Finally published on April 01, 2007

March 23, 2007 (11:41am)
40º F, Bright sun, SSE wind 4 mph.

Good morning,

I started this a little after 5:00 A.M. so I could get a couple of pictures from Brenda and Arnoud’s wedding included. However, they would not upload to the blog for some reason. I have been fooling around with it more or less since. No luck yet, but I do have one more thing running at the moment, so I still might be able to get them in before I finish this. Time will tell.

Yesterday was kind of a goofy day. It started out really great, receiving the pictures from the wedding. It did take me some time to get them transferred from Margriet’s gmail account to this computer then onto the flash drive. Eventually it all did come together, without too many funny words. So far we have only gotten two pictures, but they are great. They were taken during the ceremony inside the government building. Bram and a couple of his buddies were also included - wearing black derby hats, black sweat shirts with the word "Kroew" on them (meaning crew). Guess they were part of the wedding group and looked like some miniature mafia guards or some such to me.

In the phone conversation with Brenda, she was disappointed that we had not sent the a family Bible. Instead we sent a plaque. The thought of a Bible had crossed our minds, but we don’t have the written in Dutch here, so gave up on the idea. We also thought about waiting until the next time we got over there and then picking one up. Brenda thought an English version would be just fine. So ..... yesterday we ran to Green Bay and picked on up. Margriet has been practicing how to do some fancier script than she is used to so she could put in the inscription/dedication. I gave up after a couple of practices on my doing it. The old hands don’t work as they used to. Anywho, the necessary script is in place and the box is wrapped, ready for me to wrap and get ready for mailing. That should be accomplished this afternoon.

While in Green Bay, we also picked up a couple of minor office supplies and found a restaurant to try, "Old Country Buffet." Every time we had been near it in the past, it was either too soon before or too late after time to eat. My Dad would have had a ball there as he really liked that style of restaurant. Of course then it was a bit cheaper. We usually don’t have that big of a meal at noon, but it was too hard to ignore when the price is the same, no matter how much you eat. The food was excellent and seemingly an endless variety. Since we are old geezers, it only cost us a bit less than $5.00 each. Not bad we thought and ate our fill - probably plus a little bit. We will keep it in mind for the future. The place was mostly filled with folks our age. Others looking for good food at a reasonably reasonable price.

March 25, 2007 (10:33am)

Good morning,

I’ll be dad-gummed! The above was saved when everything on the machine went wacky! Somehow the graphics driver disappeared and the screen looked like it was in "Safe Mode," but worse. Finally, yesterday afternoon, I called Onno to pick his brain (I had run out of things to pick in mine) and seek his solution. I didn’t know what the problem was and I thought I had tried every fix in the book, without success at a repair, but great success in raising my frustration level.

After asking me to bring up a couple of screens within the settings, he had the problem solved, but I still had to correct it. He continues to amaze me with his knowledge, even though he says doing it by remote control over the phone is not a good way to do it and he is not good at it. Boy I can’t wait to see his good! I still do have some things missing on this, but they are minor and I can live with them for now. I will, hopefully, get them back before too long.

Eventually I did get the driver reinstalled, but it was difficult. Had to use the download from the web. Almost everything worked on the computer worked, but the screen only showed about ¼ of the normal screen information in very large type and poor resolution, just about invisible, and I could not access all of the page. Made for difficulties going to the next step, &c. I was able to accomplish the task, and raise my frustration level went even higher. After a restart, every thing was cool again.

Guess I could blame this on Brenda, but probably won’t. I still don’t have the pictures uploaded to the blog. Kind of afraid to try it again. They really are good pictures too. We will be getting more I am sure, but they have other things to do at the moment - like celebrate their wedding.

The upshot of this whole deal, is putting the notebook into service online. It has never been online until yesterday. There are many, many, updates for it. We have had the notebook for 2-3 years, so a lot has changed. I think there are close to 100 updates available, after the first major updates were in, I am now starting on the rest, but in small batches. As soon as all of the things needing updated are updated, I will copy/transfer all of the programs, &c. to the laptop. If we ever need to, we can just plug the laptop in place of the PC. With this machine messed up, it also messes up Margriet’s ability to get online too. She is not happy about that at all! Grumpy would be a really good word I think.

Being so frustrated Friday night when I went to bed, I decided when I woke up that something was going to happen to get the problems solved. I had not talked to Onno the. So we went to Green Bay to see if I could get a "router" or some such to connect the notebook in a LAN here. Onno put in a LAN card on this machine and assumed I had to do the same on the notebook, but there was no way I would tackle that on my own, if it was possible. So .... I asked at the store and the only solution was to connect one computer at a time to the phone line. I know there as a better way, but didn’t know what. The tech sold me a patch cord to connect the two machines so they could "talk" to each other - off line. After getting home again is when I called Onno. Didn’t ask him about the LAN, but Margriet pointed out to me the laptop already had a LAN card/program already installed! Came with the machine. So .... as soon as every thing is up to snuff, will set it up. Might be a day when the PC will be replaced by the notebook completely. I really started to look at the capability of the notebook and found it has many more features than I thought. Have to do more looking at it.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><