Miscellaneous

The "old new" laptop is about four years old.  The "old old" laptop died suddenly during my first year of retirement, you see.  Suddenly it dawns on me that come December, I will have been retired five years.  Yikes!  Where did those five years go?

Sunday, the replacement laptop arrived, thanks to Prime day deals.  Just in time, it would seem.  The old laptop formerly known as "new" is the one the cat knocked on the floor, that lost its "4" keycap, and has been a little fritzy at times.  Sunday evening it decided to freeze up on me.  I had been fantasizing about having two, and putting them in different rooms, so that I could just leave them in place and log in wherever I happened to be.  It's still a backup plan.

The new new machine is a Windows 11 operating system.  There are some differences, but it's enough like Windows 10 that I can deal.  Interesting feature of Windows 10 and 11 is that my automatic "new login" alerts from Google that come to two e-mails AND my phone... identify BOTH of them as Windows NT devices.  When did Windows NT become so old timey in my brain?

In any case, setting up a new machine isn't what it used to be.  Anybody else this old?  You booted up the machine, loaded the operating system with multiple 3.5 inch floppy disks, then one at a time loaded your software packages, many also with multiple disks  It would take a few days to get the machine into usable shape.

Now?  If you are going from one Windows machine to another, you log in to Microsoft with your e-mail address and password and tell it you want the new machine to look like the old one, and it ghosts all the files, hooks you up to OneSource, and except if you WANT to change how you use it, and the little changes to the OS, you're in business in an hour, tops.

Monday's adventure was finding the drive-thru lane at my local pharmacy (inside my grocery store) blocked off by a cone.  I parked and went inside, masked.  The line was really long.  All of us who would normally have used that drive-thru to pick up our prescriptions had gone inside.  Oh, well.  All were in typically good spirits, waited patiently, and got our business taken care of.  There was a sign that they were low on the Pfizer Covid boosters, so no walk-ins for those, but flu shots were still available without an appointment.  

The kids are bird-sitting, keeping Ollie while DIL to be's parents are busily road-tripping.  Here's Ollie, perched on Lacey's shoulder.  This family the mythical son is marrying into is quite mobile.

Lacey says Carl is grumpy, as he's not allowed out in the main part of the house when the birdies are on the loose.  The two Cockatiels are also hopping and flying about, as the birds are being encouraged to flock together.  It's an adjustment.

Overnight Monday to Tuesday, I woke at about 2 a.m. to doorbell ringing, insistently.  Spooked me.  I turned off the TV, which I had on when I fell asleep, and carefully crept downstairs.  Nobody pounding on the door, no more rings.  Crept back upstairs and peeked out the window... totally quiet street, just the glowing lights of Halloween decorations across the street.

I went back to my room, tucked back into bed, wondering what happened.  This morning, I'm thinking whatever TV show I had on had a scene involving doorbell ringing, and in my sleepy state I thought it was my real doorbell.  

Sound effects are so good these days. I've had this happen with commercials, where I think it was my phone signaling a message, or my doorbell. I often have the TV on for background noise and am not paying close attention to the plot.  So, yeah, I can miss that it's the TV doing this!  

Anyway, I went back to sleep, and when I got up Tuesday morning, checked the stoop for signs, the garage for if I'd left the door open (I had not), etc., as one does, when second-guessing.  No signs of any disturbance in the night.

I guess the question this leads to is:  What do you all think about the new authorization for "over the counter" hearing aids in the US, that you can control with your phone?  Anybody lining up for these?  Of course, even if I were to get these, and they helped a lot in the daytime, I would still be putting them on the bedside table while I slept.  So unless I stopped watching TV reruns to fall asleep to, I could have a similar experience.

Tuesday also brings the 23rd anniversary of my father's passing.  I'd been thinking about him a lot, as the October weather rolled in.  As I find old photos of him, I remember what a process it was, developing photographs.  This is a "selfie" from the early 1960's, that he took, oh, so carefully, to get the special effect of himself as twins.  I think he was inspired by Haley Mills in "The Parent Trap" which came out about that time.

Dad had a darkroom in the basement of our childhood home (pre-age 7), and then when we moved and he took a better job "in the city", he had one at his workplace.  This photo was taken in that darkroom.  I remember it well, as for a special treat, dad would sometimes take one of us with him, when he was doing work on a weekend.

Here's to the ongoing journey of life, which is good.  Spark on!

🔥✨💖