August 19, 2009

I have switched computers.  My old laptop overheated on me again and irritated me.  I studied my computer habits and needs and looked at what was available.  I was surprised when I typed on one of the little netbooks that the tiny form factor didn’t affect my typing accuracy.  The screen seemed adequate for most of my purposes and I do have a desktop monitor available.  The low power requirements fit well with my life philosophy even if the actual energy savings is insignificant.  The microprocessor, while reputed to be low performance by today’s standards, still appeared to have better performance than either of my old computers. 

The price made sense as well, $299.  I shopped around, but everyone had the same basic product for same price.  I ended up buying mine at Fred Meyer because they had it in conservative black instead of a trendy color.  It was the first time I bought a computer in a store that sells groceries.

Of course any computer setup work is going to be painful.  At least it came preloaded and required very little to get started.  The first night had me fighting with getting my wireless router to allow my new computer on the network.  The second night I decided to try to load some software, a real challenge when your computer doesn’t have a CD drive.  I suspected it was possible to network two computers and share the CD drive.  I decided to start with something easy, the printer driver.  After working through the networking challenge, I began loading the software.  It seemed to be loading, but then it hung up.  A message indicated that it had 20 minutes to go.  I waited.  Nothing happened.  I tried again.  After an hour of trying to load a simple printer driver, I gave up.

I would have bought an external USB CD drive at Fred’s if they hadn’t been out of stock.  I decided my networking experiment was a failure.  I stopped at Best Buy and tried to find a cheap drive.  After taking two units up to the counter for a price check, I found one at a reasonable price.  It was still more drive than I wanted.  I don’t really write CDs or DVDs.  An old style read only drive would have satisfied me, but they don’t seem to offer one.  I brought it home and plugged and played only to find out that the printer driver hung up while trying to load, similar to my experience with the networking.  I used a custom installation to work around the problem, but I am now wondering if the network concept would have worked just fine.  Oh well, it still wasn’t much money.  I am just cheap.

So now I am preparing my first post on my new computer.  It is nice to not have a heavy laptop hurting my legs and overheating if I don’t situate just right on my leg.  The screen is a little small for my old eyes.  Well see how this goes.

The weekend was a little slower than usual.  Kris had to fly out on Sunday morning for a work trip to Chicago.  The rain didn’t help motivate me on my day off.  I did fish on Friday morning in Campbell Creek.  I landed one silver from the last hole I tried.  I quickly coralled it on a gravel bar.  It rolled in my six pound test line and as I tried to unwind the line, it flopped and broke the line, escaping back into the water with my spinner.  I went back out on Saturday morning and quickly hooked two that got off, but then spent a couple more hours with no action. 

On Sunday morning, I caught three on my light tackle.  The action was steady, although the fish were relatively sparse.  The fish were still pretty brightly colored and full of life.  I have seen large quantities of fish sit in pools and ignore my lures, but these came out of nowhere and attacked.  With the light tackle, I was challenged and surprised that I successfully landed all three that I had on.  It was a serious fire drill each time, dodging brush and chasing the fish up and downstream.  I fell off the bank trying to enter the stream while chasing one of the fish, but still managed to turn it before it made it around the next bend that was partially blocked by a fallen tree.  It was great fun.

Kris and I took a bike ride on Saturday afternoon.  We rode to Kincaid Park and back, a trip of about 20 miles.  We saw five moose on the ride.  On the return, we were pedalling pretty quickly around a bend and almost ran into twins, one standing on each side of the trail.  I was already between them when I noticed them so I kept pedaling.  Another cyclist was stopped waiting for the moose to clear so I asked him worriedly where momma was.  He shrugged and said she couldn’t be far.  We kept moving to avoid any potential moose charging out of the brush.