BZ’s Druid cowl and analog sword
My wife and I have a pact.
She stays away from plants, because she has what some call the proverbial Black Thumb. Most plants she touches die. I handle the plants at the homes.
Conversely, I am the family Druid, the Luddite. I am as tech-savvy as a pair of worn socks in your dresser drawer. I stay away from the technology and let her handle the bulk of it.
Recently, for example — on WordPress, which powers this blog — I uploaded one single, solitary plugin. I’ve loaded plugins before on WordPress but this plugin somehow crashed my entire blog about two weeks ago. I couldn’t even access the dashboard in order to discover which plugin was responsible.
Luckily, my tech guru is Robert, who is the I.T. expert for the blog consortium of myself, Texas Fred, American & Proud, The Right Handed Cowboy and The O Word.
Robert was able to suss out the problem, un-crash everything, and bring my blog back up. God bless him. But absent his intervention, my digital world would have remained shattered.
That said, I’ve had — like most all of you, I suspect — damned near thousands of computers to date. And today I updated the one at my wife’s house in Ghetto Centrale.
Right now I’m typing my last post, for a while, on my Sony Vaio 15″ laptop. It’s been a great machine, not a hiccup to it, ever, with a great keyboard. I really like its keyboard, illuminated as it is in white, with a crisp strike, and very responsive. But it’s no Toshiba all-in-one, like the 25″ screen I have at the cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. It’s a remarkably sharp touchscreen with no cables or wires or confusion. It has a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. I, however, dislike touching screens because I have to reach. And you have to clean the screen.
Today, as a replacement for the Sony Vaio, I purchased a 27″ Samsung Series 7, with an Intel® Core™ i7 processor, 10 gigs of RAM and 2 TB hard drive. Another all-in-one with a power cord and that’s it.
This will be my new confuser down here in Ghetto Centrale, at my wife’s house.
One niggling little problem: it has Windows 8 loaded. And, from what I’ve seen, I don’t like Windows 8. You cannot get any new PC without Windows 8. But apparently you can revert back to something similar to Windows 7 and the desktop with the START.
For shite’s sake, I don’t want to re-learn some new OS every damned 6 months.
Thoughts, anyone, on my purchases or Windows or PCs or Macs or desktops or all-in-ones or tablets or anything else digital?
BZ
If that asshole Gates had any sense of decency he/they would rework XP and re-release it. But hey, wheres the billions in that?
Nowhere.
BZ
Good luck with that. The last, and only, OS I mastered was punch cards.
Wow. Okay, I think you have me beat.
BZ
I’m older than dirt.
Fortran on IBM punch cards at the local state university was a step up from Apple Basic. I’ve dabbled in a few other programming languages, and have learned every Microsoft OS since Win 3.1 (moved on to Linux a few years back). I think MS has two teams writing OS software and they take turns releasing new code. The problem is that one team gets it mostly right and the other sucks. Win3.1worked, Win95sucked. Win98 worked, WinME sucked. WinXP worked, Vista sucked. Win7 works, Win8 sucks. Maybe the next one they release will actually work.
First, Chaplain Tim, thank you for visiting, and thank you for your comment and weighing in.
Unfortunately, if you purchase a PC, you purchase the current MS OS. I’m told that I can sort of go back to the “desktop” view, and that’s probably where I’ll start.
I was supposed to pick it up today, but they haven’t created my backup disks yet.
And BTW, I would be curious — if you are still a military chaplain — on your take regarding religion in the military. My understanding is that Christianity is not viewed kindly.
BZ
First- No problem, happy to do it. You do keep my skill level sharp though…
Second, with your “Tech savyness” I suggest you get a Mac. You’ll save money and time in the long run and the frustration of Windows at your age could kill ya! LOL
Good luck with whatever you choose.