Oct 27, 2023 — Suaveolent Sempect

Hey! That’s my own photo. One of the last hydrangea blooms we have at the moment. And it’s been cold enough recently — near freezing at night — that I suspect it won’t last.

Welcome to the end of yet another week.

The big news this week is that I have fully moved over to the Windows computer. The old Ubuntu machine is stuffed into the closet for the moment, and will probably sit there for six months (or more) before I decide the migration is complete.

Mostly, I am happy. There are a few oddities, though. The only thing that I have to worry about is a very occasional display issue. I run with two monitors and once in a while — for reasons I do not yet understand — both screens turn all white. After a second or two the window that was active returns leaving everything else on both monitors still white. If I then move the mouse around and it goes over another window, that pops back into place, along with the entire desktop. I think. Nothing about that makes sense, and I haven’t even seen it often enough to fully characterize it. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Another weird thing had to do with selecting groups of words, but that was a Firefox specific issue. In fact I had written quite a few paragraphs about the problem before I discovered that it is not an issue in Chrome. That prompted still more digging which led to a deeply buried configuration setting in Firefox that fixed it.

I know, I haven’t described the issue, so (briefly): when selecting whole words Firefox was also selecting the space after the last word you selected. That’s fine for editing text, but it’s awful when inserting hyperlinks.

It’s kind of cool that there is a configuration setting to fix it, but it took a fair bit to find it.

In any case, the new (tiny) computer is totally quiet, takes up a lot less desk space, and gives me everything I need. So long as the occasional display issue doesn’t get worse and is eventually resolved by some future Windows update, I should be fine. It should be noted this computer runs Windows 11, which appears to be no one’s favourite version of the OS. I don’t see the kind of vitriol applied to it that Windows Vista used to get, but there are plenty of complaints about stability and features.

Such is life, I guess.

Now if only I could do something about all the wires:

• System Unit: Power cord (to a wall wart transformer) and ethernet cable
• Monitor 1: power cord and HDMI cable
• Monitor 2: power cord and display port to HDMI cable
• Scanner: USB cable and power cord
• USB Mouse
• USB Keyboard
• Outboard speakers: power cord and audio cable

That’s literally a dozen different cords, and I didn’t include the phone charger, the power cord for the WiFi access point, and probably five other things.

I could go with a wireless mouse. In fact I have tried it already. Twice. I have two different wireless mice and neither works well with the new computer, or with the old one for that matter. Both are ancient, but work just fine with my Chromebook. Alas, they get… stuttery — if that’s a word — when used with either the Windows or Linux computer. Mouse movement isn’t fluid and I don’t know why. Go figure. I could try purchasing a newer cordless mouse — perhaps even one that connects via Bluetooth, but at the moment I don’t know if that would be a waste of money or not.

Some might suggest getting a wireless keyboard as well, but I just cannot bring myself to trust those. There were all kinds of security issues with them some years back. Actually there were security issues with wireless mice as well. I suppose I should do my research though. Perhaps now — with Bluetooth connections and encryption — those issues are no longer a concern.

In other news… hmmm. Well, I spent a lot of time on the monthly community email and a tiny bit on the community association website this past week. We’re about to launch the annual program that provides help to those who need it over the holidays, and that has kept me busy. When you add in the time spent getting the computer migration done, that’s about the extent of my week.

There was more rain, and a lot of duff and leaves came out of our trees. I had to clean the driveway multiple times and the roof once. On the latter, Halloween is coming up and there will be far too many fireworks in use. I’d rather the roof wasn’t covered with flammable material, just in case.

Oh… I remember. Last week I’d had the latest COVID vaccine on Thursday, the day before I wrote the post. By the end of Friday I was miserable. I basically lost half the day and part of Saturday too. I really react strongly to those things! But that is all in the past and my system is busy building antibodies to COVID. Yay.

I guess that is all for the moment. I need to get other things done, and I just learned I am helping a friend install a new dining room light this weekend, which means I need to wind things up. Whee!

Have fun out there!