On the Electronic Front, However...

Say what you will, down here, electronics, like so many other mechanical, and quasi-mechanical things, are doomed, that's DOOMED, to failure. Case in point, my old and decrepit desktop PC.

I bought it about three years ago when my laptop decided to give up the ghost. Dust, heat, humidity, in short, the usual suspects, all conspired to destroy it. Anyway, I made it down to Fred Orio (Oh-Rio, not Oreo, like the cookie) at Corozal Virtual Office, where he set me up with a desktop box of indeterminate age and pedigree. That's not to mention where all the components may have come from.

On the plus side, it did have a new hard drive, motherboard, and power supply. We managed to get everything transferred off the laptop, so that in itself was a lifesaver.

It has worked good enough since then, with more or less quarterly visits back to Fred to have various gremlins sorted out. One of the most persistent seems to be the power-on button refuses to work. I take it in to Fred, he fixes it, I bring it home, and it works for a period of time, and I repeat the process.

The latest iteration of this is going on now. I press the power-on button, and I hear fans start up, and the DVD cycles, and nothing. No log in screen or anything. And sometimes, I don't even get that much. Sometimes, I press the button, and a little red light appears, and just as quickly, goes out.

So, once the rain subsides, it's another trip down to Fred. I really should get a new desktop, but, I do enjoy my conversations with Fred, and his office kitty, Cauliflower, who reminds me a lot of our kitty, April. They could be cousins. That's a Belize joke, BTW.

"So," you ask, "How are you creating this posting?" Well, it's pretty easy, as such things go. I have an iPad and it has a handy protective case. It also has a blue-tooth keyboard, that makes the iPad behave much like a desktop PC. I love it. It makes creating the text for the blog very easy (as you can see). The one thing that I'm not sure about is, photos. I don't know if I can transfer photos to the blog as easy as I do on the laptop. I'll give that a go right now. If I find a suitable photo, I'll insert it below.

Well, what do you know? It worked! I can't figure out how to create a caption for the photo, but that's a small problem. At least, now I know that I can add photos to my blog postings.

A quick bit about the poster. Back in the late 60's, this poster hung on a readerboard outside the Post Office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was what really drew me in to talk to the recruiter. and my subsequent enlistment in 1968. It's still my favorite Navy poster of any. It speaks volumes. I've always been a real romantic about going to sea, reading about the sea, and especially Naval warfare in the Napoleonic era, and Naval history in general.

Well, I've about exhausted this topic. The rain is still coming down as hard as it was earlier. We don't even have TV. We have Shaw satellite. Everything is pixilated or we've got a window on the tube that says "ATTENTION Receiver has lost satellite signal. Signal re-acquisition is in progress. Please wait." So, we'll wait.