December 19 - almost Christmas!

Well, Christmas is closer than it has been but the actual Christmas season has been underway for quite a while. We managed to decorate this year, something we really haven't done in years past and it looks nice. I should do it every year but -------

Anyway, I'm still plodding along with both the chihuahua painting and the apple still life. Fortunately, the dog wasn't necessarily to be a Christmas gift since it was commissioned long past the time I could guarantee Christmas delivery but I had honestly hoped to get it finished by now. There has been some intense pain in my right hand when gripping even something as light as a pencil or a paintbrush that has made painting impossible. I've been resting it and taking aspirin and it's slowly getting better. I didn't even write here in my blog although typing doesn't seem to bother me. Anyway, I refuse to let the ailments of the old (someone dared suggest that it might be arthritis!) invade my body and make art so difficult! I've waited way too long to be able to paint again so expect a finished chihuahua and apple still life very soon!

Better Late Than Never!

I so wanted to update this blog on a regular basis but life doesn't seem to work on the same schedule you lay out for yourself, does it?

I know everyone does it, but I want to rant a bit on MicroSoft (could it be that maybe they deserve the rants?) I cannot understand why they offer updates that totally screw up your system and especially mess up their own products!

We only have slow, slow dial-up internet service out here in the boonies so I spent about 4 hours downloading some non-critical updates from MicroSoft in order to try their latest beta of Expression software. After I got all the updates downloaded and installed, got the software installed, I found out that Expression was merely a 30-day trial and not a free download after all! Not only that, but some software I already had on my computer now refused to work or kept giving me error messages! The worst thing was that my email no longer worked! I use Outlook Express and I kept getting error messages with it saying that it had to close! Finally, I had to totally uninstall the Expression beta and do a system restore to get my other software working again.

No wonder everyone rags on MicroSoft - this was not some insidious worm or virus that a competitor or smart-alecky kid produced and which entered my system because MS forgot to plug a security hole. This was the company's own programmers writing updates and software that conflicts with other software that they've produced! Now, how smart is that?

I believe that Apple products are waaaay overpriced, but if they work as well as their loyal supporters say they do, my next computer may well be a Mac!