Making Oopsies

moar funny pictures
Ed's folks left town before dawn this morning. Ed found a note on the TV screen when he got up stating they would be back tomorrow. I suspect their sudden decision to leave had much to do with it being the first full day without Sweetie. (see yesterday's post)

It was Ed's day off, though we didn't know that last night. He has to work Saturdays and they want him to avoid overtime so he needs to take time off on one or more of the weekdays but he seldom knows before he either calls in or goes in when that will be or if it will be a whole day.

So we had one of our rare days of hanging out together. Almost like a married couple. Though it feels more like playing house. There may be light at the end of that tunnel though. Dare I speak it without jinxing it? He's confident we'll be able to swing the moving expenses by January or February. That's what has been keeping us here for at least two years now--the cost of moving--first/last/deposit on a place; deposits on utilities; furnishings; kitting out a kitchen and so forth. We're starting from scratch having left our stuff in storage when we escaped the Silicon Valley after the tech bubble popped in 2001 and were then unable to keep the payments on it up.

Anyway, today he finally set me up my own desktop on his laptop. He is encouraging me to start learning my way around it because it may become mine after the first of the year. As I've mentioned here before, my four year old laptop is getting crotchety. I broke a hinge on it in June, the battery is only holding a twenty minute charge and the touch-pad is wearing out. His is less than a year old and he's quite happy with it but he's hankering for a custom built programmer's machine which he can get for a third the cost of replacing mine with a machine the equivalent of his.

But even if we can't swing a new one for him if mine gives out, I'd still need to know my way around his as we'd be sharing it the way we shared mine for three years. When it comes to tech I'm a tentative learner at best. I'm nervous as a cat in a dog kennel around new hardware and software.

So tonight when Ed went to bed he left his laptop in the front room and I moved mine out as well. The are set up on either side of his mom's PC for which he had asked me to monitor the installation of an upgrade to its virus protection. I know my way around that computer as I used it for nearly two years before acquiring my laptop in late 2005. I bet a picture of my current workstation would look pretty funny. Especially the two mouses (mice?) on the one mouse pad. Something went wrong with that installation on the PC and I couldn't decipher the geeky explanation so I left the error message box on the screen and called up a mah jong tile game on it which I stop and play for a few minutes every now and again to rest from typing or to contemplate.

I haven't opened Ed's laptop yet though. But I probably will after I get this posted. It's not as straightforward getting to my desktop on it as it is on mine as he has a dual OS--both a Linux and a Window's Vista--and it's set to automatically load the Linux unless you press the down arrow in time to choose the Windows. That's tricky for me because of my vision issues. I have to have my finger on the arrow key before I press the power button because if I take the time to look down at the unfamiliar keyboard I'll miss the moment the list shows up and I have five seconds to change the option.

And that's just the beginning of the minefield of oopsies in waiting. My new Vista desktop is on default settings which means 9pt fonts and tiny title bars, scroll bars, cursors and menus. Before I can do anything else on it I have to optimize that for my vision issues meaning 12-14pt fonts and at least doubling the size of the other things so I can see them without putting my nose on the screen. At least this is something I've done before when I did it for my Mom on their new Vista in December 2007.

Well, sitting here talking about it is not going to get it done.