subtracted, I have $4.06 left on the card. My plan is to get one more, what is it, "venti", is that the biggest size, which will be covered by the card. Then I'll have change left. I can afford a small one after that and pay cash. That means I will have squeezed 5 and a fraction drinks, one slice of cake and one cookie out of this gift card. Now that's value.

Sad part is this drink is only available during the holidays. Once January hits, it's gone. That's okay. It will be a fond memory that I can look forward to next December.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Happy Music

Music hath charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

--William Congreve

Such a familiar quotation, but it's true. What you are listening to says a great deal about who you are.

Everyone knows I listen to jazz. My parents listened to singers who have been given the moniker "crooners"; Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Bing Crosby. They grew up in the 1950's, when the solo jazz artist was in his prime. Swing's time had passed with the end of World War II. People listened to music. I remember my father, who couldn't carry a tune in a dump truck, singing all these jazz standards to the cows as he milked them. It doesn't seem at all a stretch to be a jazz lover now. "Lady What-ga"? Rap? Isn't that another term for knocking on something, like a door?

I fire up my iMac, turn on iTunes and let the music flow. I have a little over 5 days worth of music. In true collector form, there a number of tunes for which I have 4 or 5 versions, my favorite jazz standard, "April in Paris", is an example. My iTunes play list probably consists of 70% jazz in some form and the rest in classical, pop, celtic, folk, Christmas, movie music and other eclectic categories.

When I'm contemplative, there is nothing like Copeland, Mussorgsky, Grieg or Joshua Bell. I don't usually have music playing when I read because I find myself pulled towards interaction with the music when I have chosen interaction with the printed word. When I play World of Warcraft, the games sounds and musical snippets get repetitive, so I'll turn on my iTunes, set the sort for some category and let it go. In the summer, if I'm sitting on the deck, I'll some times crank up the volume on the computer, which sits right by the window, and pump Ella and Louis and Frank and Dizzy out into the atmosphere. The Beach Boys can't be beat for driving around Chicago with the top down on a July Sunday.

As I'm cleaning my house in preparation for a visit from my daughter, I've had 'happy' music on. Generally, this consists of peppy jazz, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman with some Glenn Miller thrown in for good measure. But I also include my favorite Scottish band, Old Blind Dogs, in the category of 'happy' music. The skirl of the pipes, the bouzouki, the fiddle make a nice counterpoint to buffing windows, dusting pictures and door frames and sorting and shredding mountains of papers.

I was listening to WDCB, College of DuPage. Last night, I turned on the radio before going to bed, just to unwind. They were running promos of upcoming programs and this music came out of my radio in response to a promo for "Mountain Stage". It was peppy. It was bouncy. It was happy. Who is this? Pine Leaf Boys. Never heard of them.

So, this morning, I did some research. Oh man. I will have to find a way to get one of their CDs. I could play this music a lot. Give them a listen. Go to the "Media" tab and click on the videos. This is infectious music. I see they were at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, the venue where Carole and I saw a lot of Old Blind Dogs. I couldn't afford to attend a concert there right now, but Chicago has a lot of free festivals during the summer. Maybe they will turn up on the venue for one of them. I'm thinking, like OBD, listening to them live is much more of an experience.

Tonight, I work on the living room. Maybe some Nat King Cole?

Beverage: China Black Tea

Deb

Lust

I don't get gadget lust. I generally don't want the newest and fastest and first one on the block thing because I'd rather wait until the bugs are out. And I'm getting, more and more, to be of the "if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it" opinion.

But...

LUST...

for the new Apple gadget whose name I really, really, really don't like.

Never mind that it's probably a glorified iPhone. I don't have one of those. I find it a mite confusing. If someone wanted to give me an iPhone and pay for it and then show me how to use it, I'd take it, but I won't get one on my own. I have an iPod that I have used exactly 7 times. It's buried on the table in the office.

I think I would use this. It's supposed to be really light-weight and, having had to lug laptops around for work, light-weight is attractive. The bigger screen with similar controls to an iPhone is attractive to me. Would I watch video on it? I might although I don't watch movies on my mac. That's why I have a DVD player.

So, I'm wishing I had a lot of disposable income right now because I certainly would be one of the people at the store the first day you could get these. They just need to change the name. It conjures up all sorts of images I don't want.

Beverage: Assam tea

Deb

Why do I still have this?

I moved this out of the way so I can drag the tree box upstairs tomorrow.

Yes, this is the box my Mac came in. If you've never seen an iMac, that is what it looks like on the box. I could use a memory upgrade so my game runs smoother, but, otherwise, I love it.

But is there any reason to keep the box?

Beverage: Assam tea

Deb

It'll take how long?

My TechTools software order was waiting inside the front door yesterday when I got home from work. Quick blog post. Quick signing onto the game to tell everyone that I was going to defragment my hard drive and I'd be back on when I could. Then crack open the box and get going.

I ran the first recommended scans which took an hour each. Then I did the small scans. After that, I had to boot from the Tech Tools disc so I could run the deep scans and defragment. I fixed file defragmentation which resulted in a gain of 2 GB of disc space. I was falling asleep at this point, nodding off in my chair while watching the graphics on the screen. But then that finished and the next big thing was to completely defragment the main hard drive.

Now, Perry's defragmentation took 30 hours. I have a big guild event on Wednesday and I wanted my computer to be optimized for that. If it's going to be a 30 hour event for me, too, I needed to get started on it.

You get this bar graph and a percentage number before you start which give you an idea of fragmentation. I had bars all over the place and the program said my hard drive was 82% fragmented. Okay. I'm not a computer whiz over here, but that can't be good. Push the button marked "Defragment the hard drive" and off it goes. This was 10:20 p.m. last night. I went to bed.

When I got up this morning, it was done! Just like that. I ran a couple more scans before heading off to work. When I left, it was fixing disc permissions, whatever that means. I noticed I got back another 2 gigs of hard drive space from the optimization. That's 4 gigs just doing this. I'll take that.

When I get home tonight, I need to do more wash. I'm low on pants. Then I can install the free antivirus Perry recommended and I should be good to go again. I have a Mac because it doesn't require much hand-holding. Now that I've done this, I'm tempted to get the new software upgrade, nicknamed Snow Leopard. But let's wait and see what kind of speed increase I get. Maybe I'd be better off getting more memory?

If only that were true for me.

Beverage: Blackberry tea

Deb

And there was a knock on the door at 9 a.m.

I'm still in bed, mind you. I've been needing sleep all week for obvious reasons. I'm not sleeping well at night and it's been terribly hard to get up in the morning because, honestly, there's no reason to hop out of bed. No one is demanding my presence. No one has attempted to take a bite out of my chin. No one has drooled on my face or meowed in my ear. I'm sleeping in today.

So who is knocking on my door at 9?

I was worried. What if it was Zeke coming over to say he would be mowing my lawn? I would be horribly embarrassed to get out of bed right now. I heard a vehicle drive away. That was double suspicious. I pulled the covers up around my chin and lay there as quietly as I dared.

After about 15 minutes with no more discernable noises from the front steps, I got up and cautiously opened the front door. FedEx left a sticky. There was a package on the front steps.

Now, I ordered more tea and I ordered TechTools for Mac. My Mac has been running slow lately and Perry suggested I get TechTools and defragment the hard drive. That's probably a very good idea. MacMall had it for $20 less than buying through the Apple Store. (I know that's a duh, but I did check. Comparison shopping is something I just do instinctively.) I did not remember paying for next day shipping, but I might have.

I opened the front door, mindful that I'm in my pajamas. There are some things the neighbors just don't need to see. Oh look what's on the front step.

TEA! It's my tea order. I don't remember paying for FedEx delivery for that, either, but hey, this is very important, particularly if it's going to continue to feel like early October instead of August.

So I brought the box inside.

Yesterday, I ordered pizza for supper. Yes, dear readers, Pam's taking me for dinner made me actually get something other than peanut butter M&M's for supper. I also got garlic breadsticks and a 2 liter of Coke with the pizza. There was plenty left for today's lunch AND supper. I also took the Italian sausage links out of the freezer. I think I have pasta that if I crumble these and cook them, I can have a sausage and pasta supper. I could, in fact, cook again. I know you're sitting down so I can say that without you fainting dead away.

I opened the box and there was my order. No, I have no idea how the Scottish Blend tastes. I ordered it because it was on sale. I'm generally not fond of green tea but "Gunpowder Green" has a bite to it that I like. It, too, was on sale. And, at the far right is the Huckleberry tea I've grown rather fond of. This might be enough, with all the flavors you can just see behind these three, to last through Christmas when I might get more, not that I'm hinting or anything.

This was worth getting out of bed for. I expect the software Monday or Tuesday. I know defragmenting the hard drive is a major event so I may be out of pocket for a day, at least. But if it removes the lag, I certainly have the tea to drink while I go do something else.

Beverage: Assam

Deb