Monday, May 12, 2008

Stymied [update]

This will be a rare spontaneous post from me. Usually I work 'em over thoroughly, rewrite them at least a couple times before posting, but all my plans have gone awry.

I will never buy another PC. Ever. It's Mac next time. This [bleeping] computer has (again) developed a host of problems. My work plans idled, I said to myself, OK, I'll do a blog entry I've been meaning to do. That's when I discovered that I can't upload pictures either.

But I can still scan! So for lack of anything better to do until a solution -- and that might mean taking it in to the shop -- here's a blog entry I did not plan, an assortment of scanned photos to ... um ... ponder.

Two pictures that I couldn't find for My Unillustrated Robert Goulet Post have turned up.
Me (in white) and my cousin Emily (in blue): The not-very-matched set of little girls our paternal grandmother -- who had two boys -- had always longed for. We're about 11 and 12 months old, respectively.



And a later pairing. 1959 is a guess. We look about 5 or 6. She got to have a ponytail, while short cuts were my lot in life. I'm still rebelling. Our plaid dresses do not match precisely, but you can see the effort at coordination. Whenever our clothes had a theme like this, it probably meant that our grandmother had bought them for us.


In unrelated scanning: Snakes are fire hazards??

Why did I take this picture? I have no idea.

Wait! Guy I was dating had picked the flowers for me. That's it.


Around the same time, I took this one as kind of a humorous still life. My unwashed dishes, spring 1988. I stood on the opposite countertop, my head nearly against the ceiling.


Last but definitely not least, my dear little cat Alpo, 1995, lounging in my Wilmington, NC, apartment window, as I look up from the walk below.

I'm afraid that's all the entertainment I can provide for now. This miserable machine may be in the shop after tomorrow. If it weren't so filled with toxins I'd be sorely tempted to dump it into the marsh.


---

An Alpo Update - Sherwood in a comment mentioned that Alpo looks like a tuxedo. On looking back at my initial post about Alpo, I see that he does look rather like one in both pictures. Neither gives a good view of his true colors, which were really dark tabby and white. This early 2000 photo shows him more clearly.

Our older daughter does share her life with a lovely tuxedo - Larry gave her an entry in the cat blog.

Meanwhile some computer problems are solved, thanks to Larry! Others persist. My Pakistani tech support friend is getting very tired of me, but hasn't yet run out of things to make me do. I tend to gravitate toward all-or-nothing solutions and hadn't really thought about Linux, but I may need to look into that!

5 comments:

ronnie said...

These are great pictures! I especially like the kitchen still life. And who knew snakes were fire hazards? That makes snakes on a plane even worse than I feared...

My laptop is screwed, too, and I empathize. I know I need to get a new one, but it seems as freaking complicated as trying to choose a cell phone plan or buy a car, so I keep putting it off. Then there's the heartbreak of losing a setup of dozens of software programs you'd lovingly tweaked for years so it was just right, and starting from scratch with Windows and Office. (Well, for me, anyway. I'll always be a PC girl, having never had any problems related to the Windows software... it's always the hardware that kills my computers...)

Good luck with it.

Anonymous said...

Linux anyone???

Nice pics, btw.

Sherwood Harrington said...

Will Linux work on a broken laptop, Dann?

Snakes aren't typically fire hazards these days, but back in the 80's, more of them used to smoke.

Alpo was a tuxedo kitty! Special by definition. And I loved the other scans, too.

My broken hardware is my slide scanner. Actually, not so much broken as it is filthy. Its innards have accumulated a lot of fine particulates over the years through the slide slot -- something that I should have expected, given that the device shares inside air with nine fuzzy quadrupeds. Having gotten quotes on its cleaning that approached the cost of a new one, I've decided to get a new one. (Back when I was a single renter, that's kind of the way I'd clean drapes and/or venetian blinds: by getting a new apartment.)

Anonymous said...

Did you mention your cousin did not walk (she rolled) until she was 3 years old. Emily

Nostalgic for the Pleistocene said...

That's right!
And when the doctor tried to test her responses by pushing a penny across the table toward her (she was supposed to pick it up) she simply pushed it right back toward the doctor.
Several times, according to the story i heard. 8~)