Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We're still here having a good time at Gulf State Park.  Been an exciting week for us.  We got in two movies: "The Book Thief" & "Saving Mr. Banks".  "Saving Mr. Banks" gets 4 thumbs-up from us.  We continue to find a half dozen or so ants every other day or so.  We spray and wait for the next "showing".  We've got a good barrier around the outside of the trailer, so they can't leave.  Donna continues to ride with the "Folks-with-Spokes" gang.  We also got in a meal at Steamers.

Our weekly draining of the truck's fuel/water separator still shows we've got nice, beautiful, light-blue diesel (reminds me of aviation 100LL) - just like the last 5 years.  Also, we've bought all we're told we need to change out the hydraulic fluid (in the reservoir) for the trailer's legs & slides.     May try that tomorrow.  May not.

We went to the Gulf Shores United Methodist's contemporary Christmas Eve service.  Nice service.  Some of these people down here can sing.  Did a great job on "My Heart is Bethlehem " - as good any any studio backup singers would do.  Christmas dinner/potluck was held at the state park's activities by a local group.  We volunteered as "servers" and ate at the noon setting on Christmas Day.  Probably had 80 or so at the noon serving.

There's a reason Microsoft is doing poorly as a company.  We've confirmed it's Windows 8.1.  This change over was not something we did willingly. Our laptop came apart Monday night...that's right...it came apart. You could still use it, but it looked like something you'd see on a Borg ship in a Star Trek Next Generation episode.  The screen (top) literally came apart and broke at the hinges.  Not something you'd really want to use on a day-to-day basis.

So off we go, Tuesday, to Spanish Fort to mingle with the last-minute, Christmas-present-buying crowd and get a cheap laptop.  Unfortunately, only Windows 8.1 is available for us Windows users.  You get a "quick start" guide and an owner's manual for the laptop.  Nothing on how to use Windows 8.1.  If you're use to a iPad, you may like Windows 8.1 or at least may be able to use it.  If you're familiar with an iPhone or with an Android smartphone, then you're kinda familiar and can make your way around.  If your a Windows 7 user (that'd be me), then welcome to hell!

Luckily for us, we've experienced a previous laptop and external hard-drive failure, so we've learned to keep everything duplicated and on thumb drives/external backup drive plus any software we may need with us.   You lose Windows 7 functionality, so I've had to learn to work around that.  About half of my installs quit about midway through the install process.  You don't know why.  You can't check the internet connection to see if it needs - and lost - internet connectivity (that is you can't check to see if data is transferring.)  You can't tell if you need to do something like answer a question from the install wizard.  You can't pull up two drives side-by-side to manage files or move pictures from your smartphone to the computer or external hard-drive.  Our printer and scanner work, but the computer sill doesn't list them as available hardware when these two items are connected to the computer.  Loading iTunes was another nightmare.  And this is just the second day...  Oh, and after a day of "playing with the computer", Malwarebytes found 189 items of malware on the computer.

We plan to go get me a Windows 8.1 for Senior Dummies this afternoon.  At least that's the plan.

Enjoy your New Year's!  Later, David