SETTING UP A NEW COMPUTER AND UPDATING AN OLD COMPUTER - OYYY!

 Computers – can't live without them and can't live with them!!

And they DO need to be kept organized!

Computers are important to keep organized also.  In addition to each having a desktop computer, we each have laptop computers (and I keep my old ones so I have 2 Windows XP latptop computers, a Windows 7 desktop computer, and my latest – a Windows 10 laptop.  (I am using the latter as I post.)  My Win 7 and my Win 10 computers each have a virtual Windows XP machine in them.  (This allows me to run old XP software in them – mostly my Lotus Organizer.)

My husband I do not keep our data on our hard drives.  We keep them on thumb drives (originally on 5.25” floppy drives, followed by3.5 inch floppy drives, then zip drives, and in the years since – thumb drives (aka stick drives).  This does several things  - most importantly if our hard drives die we still have our data and it is easy to move the data from one computer to another.  We also each frequently back up our hard drives to external hard drives to prevent loss of data on same.  

This all comes to mind as my husband has just bought a new laptop computer.  He has vision problems from when he had cataracts despite having had surgery for same – mostly problems seeing to read small print.  He has been struggling more recently to read items on his laptop as it is a small one, so we discussed it and he bought a 17.5 inch laptop.

He bought it Monday.  Yesterday (Tuesday) he took it out of the box and started setting it up.  First, of course getting rid of some of the newer features which he did not want and finding features which no longer come with them which he DOES want.  

In doing of all this (so far) he noticed that the hard drive on our network did not show up on his new laptop – he checked my laptop and it was missing there also.  So tonight he dealt with this problem and got the hard drive to show on his laptop.  He then moved to my laptop to fix it also.  Why?  Because he needs to do so, so mine will be able to access that hard drive.  Have I used it?  Maybe – once – or twice.  

In fixing this on my laptop the computer decided that “Whoopee! She is letting me do things!”  “I am going to update – whether she likes it or not!”  So I lost over half an hour of my “me time” on my laptop (which I get in the evening as opposed to using using my computers for work related work or house related work).  

Understand – I am not against computers.  My first use of a computer was a main frame IBM computer back when programing and answers were by punch card (programming in Fortran) in high school.  That was followed by a main frame computer which used various stations around our college campus to enter things (programming in Basic).  But each version of the software to run current computers seems to make more and more problems.  And they do help to keep one organized and cut down on paper clutter.

NEW PILLOWS FOR HUSBAND - AND WHERE TO STORE THE OLD ONES

 Two weeks again – sorry no post last week. Then again – is anyone other than me actually reading these posts? (If you are a “hi” would be nice so I know someone is out there.)

My husband decided he needed new pillows for when we (hopefully soon) start traveling again in our tiny RV. (Think Chevy van conversion, not the RVs you see in movies and on TV.)

He had recently been having sleeping at home and bought a new pillow to use at home. He had me bring in his pillows from the RV and he tried them and they were not comfortable. (It has been since 2019 since we used the RV and the pillows.) So we went out and bought him a new pillow – same as the one he bought for the house. I put pillow covers on that pillow and one of his old pillows (he picked which one) and he tried using them at home for a few nights and said it was fine. I also bought him 2 new pillow cases – why I am not sure as I will be using the old pillowcases for me, but he insisted.

Do we throw out the old pillows? No, of course not! “We might need them.” Now the problem becomes where to store them. I have mentioned that our house is on the small side (though much larger than our RV) and storage is limited.

Our house has 3 bedrooms – the largest one is, of course ours. We had planned for the remaining two bedrooms to be used for our children – who were not to be. So, the middle sized bedroom serves as our office – we sit at desks facing each other – and our main library space for our books. The small bedroom was setup as a guest room in case one of our moms or a niece or nephew needed to stay with us. It has been used 3 times – once my niece and nephew (brother and sister) used the single bed together when they were very young and stayed overnight. Same niece used the room again twice on two different occasions when doing something with us. Other than that it has not be used a bedroom. The bed is covered with a blanket and there are stuffed bears (and a few of their friends sitting on it) and the room has become known as the Teddie's room as there are also shelves in the room holding stuffed and other types of Teddies and their friends in it. (We use the closet for husband's out of season clothing and some other storage.)

Among the other storage for the room are the bed pillows for the room which are kept in pillowcases and stand against the walls waiting for someone to stay and use them. (I would change the pillowcases if someone used them as they have been on the pillows for years – some of them have Teddy bear designs on them.) So I put the extra pillows in pillowcases and stood them on top of the ones already in place.

At least with this resolved and the extra and RV pillows out of our bedroom I again have back the place I put the laundry basket when I bring up the clean laundry to fold and store. The extra pillows had been sitting there while he decided which pillows worked for him.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Think outside "the box" when looking for places to store things – often storing them in some way which makes sense or looks decorative (or you can make look decorative) is the best place to store them – especially larger items which need “a home”.

JUNE - ALREADY????!!!! SPRING CLEANING? - I JUST FINISHED STORING AWAY CHRISTMAS - LAST WEEK!!!!

 JUNE – ALREADY?!

I guess it well into “spring cleaning” time?  Anyone doing any?

Well ….  I have mentioned that I have a small “village” of small bears  - figurines, toys and such (about  ½ inch to maybe 6 inches tall each) in our upstairs hall.  If you have missed this – it started as a Christmas village populated by bears and grew to a year round village which is changed (more or less) monthly to match the month.  It is a terribly silly thing, but husband and like it and it gives us smiles – and during the worst of Covid it gave us someplace “to go” when we stuck in the house.

It gets overdone for Christmas – like a small village which is over crowded for the holidays with shoppers, a parade, carolers, Santas, skiers, skaters, booth selling hot beverages and renting out skis and sleds, bears finishing decorating the large tree at the center of the village…  The rest of the year the setup is much is less.  

I have mentioned that I am accountant.  I had an extremely odd and bad tax season this year so the bears have been having Christmas all the way into May (and the mom bears were upset at no Mother's Day) as I have not had a chance to store the Christmas part away.  I finally had a chance last Sunday to start taking it down.  Christmas in the village is almost done being stored now.  I should finish this Sunday and will jump ahead to wedding and later in the month graduation in the village.  (Same young bear couple get married every year.)

Sooo, who is doing spring cleaning – not the bears they are too tired from celebrating this long.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Things need to be done.  Sometimes something suddenly takes up a continuing huge amount of time and it needs to done and other less essential things put aside.  That is life and we have to take it as it comes and then catch up when we can.