At 7AM some morning I rolled out of bed to do an update on Tropical Storm Elsa and the little office machine wouldn’t turn on. So I went out to the living room and the big machine had forgotten it was a computer, so I dusted off the Toshiba laptop that was still a Win 7 box because it didn’t have the power for Win 10.

I went back to the office machine and extracted the data disk, which was hotter than hell and stuck it into my stand-alone USB disk port and managed to retrieve the files necessary for both hurricane and Le Tour posts.

I ordered another refurbished Win 10 box, upgrades for the Toshiba, and today a new power supply for the big box. The power supply is the only major component I didn’t change when I installed the new motherboard.

I will not dwell on the lawnmower problems other than to say I don’t want a lawnmower because I don’t want a lawn. Grass fertilizer is a major source of algae blooms in coastal waterways in Florida. We will not discuss the SUV that was parked on the front lawn of the cats’ house for four days as it was topped by a tenant bringing a 30+ foot demasted sailboat to strip and dismantle. The weather has sucked; the computers have sucked; the lawnmowers have sucked.

OTOH, Honda has given me a “personal assistant” to help me get the airbag inflators in my car replaced. I haven’t done it because the service department of the local Honda dealer is peopled by jerks and the next nearest dealer is a 120 mile round trip if I’m lucky, It used to be 70 miles but then the barges broke loose during a storm last year and damaged the southern-most bridge to Pensacola.

I did get a new keyboard (Velocifire) that I really like. It has mechanical switches, is backlit, and has a rechargeable battery. Now if I can get a consistently working computer to go with it….