Where have I been?

I've been pretty busy for the last week, using all of my spare time to set up my new Surface Pro 4. No time for blogging.

I am trying to simplify my life. In the walkout basement, next to my soap room, is my "office," if you can call it that. I have an older computer with a tower, a BIG screen, a nice wireless keyboard and two printers. Yes, I do often need two printers. One prints double sided without having to raise a finger, the other is the backup workhorse when I have a huge pile of printing to do and limited time.

Then there is the laptop, that I really didn't use much until I discovered how handy it was at the market. Instead of going home with a list of questions posed by my customers, I now just walk over the the laptop and google things. I'm not proud. I explain to my customers what I am doing, as well as giving them some tips to get better information when they do it themselves. And then I discovered that if I put my business apps and data files on the laptop, they were always with me. On slow days at the market, I could catch up on entering information into my accounting software, and since the desktop is really nicer, I could go home and use it, but have it talk to the laptop to get to the data files.

I should have done it with Outlook as well, but I am so afraid of messing up the files. Lots of history in those old Outlook folders, and I can find all sorts of things in that program. However, I am prone to missing meetings, or being very late for them, because I haven't gotten down to the basement to open Outlook and get organized. So I use the internet to open emails at the market, and then have to send a copy of my responses to my Outlook account so I have a record of them when I get home to the desktop, and then there's my Droid - both email accounts are on it as well, and I'm confused - VERY confused!

I have been looking at the Microsoft Surface Pro, as it supposedly could take the place of a laptop. Could it work? Really? One machine, small enough that I could slip it in a handbag, with all of the stuff I have on the desktop and the laptop! I was pretty sure that the Pro 4 would hold all I needed to transfer to the new machine.

I bought one. I moved all of the data files from the laptop over, then started with the desktop files. I RAN OUT OF ROOM! Say what? There were a lot of duplicate files, which I have since taken care of, but I hauled it back to Best Buy with the intention of buying a bigger one, or else just getting another laptop, which would have a whole lot more storage space on it for the same money.

The first thing the salesman did was hit the "RESTART" buttons on side-by-side machines, one a super-fast laptop, the other a tablet (which is what Surface Pro is). The tablet - well, it's almost like turning on a light switch. Push the button, put your face in front of the camera (that's my password) and it's running. My middle name is Impatience, so I said, okay, I need to go one higher on the Surface machines. Oops! Got a thousand dollars to spare? No way!

Then he showed me this tiny little slot into which one can slide a SIM card - like you would put into your digital camera to get more storage. For only $59, it doubled my storage space, and now I have a D: drive, which I kind of like because I can separate the files from my laptop and the files from my desktop. It appeals to my neat and orderly mind.

Back home with the Surface Pro 4, insert the SIM card, and put everything from the desktop onto that tiny little card. In my desktop, I had installed a second hard drive, just for data - one drive for applications, one for data. See, I really do have a neat and orderly mind which I was very thankful for when I had a major crash. Well, sliding a SIM card into a slot was sure easier than taking the cover off a tower, screwdriver in hand! And I can buy more of them for storing archived MSMoney files and old pictures.

Getting Outlook loaded was a bit dicey and required a call to AT&T, but all is working well. I think I'm finally there! I know, I know, it took a whole week, and I am now going to have to put up with all of the Mac people saying how much easier it it with a Mac, but I saved about $2,500. Not bad for a few hours of work crammed into my spare time, and I learned a lot!

Here's a pic of my new little baby. And BTW, if I think I need that big monitor and the ergonomic keyboard, I can hook this up to them in a nanosecond and I'm ready to roll. I'm happy.

Surface Pro 4  Follow this link to see more of what she'll do.

Here she is!

The cat with attitude is living in a box on the file cabinet.

My new dog has been renamed - from Figgy Pudding, which is really cute but unisex, to Fred, definitely a male.  Since he moved in after I lost Ayn Chee, a female, I was constantly referring to him as "her" and "she."  So Fred helps me to remember he is all boy!

Unfortunately the boy in Fred, or perhaps just the dog in him, led him to chase the cat, Holly Berry, at their first meeting.  Holly Berry has not forgotten.  Being a cat, she probably never will.  He leaves her alone, doesn't even get close after many reprimands, but like I said, she has not forgotten, nor forgiven.

A little history on Holly Berry.  She was one of six kittens born in our garage at First Unitarian Church.  When I arrived at church one Sunday a couple of weeks before Christmas, I was greeted with, "Oh, Susan will take one."  Oh, yeah?  I already had three dogs, a cat and a parakeet and I had no intention of taking on another pet.  And I said so.  An hour later, I left with a 15 ounce kitten tucked in my pocket and headed home.  She was obviously strong willed, as I found out on the ride home.  She wanted to be free to run around the car, and even with several stops to put her back into a box I had found in the car or back into my coat, it was a losing battle.  She would have her way.  By the time I got home, she owned me, as cats so often do.

She took over the other cat, an adult male.  She would straddle his back, tiny little kitten, and wash down Smokey's head and ears.  And he let her.  There really was no arguing with her.  As for the dogs, there was no problem, no growling or chasing, they pretty much ignored one another -- except for Tashi.  Tashi was the newest in the household, probably less than a year old (strays don't come with paperwork so the vet was guessing her age), and she didn't want to hurt Holly Berry - she wanted to mother her.  She, a fifty-five pound dog, carried this 15 ounce cat around in her mouth.  They became close, and played together often.  I found one pic of her sleeping with my beloved Ayn Chee.  So I guess they did more than tolerate one another over time, but they were never a close as Tashi and Holly

Ayn Chee and Holly Berry getting along

About a year after I lost Smokey, someone asked me to take a cat because they were moving and couldn't take him along.  It took Holly Berry about a week to run him off.  Never saw him again.  He was twice as big as her and scared to death of her.  One night he slipped out the door, and that was the last of him.  Holly had won.

Our household has lived in animal peace - until Fred.  It has been over three months, and Holly Berry now lives in a box on top of a four-drawer file cabinet in my office.  Occasionally she crawls into the insulation around the foundation, since I didn't put a ceiling in the basement.  So I see those eyes staring out at me from this pile of insulation, just above her file cabinet condo.  She comes down to eat, to go outside, and if Fred is in the kennel at night, occasionally she will come upstairs in the night, licking my hand, lying on my chest, establishing her right to be there - so long as Fred is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!

Yesterday morning I was working in the soap room.  I heard Holly jump onto the desk that is beside her file cabinet condo, then she wandered into my soap room, where Tashi lay at my feet.  Fred was absent.  She walked right up to Tashi and nonchalantly kissed her.  And then, of course, she went back to the box on the file cabinet.  The message was loud and clear - Tashi is acceptable, Fred is not.

She obviously still loves Tashi, she has not been declawed so can protect herself, and Fred truly leaves her alone.  What is her problem - other than that she is a cat?  Exactly once, she has come upstairs to the bedroom when Fred was sleeping in the bed.  She did the hand licking, hung around on the floor for a few minutes, then she was off.  Perhaps there is hope.  She really needs to get over this!  I feel bad that she is living in a box.  Yeah, I know, it is her choice, but I want her back in the fold.  Sigh . . .

Here's holly in a box of papers in my computer desk.

I may not be crowing tomorrow, but . . .

My trusty Canon MP640 is a real workhorse.  For a little and fairly inexpensive printer, it does a lot a things.  It is a little slow, but it prints on two sides - without having to remove the finished prints and flipping them.  Imagine my consternation when I got my Epson and found out that "prints on two sides" meant that instructions for how to flip the paper popped up when you were done with the first side!

My mighty Canon can be filled with 25 lb. paper, the printing for 30 of my two sided flyers for the Walkerton Dairy Herd Association  (see more here) or my skin care products (more about that here) programmed, and then I really don't care how slow it is, because I can shower, or make a batch of soap, or load the dishwasher while it is doing its thing - it prints two sides without any further input from the operator.  It even senses when you have new ink cartridges and it lets the ink dry a little longer before it does the second side.  Good machine!

Today my color was off -- I use a lot of brown in my printed material, and it was lavender/pink instead of brown -- and even though it hadn't said to clean the print heads, I did it anyway; but the yellow just didn't work.   Then I got a printer error message.  I have already changed the print head once.  They are expensive!  I went out to the internet to see if I could find a good cleaning kit so I could save $75.  One site said to remove the print head and reinstall and sometimes that would clear it.  I did.  Oops!  Now it wouldn't print at all!!  Perfectly blank paper, even after it made all the sounds of printing.  I reinstalled it three times, figured I had damaged something and would have to buy a new one.

I found another site that showed you how to clean the head by putting it under warm running water.  Say what?  Would that really work?  Well, what did I have to lose?  I rinsed it until the water ran clear, dried the contacts thoroughly, reinstalled it, and voila! it printed again.  Yellow still wasn't good, so I ran a cleaning cycle, and all is well!!  Who'd of thunk it?  $75 for a print head, $8 plus shipping for a cleaning kit, and this cost me a couple of paper towels.  :)

Go to this site (video on how to clean a Canon print head) to see it done if you have a Canon with a sticky print head.

I can only hope it is still printing tomorrow morning.  Soon I'll be printing greenhouse labels, can't do without it.