Well, sure glad to see I can still find you.
The electric company decided to swap out our meter (a digital upgrade), and in spite of numerous other survivals of power outages, the computer power supply went kaflooie, kerflop, kerpkunk, THUD! (At least I assume it was the power supply - it doesn't even turn on!) Repair estimates ranged up to a week, depending on part availability - since we both live and die by the internet, even a few days delay were unacceptable- (I mean - miss Tony's at HHW - NEVER!)
I didn't want a new unit because the cost of upgrading all my old software would be brutal; fortunately I found this puppy (a used, reconditioned, DELL Latitude laptop for $250) which should suffice for now. It has some open-source freebie software package called OPEN OFFICE which let's me open and maintain all the old Excel, Word, and Access Database files we had (I had been regularly copying important files to a flash drive, and they restored nicely; I had even made a back-up copy of our AOL Favorites files that I was able to import into the AOL software (I had saved one of those freebie intro disks I had received in the mail when we moved, and that was good enough to get us up and running.) And there went the bucks we were setting aside to replace the Livinf Room HDTV, which is on it's last legs (it is a 52" rear projection monster that's losing both it's contrast and color registration (we have green ghosts around everything!)
Of course it will take forever to ketchup!
der Brucer
