Computers, redux

Well, I spent most of the day with my Toshiba 3500 tablet PC trying to make it make sense to me.

After getting frustrated all morning, I took it, my CD's, and my USB drives down to our PC repair shop to inquire if they had a USB CD drive that I could borrow since mine seemed to be not OK. There was one, but meanwhile I learned that one of the folks that lives in there has one of these little pups, and even has the right CD drive for it. We are trading the use of his drive for the use of my official disks. When I get back on Monday, it will come right up - it says here....

Meanwhile, I'll take the drive home and see if I can get the mini-Toughbook to come back to life. That would be a real coup!

I've just rediscovered internet radio - WinAmp comes with a set of directories to find almost anything you might want to hear - and some of it is pretty good. One of our local radio stations changed format a while back, and made me mad so I quit listening to them and supporting them - and on the internet I found a source of the sort of things that they had me hooked on.

The Internet is like a huge library - without a card catalog. Google helps, but if the search is broad enough not to miss something it can take years to examine everything that gets returned. I've learned to get clever sometimes with searches - but sometimes I get too clever and get frustrated.

Some SOB in our building finally turned the heat on - and has it up really high to make up for the month that had everyone complaining about freezing. Not cool (and no that wasn't an intenional pun, but if it works for you....)

Choir rehearsal was good last night - it seems to be getting better, or else I'm getting more mellow. But when it was done, I was ready to go home and read the latest from Greywolf at the Roswellfanatics site, which is one of the largest and most active Fan Fiction sites based around the Roswell TeeVee show. I should never admit to this, lest folks think I'm getting soft in the head, but I really liked that show - it resonated with me - and there are some damn clever writers writing to the show's character set and backstories. Some of what is written is crap, but much of it isn't - and as much as I'd like to think most of the writers were twenty-somethings, I have found a couple up around my age - and some of them are truly outstanding. In fact, I wish I could write like some of them.

Anyhow, now you know my secret vice. Please don't tell anyone, OK?

Actually, there's another secret vice - one of my compuers here at work has Linux on it - and Linux has mcuh better games than Windows, even their Solitaire is better. There's a Mah Jongg that will make you crazy, and a pretty good Othello, too. Since I use one monityr and one keyboard and a KVM switch to switch between computers, if I am paying atention, nobody notices when I'm playing, and since it usually happens only when I'm waiting for something to happen so I can continue something, there's no harm and no foul, although he bosslady has asked on occasion what I'm doing. When she asks, I tell her I'm goofing off, and she walks away, apparently the truth boggles...

I gotta get ready to get outta here. It's Thursday, tomorrow I am off, but that doesn't mean rest - Phyllis and i have a Joe visit, then I have to get ththoroughly swaddled and insulated and get my motorcycle up to Jack so he can put in the new steering column lock, then get home before frostbite sets in. At least it isn't supposed to snow before Saturday.

Happy Thursday to all of you out there.