Stuff that just like happened

 

It's difficult trying to be productive and that not least as with having to replace two computers I have a few issues to resolve along the way like a bit of the bank of images I built up for the next few months of the blog went as one machine just died from the hard drive up and I failed to back those images up and the chromebook that works with issues only has one USB socket and the mouse has to go there as the trackball is broken so it can be used with it.

What that of course means I can't put a spare USB memory stick in to copy over the files and maybe transfer them to both machines which is pretty annoying actually so I'm going to have to wait until a USB hub comes and hope that will cure that bottleneck.

We are making some progress on the christmas front with some cards organized ready to write and all being well I should be at an informal pre-christmas party the weekend before Christmas so I'll have to sort my party dress out.

I think we'll pause just after then as things will be a bit busy and resume just after Christmas.

Time together or time alone?

 Modern life is certainly very different  compared to that some of us can recall having had one form of entertainment cease to work properly and require replacement this week in this post done exclusively on the Chromebook.

I think one of the big factors has been that increasingly we are living separate lives even when we say we're living together say as partners  or with our families, often in isolation in not just our own mental space but actually increasingly our own physical ones.

It's by no means uncommon to hear of families may text members about either meal times although increasingly that's no longer shared or to have snacks fixed for them ready as they emerge briefly to return in minutes.

When I was growing up the television was seen by some as threat to their way of life, taking away from things people did together such as playing games or just talking to each other with us becoming just passive consumers of that coloured tube in the corner of the room.

People didn't anticipate we'd talk about what we were seeing to each other, on the subway or at school or work so in some way you can look at it as a 'golden era' like that family in the picture, that's how we lived including for some of us the wonders of colour that was like going to the movies, 'cept it came to you as huddled around it.

Today though we consume our YouTube, NetFlix an co wherever we happen to be and you may be watching that as someone's chatting away or playing a game which is really cool but as people we need some US time as well as ME time to catch up with each other, talk about what we've seen and done, maybe gain some perspective too.

I think it matters for all of us to try to get our modern lives into some kind of balance, sharing time with each other as well as with watching or keeping up with our friends online. Don't you?

The move away from the desk top begins

This week I got the laptop that I'd been saving up a few months for as again most of you know my desktop computer is really quiet old and was struggling not so much with self contained programs but with running media rich websites through browsers, lacking short term RAM memory and a hard drive smaller than many peoples USB flashdrives! 

It also  - hurrah! - has built in WiFi connection so I can use it anywhere.

My first move was to remove Compaq's boring grown up business background with one of boys playing on  it because this machine belongs to a little boy closely followed by setting up a few nicely set out Favourites with my sites minus some of the rubbish the old computer had acquired over the years with dead or paused sites.

I so hate having to sit in one tiny room to post away especially on warm days.

For the more computer minded it has 4GBs of RAM meaning when the antivirus is running, it doesn't stumble on the programs running and a big 500GB hard drive for music and photos.

Because it uses Windows 7 Home Edition for Europe it has a browser ballot so I elected to return to my old favourite Firefox as I find it easier to customize plus has some very good extensions and so for the curse of Adobe's lousy buggy Flash plugin hasn't stricken it which I'd rather do without ideally but a number of gaming and video streaming sites  do require it.

I bought a new multi machine license for the cd to digital music ripping program dbPoweramp I use because it was nearly 4 years old (you can convert to practically any know file type by adding the relevant plug in) and the new program gets cover art which is ideal for players that have colour screens as you copy it. 

Actually the multi upgrade license was cheaper than buying the program outright for one!

 The only thing I need to install is my all new image editing program from Serif Photoplus X5.

While I'm at it, I just changed my google account email for this site as I realized - my brain could be better - it was linked to an ISP that I'll soon be free from and in the new blogger interface this is much easier than it used to be.

Computing in 2010

It's July so I tend to spend as much time as I can outside rather than being chained to this big Tower PC trying to type out an entry over a flaky internet connection.

I've had this computer a bit, since around October of 2006 actually when the old one which was running Windows 98SE died and this runs the stable but cartoonish XP to which I now have a pink Hello Kitty keyboard, mouse and mouse mat.

This is my current computer wallpaper which is very cute and that I have that visible as my family come in the room this computer lives frequently shows just how much a sissy gurl I truly am and the extent that difference is acknowledged.

Of course my computer plays a part in this life not only by publishing this blog but in how Mistress cajoles, teases and dominates this sissy, exploring and pushing every button bring out and lock hur sissy nature. 

A message from the operations centre

It may be 2009 but even if in my workplace the rooms I see people in have small laptop computers for looking things up for them, I'm sat here with an old school base unit, the one I've had since October 2006, a keyboard, mouse and 15 inch CRT monitor.

I do have some things such as plushies and that in the back office plus from time to time I play with children while dealing with their parents but this is where I do my age regressing in apart from my bedroom.

My computer is downstairs to help avoid any issues with overuse at night when obviously you're meant to be sleeping  and also to reduce clutter in it.

Since the issues that lead to my nervous breakdown a few years ago, outside of work I've been stepping back from full on adulthood and tend to wear more girlish clothing when regressed and playing.

Twelve

Sometimes I feel like writing about a part of my life as if it was in the 'modern era' rather than being based very much in the past using more of what we have rather than what I had back then as in many ways our lives had more in common with the sixties and much of that continued through to the eighties.

You see computing was for most of us was very much offline with programs run from machines and only business had limited web content such as Prestel which we used in the travel business for offers and booking and generally we used things like word processing and limited gaming at the end of the eighties. In the seventies you pretty much had to type on to stencils and use a duplicator to run of copies of the school magazine.

Today the new 12 year old me would us my smartphone to take the pictures  that we'd edit using a photo editing program before adding to with text to a web page of our school magazine which would be on a part of our schools site.

We'd read it using our laptops or on our smartphones so when any of us were poorly or in hospital we'd have instant access to it.

In much the same way we'd send texts to each other enquiring about each other and what we thought of Miss Penrose's Geography class and Mr Smith's new car or add pictures when we're away which like sending a postcard but it's a image we took ourselves.

That's what the new 12 year old me would be doing today.

Where I had a old fashioned wooden wardrobe, in this era I'd of had a walk-in one with a lot draws to keep socks underwear etc in which didn't really have being given just what I needed for that day.

Another thing about twelve was the differences between my feminine gurl side and many of my peers were showing more with many of them in long trousers at school and jeans while I was okay with wearing short trousers but would loved to had gone to school wearing a skirt.

Twelve too was when I started to realize I was still very much that child compared to my peers who always appeared to be the 'older' girls to me even though we were the same age because they had matured in  away as that girl I hadn't even though this was just before the major developmental changes.

Ideally I'd of flown up from Brownies to being a Guide too

I don't think you can have a successful new future unless you feel comfortable with your own past.