New laptop arrived this morning, all 500GB of it. Yet another tough, resilient Acer Aspire (I hope) but a very much different model. Most of the plugs (USB connections, mains lead, HDMI cable, ethernet plug) go in the back where you can’t see them, and isn’t that going to be a recipe for disaster in a confined space?<\/p>\n
It has a British keyboard (so I’ve ordered some keyboard stickers) and a British lead on the power pack; which is what I wanted. But trhe charger isn’t an Acer one, but a cheap aftermarket Chinese one; the kind that you buy for \u20ac2:99 off eBay. At least though the lead to the power pack is unpluggable so that one can acquire European and North American leads for it. Unfortunately, it’s not a type of lead that I have around here.<\/p>\n
And here’s a thing. Many of you will remember me losing a portable hard drive when I was in Brussels 2 years ago. All of my 3D files – tons of the stuff, much of which can’t now be replaced – went with it and started something of a panic that I have still not quite resolved.<\/p>\n
But there I was, cleaning out the drive on the 1st Aspire – the one with the broken scren and smashed keyboard that I’ve been using just now – and Lo! And behold! Here are all of the files, and every last one of them too, in all their glory, sitting in a clearly-labelled “TEMP” directory where I must have assembled them when I copied them to the portable drive. I blame old age myself.<\/p>\n
But this series of good nights sleeps continued again. Once more, I was well away with the fairies during the night, doing some shopping at a farm shop, patiently waiting my turn in the queue. Finally, it came to me and as I stepped forward, one of the previous customers pushed her way in, handed the assistant a birthday card and started to chat. I had quite a few words to say on this subject, as you can imagine.<\/p>\n
So after my early breakfast, I cracked on with the radio programmes and I’ve finally finished despite the numerous distractions. Terry came round for a chat and to make plans for a future project, someone rang up (and I can’t remember who it was now) and I was having a long chat with someone on the internet.<\/p>\n
Not only that, the glorious day today saw 180 amp-hours of surplus solar energy into the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. That took the temperature off the scale (ie over 70\u00b0C) and with the water in the solar shower at 33\u00b0C, I added 5 litres of hot water (that took it to 39\u00b0C) and I had the most glorious solar shower. First for a while and now I’m ready for anything, even Radio Tartasse tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n
Now I’m backing up all my files and when it’s finished, I’m off to bed. <\/p>\n
