Temporary refocus

He sat on the top step, his battered old hat slightly down over his eyes and a bit cockeyed as though he had thrown it on his head without thinking. His right shoulder was in contact with the weathered concrete support to the doorway as he leaned against it. An old, somewhat threadbare, coat covered his upper body with two of its buttons missing, giving him little protection against the chilly breeze. Yet his eyes were sharp, not missing anything on the street or pavements. They shifted this way and that, as though he was expecting someone or something to appear.

I stood a short ways off looking at him and realized that something similar was happening to me, I required direction and was waiting for it to come into view. Just hanging around expecting another person to decide when an operation takes place is not my idea of a good time. Having completed rewriting part of my blog software, I needed something worthwhile to keep me busy during that period. A refocus is required and there may be a number of options available.

Which way to go?

Forget about anything which requires lot of work on my computer. My old desktop one blew up and I bought another one, but Windows 10 is a mess so the guy who put Windows 7 (W7) on my laptop did the same for the PC. The trouble is it had Windows 10 on and some of it must have been retained. Everything was ticking along okay until I noticed the new browser, Microsoft Edge, and thought I'd see what it was like. All updates to W7 had been disabled in my admin so that I would not get cluster tips (a geeky thing) ruining every move I made. Edge went into the admin, turned Windows Update on and did so in the background. All of a sudden nothing worked right, it won't even let me install an anti-virus or firewall.

I use CCleaner to get rid of a lot excess stuff and speed things up. The updates had banned the use of it, some versions it refused to install. Rewriting software requires a clean machine, so now I have to do a disk cleanup in Properties. SRWare Iron (glad I installed that first) has to be opened and clear the browsing data, refresh the screen then shut down the PC. After a few minutes boot it back up and things are okay until I changed a bit of code, then I have to repeat the whole process 20-40 times a day—CCleaner did much better job in a few seconds. May just trash the PC and use my little laptop to work with now that my blog software is up to date, have to do that on the road anyways. I could just use the PC for Photoshop and watching movies etc.

Traveling any distance is also out of the question. Watching a movie on my desktop is okay as well as doing any mock ups for my blog, other than that I will begin moving my computer work to the Lenovo laptop. If, while on the road, anyone wants a site done, then I will complete it on the laptop and upload to their server. The same applies to a brand and site. Only awareness sites will be done, no e-commerce ones, just plain websites (my software will be used for that, not WordPress).

Hikes will mainly be done just for exercise locally and in the nature park a few stops down the line. Photographing wildlife is limited to deer and anything else with fur (not rats) because that's about all I'll find within a decent range—forget birds unless something extremely unusual.

Blog posts will take on a somewhat personal nature (for instance this one), but only if unusual.

Update: 28 February 2023
Just learned my operation will take place tomorrow morning (Wednesday). It went very well, better than expected :D

. . . . . . .

So it's down to a few wildlife photo's, watching some movies and exercise.

Feb 27, 2023