New laptops, goodbyes - Day 474 (Yr 2, Day 107)

Asheville, NC

I had forgotten to mention that both mine and Mitch's laptops finally croaked.  Mind you, they once belonged to the company I used to work for -- purchased about 8 years ago.  About 4 years ago, they bought a few new ones and gave one of these older ones to me to replace my very old desktop model.  They also had another older laptop that they had no use for, and being old and obsolete, it wasn't worth anything to sell, so they gave that one to me to take home.  When the company closed, they let me take my laptop with me rather than try to sell it (being 7 years old by then, it was also pretty much worthless to sell).  Well, in our home downsizing and moving into the RV, we decided to keep only one tower computer, which is being used as our server, and use the 2 old laptops.  Over the past year, they have been slowly dying.  Mitch has "band-aided" both several times (by which I mean doing surgery on them -- taking them completely apart with screws and parts all over the counter -- or spending hours and hours formatting and reformatting).  Last week, both machines decided it was time to go to computer heaven.

Of course, this put me in a somewhat difficult position since I need my laptop for work.  Mitch was able to remove my hard drive and connect it externally to the server in order to copy the files I needed.  This machine doesn't have Microsoft Office, so I have to use and convert from a different set of programs (Libre Office).  Not happy about it, but it's a good temporary solution and gives me the ability to continue to work.  I should mention what my current setup looks like.  I use my laptop on the dinette table, but am currently hooked into the server machine, which is a tower that resides inside the cabinet next to the fireplace.  The "monitor" is our 42" flat screen tv.  I have the coffee table turned sideways (parallel to the fireplace) with the table top lifted to its full height to form a desk, and am sitting on a dinette chair.  This makes for a fine desk, although I'm not happy about it being in the middle of my living room!  Oh well, another test in patience and a reminder to count my blessings that at least I have a computer to work with for now.

Meanwhile, we found a very good deal online for new laptops (actually a combination laptop/tablet).  The giant box arrived yesterday.   Believe it or not, Mitch doesn't want to open the box yet!  He says there's still way too much to do first before we can get them up & running (first he needs to repeat what he did with the hard drives to remove all the files we need), we need to wait for a new router to arrive that's compatible with these machines otherwise we won't be able to access the internet, he needs to do file migrations, run a junk remover and do some other installations.  In other words, we can't just take it out of the box and start using it.  At least not the way he feels we should.

On another note, Barbara & Larry left this morning but we said our farewells yesterday afternoon.  I had a "tour" of their 1995 Blue Bell bus which was just amazing on the inside!  I also discovered that Barbara makes jewelry which she sells wherever she can (not for a living; just for fun and spending cash).  I was in need of a new black & white necklace to replace the one I lost, and she happened to have a beautiful set (black & silver necklace and matching earrings, for $18, which I bought).  They live in N. Ft. Myers so if we ever get back to that area, we'll be sure to visit them.