Where It Used To Be!

There is an empty spot under the office table where my PC tower 'used' to be.  There are now disconnected leads everywhere and the monitor is blank!

The PC has gone!  A new one will be built and be available possibly by Tuesday!  It all happened quite suddenly but in hindsight there were warning signs which happened a few days ago.

One sign was when an anti-virus scan took almost 3 hours instead of 45 minutes to complete.  There were other times but only recently when the PC would freeze during startup and other times when copying files over would take an eternity.  Then two hours later it would copy across extremely quickly.

Most likely this was the cause of me reformatting the PC several months ago as some of the symptoms were very similar to what I experienced this week.

Then the pop-up sign left began to appear on the screen and everything became clear! The PC's hard disk drive was about to fail.  The sign was warning me that there was a strong possibility the disk drive would crash and any information it contained would be lost.

A replacement drive would cost around $150 but that money could be put towards not only a new hard drive but a whole new computer!

Hopefully the new PC will have both the power pack and the video card from the former PC.  We will just have to hope the new PC motherboard has a slot which will take the former video card.  However it was argued that what I wanted to do with the PC really didn't require a dedicated video card.  We will wait and see.

Trish's old laptop has been pressed back into service.  I kept it pretty well backed up from the old PC so what I am typing on now is virtually the same as if I were working on the PC.

I enjoyed a second day at the cricket yesterday.  It was again quite warm and my face is showing the effects of some sunburn.  The cricket was great.  I spent much of the time chatting to another spectator and we relived and shared our old sporting stories.

We have had some breezy days recently and this plant from next door has caused us havoc with the pool.  When we get a northerly wind (which is almost daily in the heights of summer and every other day this time of year), the pool is 'destroyed'.  This plant is currently 'seeding' and the endless stream of airborne seeds finish up in the pool.

Even if they fall on the pavers, another gust of wind has them in the pool.  And they float on the water's surface, rather than sink.  If they sank I could vacuum them up but they float.  Surface tension then gets them to stick to the pool's edge at the water line.  We have been constantly sweeping the pool's wall to dislodge them and for them to float into the skimmer box.

But they are so light the wind usually blows them back up to the end of the pool.  Trish swept the wall edge 5 times on Tuesday.  In the finish and despite not getting on famously with the neighbour (they have a menacing dog which can intimidate us as we walk up the sideway if we have forgotten it is there) I had no other choice but to approach him about it.

He trimmed it all back yesterday!