But first, the… cuteness?

While doing my morning rounds, I got this rather serendipitous shot of Shop Towel.

That piece of kibble looks like it’s stuck to the tip of his tongue. 😁

I know the girls named him Shop Towel, since he’s clearly Tissue’s dad. I still think of him as Sad Face. Just look at that poor beat up face and sad, sad eyes! Even his body language, as he moves around the sun room, looks heavy and sad.

Having said that, he seems to be integrating into the colony rather well. Since Judgement got fixed, there has been a dramatic drop in cat fights. They do still happen, but seem more due to being startled, than active “I’m going to kill you” cat fights. He now spends much of his time, curled up on the platform set up in the sun room, sleeping. When I bring the kibble out, I put some right on the cat bed or warming mat he’s always on, so he doesn’t have to jump down and battle it out with the swirling mass at my feet. Given how he looks, I imaging getting up and down may be uncomfortable for him.

Any time I’m in the bathroom, I always look out the window to check on the cats. Often, I’ll see a big pile of cats on the platform, above the heat lamp, and Sad Face curled up and asleep on his own, on the other half of the platform. In the last few days, however, I’ve started to see other cats curled up with him! I wasn’t able to get a picture, but just day ago, I saw Patience with his chin draped over Sad Face’s back. Last night, it looked like there were two or three of the smaller cats, curled up around him.

Five years, he’s been showing up at our place and causing trouble. I managed to sneak up behind him while he was eating and pet him once last summer, and it’s like he’s a whole new cat. We’re now able to pet him regularly, though he still has his nervous times. We need to get him comfortable enough to be able to get him into the big carrier. That’s kept in the sun room right now, with the door open, so they can all be used to going in and out of it. I usually find Judgement sitting on top of it when I go into the sun room!

Yesterday, my husband let me know he had a package in, so after I did my rounds, I headed to the post office. It turns out he got more RAM for my new computer!

Which brings me to my odd computer issues.

I was having insane problems using Windows Explorer. It kept locking up on me. I couldn’t even browse through the folders to get where I needed to go without it locking up. With some things, like uploading trail cam files, I was at least able to right click on the Explorer icon in my task bar and select the trail cam folder from the “recently used” choices. That allowed me to at least be able to make a new folder for the files I needed to upload, but it would lock up and I’d have to end task and start over. When I opened it again, the new folder would be there, at least. When it came time to renaming the folder, it would lock up again, half way through typing the new name, I’d have to end task it, and start over. Then I’d have to do the same thing, over and over, to access the trail cam files through the card reader.

Last night I downloaded and installed the Advanced System Care recommended to me, along with their Driver Booster. I did scans, updated drivers, etc. This system came with only 8g of RAM and we thought that might be the problem, but the ASC actually has a little widget that continuously shows how much RAM is being at any given moment.

By last night, I concluded, it’s not the RAM. I don’t have problems with anything else. The one almost exception was when I tried to test out my video making software. When it came to importing the files – which is basically through Explorer – it would lock up. It was so impossible to work with, I had to give up until we solve this problem. I haven’t even installed my photo editing software yet because, what’s the point?

So there is something wrong with our Windows 11 Explorer.

When the new RAM came in, though, we gave it a try. There was one 8G card, and he says RAM cards should always be paired, so he took out the original one and installed the pair of cards he got. I now have 16g of RAM and I still have 2 slots left. If we get another 8g card and use the original card, we could potentially double my RAM again.

I don’t think that’ll be necessary for the things I do with my computer.

Unfortunately, it made no difference with Windows Explorer. I went to upload the trial cam files, and started having the same problems.

Now, one possible issue is that I’ve been trying to upload these to the new external hard drive that computer repair place backed up my data to. One of the changes in Windows 11 is that the “pictures” folder is now in One Drive, and stored in the cloud. I really don’t want that, but navigating through USB on anything is always going to be slower. So I tried navigating through my local disk and got to the “saved pictures” folder under users. It did fail on me once, but I was eventually able to create a new trail cam folder and upload the files. It seems to me that the photos are now being stored both in my computer, and in the cloud, at the same time. As I went through the files and deleted what I didn’t need to keep, I got a pop up warning me that if I deleted the files, they would no longer be accessible by other devices through the cloud. Which I’m just fine with.

What I also found was that, as I added or deleted things while going through the files and it seemed to lock up again, if I left it alone long enough, it would start working again. So, if I made a new sub folder and it would not appear, I ignored it and did stuff on my phone, until suddenly the folder would appear. I’d then rename the folder, nothing would seem to happen, so I’d work on my phone again, and eventually it would appear. So while Explorer still locks up on me completely, it also seems to just be incredibly, ridiculously slow in responding.

I don’t know what to make of it. Everything else is working fine. Not that I’ve done transferred or installed much from my old computer’s back up data to the new machine, mostly because of this problem.

I wonder if I dare install my photo editing software now? All I’ve got is a very old version of Paint Shop Pro that I’m happy with and, for my uses of it, have no need to upgrade.

Hmm. My husband just came over and suggested I get a different file manager to try, and see if it works any better.

I think I’ll do that, next.

The Re-Farmer