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The
weather continues to wear its white winter wardrobe. The
sun is getting stronger by the day though, and the layer
of snow is compacting, shrinking without significant melt.
Well it has been until the cloud cover arrived this morning.
However the temperature is hovering at around 0 C, and the
snow continues its metamorphosis. We have just completed the third week of the Eight Weeks of Winter Tour de Force, which ended in a flourish with the purchase of a new computer. I am quite happy to report that we are feeling no ill effect from the abrupt loss of our Tour de Force. Our spirits remain high as we are still enjoying the yellow chrysanthemum, which continues to bloom, and there remain many episodes of Northern Exposure to enjoy. And so, for the new computer, I wait, and wait, and wait. The printer shipped last week and arrived on Friday. I am very, very impressed! It is the fourth printer I have owned since my first computer, a Commodore 64, in 1984/5. I tend to keep printers until they are outdated and unusable. The printer I have been using for the last eight years is an Epson Stylus 740 with a USB connection. It has been a fussy printer, with infrequent but very mysterious complaints. I have always been able to coax it back into service. It has a new black ink cartridge in it, and I have one spare on hand. It had an additional colour cartridge in it when I got it, which I never replaced; I haven’t felt a need for colour printing, in view of the high price of colour ink cartridges. This is one of my little economies. The new printer, which will set me back $19.95 in total, is a Canon all in one. It is a printer, a scanner, a fax machine and a photocopier. The instructions say it is compatible with OSX 10.4 or above. I wanted to play with my new toy. The G4, running an earlier operating system, 10.3.9, was sitting there, waiting for attention. The software installed on the G4 without a problem, so I plugged in the Canon, configured it as the default printer and it was that easy. It just worked. That is as far as my experiment went though. The G4 will continue to use the Epson printer, and will not be networked to the new computer. The G4 will be reserved for high-security transactions on the Internet. That way I can play on the new computer to my hearts content knowing that little, if any, sensitive material resides on the machine or will be entered on the keyboard, to be accessed by unwelcome visitors, both human and digital. Today is Attila’s day off work. He has brought in the wood for today and tomorrow’s fires, and is now master of the kitchen. He is preparing tacos, which consist of tortillas baked on a baking stone, topped with a ground beef mixture then sprinkled with shredded old cheddar cheese, chopped Vidalia onion, chopped tomato, shredded lettuce and a dollop of sour cream (mine is no-fat sour cream). He is also preparing the meat mixture for a cabbage roll casserole, which I will put into the crockpot tomorrow morning. And oh yes, he has a batch of croutons in the oven, which we enjoy no end on our salads. I am doing my bit too, as a new loaf of bread is rising on the hearth. Attila was humming away to himself over in the kitchen, lyrics to a song he heard on the radio years and years ago running through his head. He caught me watching him and suddenly sang out, “Jesus loves me, but he can’t stand you.” Attila can break me up! Attila has a memory for lyrics, numbers; details of all sizes, shapes and colours. Details delight him, amuse him and provide him with a source of constant entertainment. We both laughed at the lyric, and I immediately keyed the phrase into Google to find that the song was written and performed by the Austin Lounge Lizards. We are enjoying our day of putter. |
RECIPES :: Cast Wordly Distractions  Airwaves Concerto For Mandolin In C Major, Allegro Vivaldi On The Screen Northern Expsoure Russian Flu By The Easy Chair Promised Land by Jane Rogers Weather Partly Cloudy Temp: -1.3°C Press 101.6 kPa / Visibility 15 km Humidity 66% Wind Chill -5 Dew Point -6.9°C Wind Speed WSW 13 km/h |
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