Christmas is over for another year

The leftovers have all been eaten and the fridge has been restocked with my sort of food, all the extra sheets and towels have been washed and we are almost back to normal although Parsifal is missing D1 a little bit and has become super cuddly as a result.

Today I spent some time with a very old friend whom I first met at St Anne's College in North Adelaide where we were both residents and both studying physiotherapy.  After graduation we shared a flat for a year before I left for Sydney where I married a Western Australian and she married a man from Victoria.  She has a son living in Mandurah and is over here staying with him and his family over Christmas.  She is going home the day after tomorrow.

We are having it super-hot at the moment but the air conditioning is very efficient and tomorrow I will get back to spinning the last skein of my Rincewind/Melange yarn.  I have started knitting the front of the vest (already finished the back) from the Ankh-Morpork/Cardamom spinning but I have yet to decide what I will knit when I finish it.  D1 gave me a book of 'top down' knitting patterns for Christmas and my Noro book of patterns arrived a couple of weeks ago ... so many patterns  -  so little time!

I am still struggling with a few things on Windows 10  -  mainly my inability to get back to the Tiles when I close a site; it always takes me back to Desktop.  At least I have finally persuaded it to remember to open in Tiles when I turn it on.  Probably it will eventually do as I want it to  -  I suspect that I have a Beta version (probably everyone who has downloaded it for free has the Beta version) and Microsoft is still tinkering around the edges.  I now have my "Tips and Tricks" book which is bigger and more comprehensive than the 'Teach Yourself Visually' book.  I am looking at it all as a way of exercising my brain rather than as a frustrating struggle to understand the new format.  Hopefully I will manage to keep one step ahead of my clients.

An update on google Friend Connect - Please read ... !

An update on Google Friend Connect

Posted: December 21, 2015

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

Happy Christmas to all my readers

I'd like to wish a very happy Christmas to all my readers  and to thank you all for sharing in my life for the last year.

Christmas this year is going to be interesting because our usual split family celebrations have sort of fallen through.  Until now I have held the Christmas Day family gathering and my ex-husband and his wife have done boxing Day and the following year it is the reverse.  However, this year all our children, grandchildren and whatever have spat the dummy and D3 is holding Christmas day feasting and I will still be doing Boxing Day with my Ex, wife and family doing their own thing  -  the kids there have also spat the dummy so it is Christmas all over the place.

It has meant that my Christmas has been spread over three days which I was finding a little daunting but D1 is over from Sydney and is being a huge help so I am just sort of wandering through the preparations.  At the moment I am melting the chocolate for a triple chocolate mousse for tomorrow, we will do the potatoes for the potato salad tonight to let them cool and the family insists on a sausage sizzle  -  which is easy and everyone enjoys it.  Roast Turkey and Christmas pudding is a bit much in summertime in Perth and to have to endure it for two days running is a bit much to expect.

D1 and I did the food shopping in double-quick time with her wielding the trolley and me gathering the necessaries.  I made the mayonnaise last night, the chocolate mousse will be done this morning and the rest can be done this evening and tomorrow morning.

Bless the person who invented dishwashers ... :)

Happy Christmas and I hope that the next year will be even better than this year has been.

It is only six days to Christmas

D1 is arriving this afternoon to stay for an indefinite time; indefinite because she has not told me how long she is staying.

This year D3 is holding Christmas lunch at Chez D3 and as it is my turn to do Boxing day I am going to have to do most of my preparations on Christmas eve which could be a bit of a problem since Multiplex/Hawaiian has seen fit to furnish me with a rather minimalistic refrigerator and it is supposed to be mid-summer here.  All of my kids and grandbabies seem to have things which they can not eat  -  gluten, dairy etc which makes then a bit hard to cater for and I have had to abandon the traditional trifle for Chocolate mousse and gluten-free sausages since they usually opt for a sausage sizzle fortunately as my fridge would never fit a turkey and a ham.  D3 is going to drop in today with gluten-free sausages which she buys at a Saturday Morning Growers' Market and they will go into my even smaller freezer.  I have to make a triple batch of chocolate mousse  -  nine raw eggs  -  yuk!

Yesterday the pony-tail palm which I ordered from the local nursery (Bunnings do not stock anything so exotic) arrived so I rode the train for one stop to Swanbourne and collected it.  It was bigger than I had envisaged and, poor thing, was totally and completely pot-bound.  I had checked that it was non-toxic to cats but Parsifal greeted it as though he had not seen any food for a month and began on it straight away.  Having re-checked its non-toxicity to cats I let him rip .  Since it is to be a permanent feature of my balcony I decided that I couldn't cage it for the rest of our natural lives.  He ate his fill and then threw up in a most spectacular fashion all over (fortunately) my horrible tiles where it was  easy to clean up.  I have planted it out in a tallish pot  where the babies can not eat out the heart but only the peripheral fronds.

My three aspidistra plants seem to be rooting so that is two out of the three non-toxic shade-loving plants now in residence and I have decided to pass on the spider plants as they really need a hanging basket and I am not sure if the Body Corporate would be happy with me putting hooks on the roof of my balcony.

Sort of Sorted

Since I use this blog as a diary I just want to record that I now have this computer, and Windows 10, up and running to my satisfaction.  No doubt there will be issues to be sorted in the future but I now seem to be able to do everything I was able to do in Windows 7  -  except create shortcuts on Desktop.

There is still the minor issue of my email and whether I should use MS Outlook or Office Outlook.  There is no doubt that MS Outlook is simpler and that Office Outlook is unnecessarily complicated for the general home user but MS Outlook is, after all, just a souped up version of Hotmail.  However, it synced my contacts list and I have had to manually enter addresses into Office Outlook as well as that it shows email headers in very small font in the inbox.  The other gripe I have with Office Outlook is that, on my version at least, there is no Deleted Items folder so that when I delete an email it is gone forever.  There is a way of searching for lost emails, I know, and I haven't explored it.  Instead I have created a Deleted Items Folder and move the items I no longer want to this folder where I can delete them or restore them as I see fit.  MS Outlook has a Deleted Items folder.

Since all my emails come into both programs it is really a matter of what I am in the mood for but it has been good to finally try to come to terms with Office Outlook even if I never use it in the future.

D1 is arriving tomorrow from Sydney and will be spending Christmas here.  She has yet to tell me when she is going home again but I suspect that it will be 27th December to rescue her cat from Boarding School.

Progress, upgrade or have I just been a bit slow to catch on?

For the last week I have been really bugged by Windows 10 asking, whenever I tried to close a page, if I wanted to close all tabs or cancel.  There was no option such as 'close current page' or anything else helpful  -  and mostly the back button was inactive.

Yesterday I got tired of the default colour for everything being green (not my colour) so I changed it to a watermelon pink and suddenly my back arrow works and I have found tabs which I can close without going right back to desktop and having to start all over again.

Furthermore I have finally discovered how to work Favourites.  To put something in is simple and straightforward and like the old operating systems but I have been unable to find out how to access them again.  I eventually looked it up in the book  -  the last option in most cases - and found that one has to click on the 'hub' which is a set of little lines to the right of the Favourites star, after which a tab will drop down with another Favourites star and if you click on that you will find the lost favoured sites. 

I have never used Favourites very much before because I could set a shortcut onto my desktop but that, so far, is not an option.  I still have the shortcuts from the Windows 7 version on this computer but some no longer work and I am going to have to go through them and delete the dead ones ... but not yet; things keep on changing here and I can only assume that those of us who chose to download Windows 10 at the beginning are being used as guinea pigs and that we are using a Beta version.  At the moment I never know what I am going to wake up to but some changes could be on account of my fiddling and tweaking.  The latest to come down the wire is that Control Panel is to be phased out and the Settings will be taking its place.

I have been asked to possibly give a workshop on computers for the Retired Physiotherapists Group and so far haven't worked out how I could manage it with no internet connection. I had decided that if everyone who had a laptop or tablet  brought them to the workshop and was prepared to have those who had none looking over their shoulders I could go through Control Panel which would cover a lot of the skills and knowhow needed to use a computer but can only hope that it will still be there in mid-2016  or things are going to get difficult if some of my audience still has Windows 7 and some have Windows 8.1 or 10.

Getting back to normal?

I have reached a stage with my computer where I can use it fairly normally.  Certainly there are things which I still need to work out and things which I still have to search out  -  so I have finally found a use for OneNote although I am still using the blank parts at the beginning of my Windows 10 'how to' book to jot down helpful notes to myself.

So my life is getting back on stream as far as it can with Christmas in two weeks.  This morning I girded up my loins and clipped the cats' claws which were sorely in need of attention.  Parsifal is easy; he knows that he will get some special treats afterwards but Poppy is a different matter.  She hates having what would be her right-handed ring finger clipped and squeals and bites when I try to clip it.  It is, of course, the claw which grows the fastest and sharpest and it was starting to catch in fabric which probably increases the discomfort.  She has to be muzzled to prevent her from bitting me, poor baby,  so I did both back and front claws  -  all four paws  -  so that I could delay having to muzzle her again quite so soon.  I have left a request with the Vet to examine that claw in depth next time she needs her teeth cleaned and she is anaesthetised.

The COTA Christmas get together was held two days ago  -  a buffet held at the Visability headquarters.  It is the only time when we all get together so I took the opportunity to tell the Tuesday receptionist who does the computer class bookings that I was getting familiar with Win 8.1 and Win 10.  Then Himself drove me back to Chez Self where I collected three rooted aspidistra leaves and three Rosemary cuttings.  Parsifal is especially interested in the largest of the aspidistra plants because it waves around in the wind but so far he hasn't attempted to eat anything.  The aspidistras, if they take root, will do well on the balcony since is gets very little sun.  Hopefully it will grow and flourish. 

Disasters and Resurrections.

I am still spending an inordinate amount of time trying to work out the ins and outs of windows10.  My little Surface Pro 3 tablet seems to be much simpler but that it probably because there is not a lot in it.  That was the reason I used it for my first successful stab at downloading Windows 10.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I decided to put my snail  Villanelle onto my website.  I think that there is still a spare page where I took something off but left the page so that the links would still work, with the intention of putting another poem there at some stage when I actually got around to writing something.  So I searched for the poem where it should have been amongst the poems which I email to my daughters to let them know that I am OK.  D2 had asked for snail poems but they are in short supply on the internet and, since I wanted to write a villanelle I wrote one about snails.  And it was not there  -  anywhere.  I looked through my other four computers in case the poem had synced but no luck on that one. 

And then, yesterday morning there is was  -  exactly where it should have been in the folder I had put it in.  This has been happening with Windows 10  -  it suddenly found Family Tree Maker that way  -  a whole day after I had downloaded the FTM program onto this computer it suddenly synced and not only is my Family Tree there but all my other trees including one I did for Himself showing the family connections of Francesco Laparelli (look him up on google, Bing or whatever).

Having found the snail villanelle I rolled up my sleeves to work out, once again, how to upload to my web page, only to find that my 'hub' had disappeared.  It should have come through with My Documents which is where it was on my last computer but it was nowhere to be found.  Once again I looked in my other computers and then started to go through my flash drives  -  and there is was.

Techie has said that he can talk me through reconnecting the old computer with the new and I really thought that I was going to have to resort to that but so far, so good.

I am sort of sorted out on my new computer.

I spent today re-compiling a spreadsheet for my dividends.  I was a bit dismayed that I had lost it but then remembered that it was out of date with many alterations as I traded and then I remembered that I had totally messed it up and had intended to re-do it anyway.  So I felt better about it and I have entered the dividends from the last six months and it all seems to be working.  It was, in fact, good because I haven't done a spreadsheet from scratch for ages and it is something which a lot of the COTA clients want to learn.

Luckily I had already printed off last financial year's data so I organised and sent off all my tax stuff to my accountant .

Then I contacted Avanquest Software, gave them the details of my recent download of Family Tree Maker 14 and they immediately sent me a link to download it again  -  so I did that.  Then I did a search for the FTM data download which Techie put onto a flash drive yesterday but couldn't find it and so I went to Ancestry.com to see if they would sync my tree.  They refused on the grounds that they didn't recognise the computer despite the fact that I was logged in.  So I started putting in my family back to my great-grandparents and suddenly it synced itself so that is up and working.  I started doing that on the grounds that if Ancestry.com synced from my tree I should be able to sync back to my computer and that is what happened.

And I managed to do an hour's spinning  -  but it was a fast day so I didn't have to stop to eat  -  just coffee on the run.

Finally ...

I have a new computer, new keyboard, new mouse and windows 10.

They all arrived today and most of what was on my old damaged computer has been transferred across.  The only thing which I couldn't find was My Documents but most of them had synced to one of my other computers so I copied them onto a pen drive and loaded them.  Missing is my spreadsheet with my financial stuff but since I keep everything for the seven years demanded by the Tax Department, the current ones will be easily replaced and it will probably be good practise to re-do the formulae.

It is not as easy or as clear-cut as my little Surface Pro tablet but I now know how to get around most of the difficulties and being forced to use Windows 10 without the touch screen will (probably) be good for me.

Himself came over yesterday and we had lunch and went shopping for Secret Santa presents (unisex and costing no more than $10).  There is no doubt that men do not like to shop; he grabbed at the first thing which I suggested instead of inspecting and comparing prices as a woman would have done.  But it was a nice day and I enjoyed it. 

I can't really say the same for today  -  never sure what I was doing and still believing that once again the computer would reject the download without even Windows 7 to fall back on, although the old and new computers were  working in tandem to install most of the information from the old one to the new.  But it seems to be working and I have created a recovery drive in case it all goes belly-up again.