Home!

Our Denver adventure is complete: we arrived home a little while ago.

Laundry is started, mail has been reviewed, telephone messages have been listened to and the air conditioning has been restarted. It is far too warm & humid to sleep yet but I do look forward to crashing in our own bed very soon.

More news tomorrow.

Home!

Our Denver adventure is complete: we arrived home a little while ago.

Laundry is started, mail has been reviewed, telephone messages have been listened to and the air conditioning has been restarted. It is far too warm & humid to sleep yet but I do look forward to crashing in our own bed very soon.

More news tomorrow.

Denver photos!

I've just finished posting the photos of our recent trip to Denver to my web site. Click here for the photographic joy!

Denver photos!

I've just finished posting the photos of our recent trip to Denver to my web site. Click here for the photographic joy!

New Laptop!

As mentioned previously, this past week in Denver made clear to me just how pitifully slow and annoying my old laptop has become.

Since this recent revelation, I've been looking on uBid.com and eBay.com for potential replacements, even bidding on a couple of models. Primarily, this laptop would be used for travel so I was looking for small and light: big LCD screens aren't useful to me. I want good battery life, a hard drive no smaller than 60 GB, a DVD playeer, built-in wifi (802.11a/b/g), at least 512 MB of RAM (1 GB preferred) and a CPU which can chug along at better than 1 GHz.

Today, I found one at a nearby pawn shop, next door to the 7-11 which I was visiting to purchase Coffee Crisp bars for cuyahogarvr.

I now have a Sony Vaio VGN-S460P. It has 512 MB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, the required wireless built-in facilities, DVD+/-RW and a 13.3" screen. All for $600 USD.

I've cleaned up the hard drive, removed a tonne of applications which Sony prefers to ship (any traces of AOL, etc.) and am now downloaded a mess of Windows patches. In a few more minutes, I'll have Norton Antivirus installed too; then I can start adding my preferred applications.

Whee!

New Laptop!

As mentioned previously, this past week in Denver made clear to me just how pitifully slow and annoying my old laptop has become.

Since this recent revelation, I've been looking on uBid.com and eBay.com for potential replacements, even bidding on a couple of models. Primarily, this laptop would be used for travel so I was looking for small and light: big LCD screens aren't useful to me. I want good battery life, a hard drive no smaller than 60 GB, a DVD playeer, built-in wifi (802.11a/b/g), at least 512 MB of RAM (1 GB preferred) and a CPU which can chug along at better than 1 GHz.

Today, I found one at a nearby pawn shop, next door to the 7-11 which I was visiting to purchase Coffee Crisp bars for cuyahogarvr.

I now have a Sony Vaio VGN-S460P. It has 512 MB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, the required wireless built-in facilities, DVD+/-RW and a 13.3" screen. All for $600 USD.

I've cleaned up the hard drive, removed a tonne of applications which Sony prefers to ship (any traces of AOL, etc.) and am now downloaded a mess of Windows patches. In a few more minutes, I'll have Norton Antivirus installed too; then I can start adding my preferred applications.

Whee!

Square Dance Calling Ce Soir

My gig with the Chesapeake Squares was a little more interesting than usual tonight.

Being so soon after the recent IAGSDC convention, many of the regulars were staying at home to recuperate or were still in transit back from Denver. We were 15 minutes into the night when we finally had enough dancers for a square and those who did come guaranteed an evening of Mainstream level calling.

While the building's heating system has been turned off, the air conditioning systems are not yet active. Thus, we were sweltering by the end of the first tip. By general agreement, we had longer breaks between tips and I endeavoured to use slower selections from my music library. I also went easy on some moderately athletic calls such as 'swing.'

The hall did have one working floor fan so the square (yes, singular) migrated to its vicinity at the back of the hall while I was set up on the stage at the front. No problem: I just turn up the sound a little. Except, of course, that it made it much harder to see which girl was with which boy and in what order.

Because of the heat & humidity, we knocked off 10 minutes early. In all, I think I called only three tips instead of the six to seven I try to fit in. Ah, well... we do what we can with what we have.

Square Dance Calling Ce Soir

My gig with the Chesapeake Squares was a little more interesting than usual tonight.

Being so soon after the recent IAGSDC convention, many of the regulars were staying at home to recuperate or were still in transit back from Denver. We were 15 minutes into the night when we finally had enough dancers for a square and those who did come guaranteed an evening of Mainstream level calling.

While the building's heating system has been turned off, the air conditioning systems are not yet active. Thus, we were sweltering by the end of the first tip. By general agreement, we had longer breaks between tips and I endeavoured to use slower selections from my music library. I also went easy on some moderately athletic calls such as 'swing.'

The hall did have one working floor fan so the square (yes, singular) migrated to its vicinity at the back of the hall while I was set up on the stage at the front. No problem: I just turn up the sound a little. Except, of course, that it made it much harder to see which girl was with which boy and in what order.

Because of the heat & humidity, we knocked off 10 minutes early. In all, I think I called only three tips instead of the six to seven I try to fit in. Ah, well... we do what we can with what we have.