By the end of the month, we were suffering from cabin fever. To shake it off, for fun we drove up to the villages of Lavardin and Trôo and the big town of Vendôme, on the banks of the Loir River (not the Loire, but the smaller Loir). If the weather had still been bad, we wouldn't have gone up there, an hour or more north of Saint-Aignan. I took this photo, among others. Stay tuned...
Back to the present: There are two major events that are probably going to affect my blogging pattern this week and next. For example, today I'm getting a new laptop computer (if Amazon doesn't let me down). It's a model I don't know much about. It's going to take me a week or so to get it set up and functional. The one I've been using for the past dozen years has developed an annoying screen flicker. I've tried downloading a new video driver, but it hasn't made any difference. From what I've read, you can't easily replace the video adapter in a laptop. Anyway, it might be a hardware issue, and the machine is old enough that I'm ready to move on.
A week from today, we are scheduled to have a fiber optic connection installed in our house, replacing the ADSL connection we've had since October 2003. We are not sure how it will be installed and configured, but we know what we want. Some negotiating will be required. We're just hoping the new technology will be a lot faster than what we have now. I remember hearing people talk about fiber optics when I worked on the editorial staff of a computer magazine in SF back in the late 1980s and predicting that we would all have lightning-fast fiber optic connections for internet in just a few years. "Just a few years" has turned into just a few decades.
So glad to read that I am not the only one using an "antique" laptop. Sam's Club 2013. I just can't get myself to buy one here with a European keyboard even though it would be so much easier with all the "ä, ö, ü" in my native language I have to use
ReplyDeleteOur son, now 35, insisted as a teenager that we get fiber optics back in the early 2000s, and we were among the first to do so when it became available. It was a game changer - so much faster and essentially no down time which we experienced regularly with traditional cable.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure whether or not we had a fiber optic connection in LA, so I checked. Only about 20% of locals have this available per the internet. If it doesn't say we do, then I'm guessing we don't.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we had fiber as an option in SF — we left there in 2003.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, Ken, Last Friday I experienced a 'flicker' on my image during my french zoom class. I closed my connection and restarted but to no avail. Since then, I found several instructions on the internet which I was overwhelmed by and I had decided to take my computer (5-6 years old with finished Windows Prof 7 so no updates from Microsoft and recently Google has told me no updates through Chrome (which I use) either. If you have tried to replace the driver or decided not to with all of your expertise - I will just replace my computer, too. Do continue with my zoom meetings, I merely hit the video button and show my icon so until I get a replacement I can still attend my classes.
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