Too funny. I did a search in the WP’s Pexels Free Photos for “old computer”. I got lots of images of old people using laptops! 🤣
We opened up my computer and cleaned out the dust – there wasn’t all that much, really – and checked the fans, since it seemed to me that that was where the noise might have been coming from. They were fine.
Since I had to do a hard shut down, it took forever to reboot, but now that it has, everything is working as it was before. Slowly.
I need to clear more stuff out of my machine.
Still no idea why the computer wouldn’t shut down properly. Best guess is that it didn’t like the clean up and maintenance I did last night, and hiccupped.
On the plus side, half of the table I’m using as a desk is now much cleaner and organized!
Also, most of the “dust” was cat fur. Go figure.
It’s still -12C/10F out there, with a wind chill of -21C/-6F. I will have to go into town and pick up more cat food. We have enough for today, but not for tomorrow – and I’m going into the city the day after tomorrow for the big shop. Maybe I’ll just go to the local general store/post office, instead, and see what they have in stock. It’ll be more expensive, but worth not having to drive to town for it.
Then I need to dig around in my computer some more, and see what I can clear out. I’m sure there’s software I don’t use anymore that I can uninstall, too.
Our winter has been so very mild so far (yes, I know: on the calendar, it’s not officially winter, yet), so it was a surprise to see this, this morning.
-18C, with a wind chill of -22C!!! That is far colder than the forecast for overnight temperatures, last night!
We are expected to warm up to about -7C today. By the weekend, we are even supposed to go above 0C again! Talk about temperature whiplash!
The outside cats seemed all right, thankfully. I think I counted 33. Twenty of them were in the sun room! The smallest kittens were all accounted for.
For the past while, I’ve been getting away with doing my rounds with just a light jacket. A zippered hoodie, really. Today, it was a morning to break out the down filled parka!
Normally, when writing about temperatures, I include the Fahrenheit as well, but it’s not this time. I’m on my phone instead of my desktop. Usually, I have a temperature converter up in another tab on my browser. Can’t really do that on a phone.
I had just settled at my computer to start writing this post, when I started hearing an unfortunate repetitive noise coming out of the tower. So I shut it down.
It didn’t shut down.
I tried again.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
So I did a hard shut down.
Once I’m done this, I want to open up the case and see what I can see.
Crud.
My husband’s computer is toast. Since he tried to increase the RAM, something went wrong. Now, it won’t even boot. He thinks it’s the video card. The cheapest he can find for his machine is $700. If not the video card, it’s the motherboard. Those are cheaper. Neither is affordable. He’s been using his old work laptop. His computer is the newest one in the household, since his previous one did not survive the move. Mine is much older, and has been struggling of late. For how I use it, I knew was already needing to upgrade.
Desktop computers are really expensive these days. Even if all you need is the tower, and already have all the peripherals. Especially for a computer that can handle the graphics and video intensive uses we need. I suppose a laptop would be cheaper, but I hate laptops for general use. I’d just be hooking it up to my ergonomic keyboard and 27″ monitor, anyhow.
I’m really hoping my tower just needs to have the dust cleaned out or something simple like that, but… *sigh*
After getting back from my mother’s, I tried to settle at my computer to watch some videos while I had supper, then do a blog post. Found myself having all sorts of images and videos not wanting to load. I thought it might be a browser issue, but it was just as bad when I tried others.
The rest of the family is not having any trouble, so it wasn’t our internet. While going through my computer, trying to find a cause, I realized I had almost no storage left, and almost all of it – over 1.7 T – was taken up with image and video files! I only have 2 T of storage.
[correction: I have 1.79T in storage. 1.29T was taken up with image and video files.]
I emptied my trash, which was mostly deleted trail cam files, and I’m now transferring things to my external hard drive. Later, I plan to do some clean up and clear temporary files out. I hope that makes the difference!
I take a lot of pictures.
My daughter, however, took this one, while I was out.
Today is supposed to be a chillier day. We’ve already reached our expected high of -9C/16F Which wouldn’t be too bad – especially with how bright and sunny it is – but the wind chill brings it down to -19C/-2F The wind is just whipping around the house, too, so areas that would typically be more sheltered, aren’t.
We got a light snowfall overnight. Just enough to cover the ground. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a high of -10C/14F, then reach 0C/32F and 1C/34F over the next two days! So much of it will probably be gone before we dip below freezing again.
No surprise, that the cats were preferring the sun room to have breakfast in, rather than the cat house roof, or the kibble house!
This is 10 cats eating out of 2 bowls! There was another 5 eating behind me as I took this photo. All total, I counted 33 or 35 cats this morning.
When I was about to head in after finishing my rounds, I spotted a whole crowd of heads in the cat bed, watching me. A couple ran out as I stopped to get a picture, but I did manage to catch the runners in the shot.
I cropped out the second one that ran off. I don’t think anyone really wants to see that particular side of his anatomy. 😂 That calico in the back won’t let us come near her, but my goodness, she is not at all shy about telling us it’s feeding time! She is an unusually talkative cat. Especially for a yard cat.
We can sometimes pet that orange and white cat. There was a second orange and white kitten, but it disappeared a couple of months ago. The fluffy black kitten with the white blaze on its face is also getting better at letting us pet him, and even pick him up.
Barely visible behind the orange and white’s head is the little tortie. She won’t let us just pet her, but if we manage to pick her up, she will allow us to cuddle her. Being one of the only females we can actually touch, we have plans to bring her indoors as soon as we can. The calico is a priority, though, as she’s old enough to go into heat. Something that might actually happen earlier in the season, with our milder temperatures. That one, we just can’t get close to at all. Not even while they are all eating. With some of the other stand offish cats, I’ve managed to pet a few backs while they are eating before they run off. All seem to be males, of course. It’s hard to tell at times, because they move around to fast, but the older ones are a bit easier to spot.
You can see the little one with the cloudy eye. The pupil seems to be dilating the same as the good eye. There’s just that cloudy patch across it.
With the racoons being such an issue, I asked my daughter to give the cats their evening feeding earlier in the day, after we loaded the truck so I could make a garbage run. Sunset these days is around 4:30, so this not only got the cats away from the truck so I could leave, it meant they could finish eating while it was still light out. At night, I “arm” the motion sensor recording on the critter cam. When I checked the files this morning, I did see a couple of racoons go in, but there was no food left, so they didn’t stay long.
Meanwhile…
Yes!! I finally made it to the dump! It was even still open. I got so busy working on something else, I lost track of time. Thankfully, on Saturdays, they are open for 8 hours instead of 4.
After I tossed all the household garbage into the pit (they have bins for recycling, and various sheds and storage areas for electronic waste, paint, batteries, oil, etc., as well as separate areas for tires, large appliances, construction waste and other large stuff like that) and was closing things up, the woods on the other side of the pit suddenly started screaming. There had to be at least a dozen, probably more, coyotes back there! Coyotes have such a piercing howl, and some of them really did sound like they were screaming. Then there’s that yipping noise they make. Yikes! I’d hate to have a farm with livestock in this area. We do have coyotes here, of course, but I’ve never heard that many, all at once!
On a completely different note, yesterday evening I got to get some more progress on my garden analysis series of posts. I’ve got them planned out and organized into drafts, but each posts takes a lot of time to work on, as I go over my old posts and photos in the process. This year, I also have a number of videos to go over, as well. With my WordPress storage so close to maxing out, some things only got covered in video, or images are on my Instagram page, instead.
I think WordPress was having issues last night, Thankfully, it seems to not be happening today, as it hasn’t happened while I’m working on this post. As I was writing in my drafts last night, every now and then, it would simply disappear. Everything in my browser window would suddenly go white. The rest of the browser was still visible and uneffected; my tool bar was still there, the URL was unchanged, my tabs were still up. Just the contents of my WordPress editor would disappear. I’d have to reload the page to get it back.
Thankfully, WP automatically saves draft quite frequently, so I didn’t lose more than a sentence, but when it started happening more and more often, I had to stop for the night. I’m hoping to get more progress done on the drafts tonight. I’ve got the first completely post scheduled to post on Tuesday, and if all goes well, there will be a new one posted every morning for 10 days, altogether.
Which means I need to get my butt in gear. These analysis posts can take hours to write!
It does, however, help me get my thoughts together and make plans for next year, so it’s worth it.
Decimus contentedly nursing one of her babies. The other three put themselves in the cat cave.
Bringing Decimus and her babies indoors has had an unexpected benefit.
I can now open my door, and leave it open. Not overnight, and I prefer it closed if there isn’t anyone up and about to hear if there are problems, but open nonetheless.
Before bringing her in, if I was in my room, I was constantly opening and closing the door to let a stream of “safe” cats in and out. The cats that Marlee, Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were okay with, and that generally did not try to attack Nosencrantz. It basically came down to Turmeric being the only one that could not be allowed in the room, because she would go straight for Nosencrantz, and Tissue was touch and go. It took her a bit longer, but she would start stalking Nosencrantz and was generally really high strung.
Once Decimus came in, some of the usual cats would come into the room, see her and the babies and suddenly leave! After awhile, they stopped wanting to come in at all. Cheddar was pretty much the only one that was calm about it, but even he doesn’t want to come in as often anymore. Leyendecker still acts like he wants to come in, but as soon as he sees Decimus and the babies, he might sniff a bit, but usually wants out again, right away. Especially if Decimus is out of the cage and lounging on the carpet nearby.
Decimus actually wants out of the room. She wants to wander around the house and explore. I don’t think she has discovered the upstairs, yet. Since we want her to be able to go back to her babies quickly, the door gets left open.
The other cats still aren’t sure about her, but she so obliviously ignores any hissing or growling, sniffing and stalking, they tend to back off. Or get really startled when she walks past them and rubs her body against them on the way by. It’s like “I’m threatening you! Why are you hugging me?!?”
With the kittens in my room, pretty much none of the cats try to come in when the door is open. They might go through the doorway for a moment, look around, then leave. Even Turmeric won’t go much past the door. There was one time she’d come in and was under a stool, so we didn’t notice her when we closed the door. I discovered her when I heard a sudden cat altercation (I can’t really call it a fight) between Turmeric and, I think, Marlee. I dashed over (as much as this broken body can “dash” anywhere) to open the door and Turmeric ran out with her tail puffed out like a bottle brush! She hasn’t tried to come in, since.
Which means that now, after months of having to keep my door closed to prevent cats from going after Nosencrantz, I can now keep my door open again. All thanks to a tiny little mama that is completely oblivious to the curiosity and/or aggressive behaviour of other cats.
It also means that Marlee, Nosencrantz and Butterscotch can leave the room on their own, if they want.
None of them have bothered. Even Marlee, who sometimes does decide she wants out, has shown no interest in going out that door.
Hopefully, that will change and I can start leaving my door open when I’m asleep, too!
In other things, I was up way too late last night, after finally being able to recover my original, personal Facebook account. It was stolen on May 2, and I’ve been going through it to look for damage done. My total friend’s list count had gone down, which was no surprise. I knew that quite a few of my friends that joined me on my new account had either unfriended or blocked my original account after the thief had DM’d them to try and scam them, or they had interactions with the thief when sketchy posts were being made from my account. I also saw a lot of new names I’ve never seen before. So far, I’ve been leaving public posts to let people know that my account was recovered, and that anyone who got a friend request or message from my account after May 2, it was not me, but the thief. This morning, I found the blocked list and unblocked a lot of my friends and family, but saw a whole bunch of unfamiliar names, too. I suspect these are people the thief had successfully scammed, or people who called them out as a scammer. I don’t know what to do about these new names, yet, but once I unblocked the people I knew, I posted another public message that they would finally be able to see, too, explaining the situation.
It’s Messenger that is really going to take time to deal with. The thief was very busy there! From the looks of it, a lot of the thief’s attempts to contact people simply got ignored, which likely means they had already clued in that my account was stolen. It’s the ones that I see had actual conversations that I will have to go through and assess the damage done under my name.
I’m glad I didn’t give up trying to recover my account, but I can sure see why so many people do. So many people were reporting my original account and scam posts being made from there, it really should have been shut down long ago. Since I couldn’t see any posts being made from my original account, due to privacy settings, all I could do was report the profile as imitating me, until the thief changed the public name and profile picture. Then I kept reporting it as a fake account with a fake name. I was reporting it as close to every day as I could, as well as repeatedly going through the recovery process. Then I would use every feedback option I encountered to explain the problems I was having. I would also post updates on my new account, tagging Facebook, telling people on my friends list what was going on, as well as the occasional public post, in case people who knew me were trying to look my up to see what was going on. As frustrating as it was, I fully intended to keep it up as long as I possibly could. I simply was not willing to accept that someone out there was scamming people under my name, without doing something about it.
I don’t have a lot of time to spend on this, and I want to be thorough about it. If that means directly contacting people to let them know that they had been dealing with a stolen account and not me, I want to take time to do it right. So that means I’ll still be using my new account a lot, still. Especially for direct messages.
It’s a pain in the butt, but I really want to repair as much damage done under my name as possible.
You know, I’m really glad we’re having such a relatively mild winter right now. The past two years, it got so cold, we had issues with the vehicles and were basically stuck at home. This year, I’ve had to do more unexpected running around than I’ve done in months!
But first… some cuteness!
Tissue’s recovery continues, and she is absolutely thrilled to no longer be in isolation in my office. She has been almost non stop cuddling my younger daughter, or sleeping on her bed, or both at the same time! About the only thing giving her issue right now is the dead skin coming off her frost bitten paw pads, which seem to be itching her a bit. No signs of any infection or other potential issues.
My daughter has been working on an interesting project of late. When my late brother was in his teens, or even just under his teens (being the youngest, my time-scale memory is a bit off!) he had carved a wooden ship. When we moved out here, it had been sitting on top of the closet in the entry for several decades, at least. When the cats started jumping up there, we took it down to protect it from damage.
There already was some damage, though. A piece broken here, other pieces missing there.
My daughter has spent the last while cleaning up years of dust and dirt, sanding it, and starting to repair it. Among the missing items is one of the small boats on the deck. She’s been using my wood carving kit and some maple we had in the basement to carve a new one.
Not an easy job, considering how tiny it is! It’s the same length as the others, but slightly wider.
Next, she’s going to carve a couple of cannons to replace the missing ones, and figure out how to repair/replace a couple of yards and topsails. She’s doing a really great job of it! I think her uncle would have been quite pleased. 😊
In other things, I ended up going to my mother’s today. She phoned me a couple of days ago to tell me her TV stopped working, but told me not to come over to check. Yesterday, my brother had called her and tried to talk her through finding the power button the the TV, so she would at least test to see if it was the TV that was the problem, or the remote. She couldn’t find any and kept saying it was too dark to see, etc., much to my brother’s frustration.
So this morning, I called and told her I’d be coming over to check the TV. I’d already offered to help her with groceries or whatever she needed, the first time she told me not to bother coming out. Today, she started telling me that she was okay with no TV, it was giving her more time to herself, and watching too much TV wasn’t a good thing. I told her, just because you have it, you don’t have to watch it (speaking as someone who completely forgets we even have a TV! 😄). Oh, but it’s a temptation! True enough, but I told her I was coming over, anyhow.
I was going to pick up lunch before getting there, but when I called, she was having a very late breakfast, so told her I wasn’t going to bother. I then got a lecture about how it was wasting money to be buying take out, and how it’s so much better and cheaper to cook our own food. I told her, I eat my own food all the time. This is a treat. I’m allowed to have a treat!
Then as we talked about her TV again, she started saying she could just buy a new, bigger one, because my brother had suggested she would enjoy a bigger TV. Or, as she put it, he told her she should get a bigger TV, which I know full well is not how he’d said it. He just thought it would be easier for her to see what’s on the TV from her chair with a larger screen. Her TV isn’t much bigger than my desktop monitor.
I told her that buying a new TV when the problem might be as simple as needing new batteries on the remote would be an unnecessary expense. Oh, I can do what I want, she tells me. I just had to laugh and pointed out that she was just lecturing me over “wasting money” for buying food, while buying a new TV over what might be just dead batteries in the remote would be an even bigger waste of money! Let me at least come and check it, first!
So that was arranged. I came over and the first thing I did was see if I could turn it one manually. My brother had even sent me an electronic copy of the user’s manual, so I had some idea of what to look for. The manual was for several models, so there could be anywhere from 4 to 7 buttons. For her TV, I was expecting four – input, volume up, volume down and power – and I first checked where my brother had been asking my mother to look.
No buttons.
The other corner?
No buttons.
The top? Underneath? The back?
No buttons.
I changed the batteries on the remote and tried that.
Nothing.
I kept looking for buttons. The closest I could find was a button in the recessed area next to the cables that was labeled “source” and had the power button icon beside it.
It did nothing.
I picked that thing up and was flipping it in all directions to look.
No other buttons!!
It’s so bizarre!
I ended up unplugging it, plugging it back in, and trying again with the remote.
Once that was done and I sent messages to update my brother, I again offered to go to the grocery store for her. Because she’d told me she didn’t need to go to the grocery store before, I’d gone over in our van, which still has the summer tires on the back and nothing else. It looks like we aren’t getting financing (still no word one way or the other), but we haven’t put our stuff back in the van yet, but I could still pick up some milk and bread or something for her.
She had a shopping list she’d made, since I was coming over anyhow.
She also decided she needed to do the shopping herself.
If I’d known that, I would have used her car!
We did remember to grab her little stool, so she could get into the van more easily. She also decided to just use a cane, not her walker, to get to and from the van, since at the grocery store she uses the shopping cart as a walker. I wasn’t too happy with that, and could have at least rearranged the tires to make room for her walker, but she insisted.
She did okay but, towards the end, her knee almost gave out. Next time, I need to insist on bringing that walker!
She ended up doing a rather large grocery shopping trip from her usual. So much for not needing groceries!!
Meanwhile, I heard back from my brother. He bought this TV from her not long ago, and it should still be under warranty, but since she wants a larger TV, he’s going to pick one up for her and bring it out, then take her current TV home to see if he can find what’s wrong with it – or return it.
He is such a good man. She treats him so horribly, and he still goes out of his way to do super nice things for her! He’s only been back in the province for a few days, too.
At least now we do know it wasn’t just the remote needing new batteries!
Meanwhile, I’m going to have more running around to do tomorrow. We’re going to have to get those tires out of the back of the van and make a much delayed trip to the dump.
I do wish we’d been able to get that Escape. Ah, well. We’ll manage.
For quite a while now, I’ve been noticing something odd when I check my WordPress notifications.
You know how the display is a different colour for the notifications you haven’t looked at yet? Then, once you’ve clicked on and read them, they turn white? The “unread” notification colour is such a pale blue, I actually have a hard time seeing it, whether it’s on my desktop on my phone.
The weird thing that’s happening is this…
When I check my notifications, I’m finding the reactions, follows, etc are in “unread” blue – but when someone leaves an actual comment, it’s in “read” white! If I go to the “unread” tab, they’re not there, of course.
We’ve been allowing the kittens to stay in the sun room overnight, propping the doors so that they’re just barely open, since cleaning up the glass in the broken windows. The down side of that is, other critters get in, too. It used to always be skunks, but we hardly see the skunks anymore.
I think the racoons have chased them off.
After deciding to let the kittens use the sun room for the night, I put the extra kibble bags in the old kitchen, the used my husband’s walker, with the brakes on this time, to block the kibble bin into its shelf. This morning, my husband chased a racoon out of the sun room from the old kitchen, but he never actually went into the sun room. The walker looked like it was where it belonged and he didn’t think anything of it.
Well, they did get into things.
When I tried to open the door, I had to push away some things that had been knocked in front of it. The walker almost worked, but was half pushed aside.
The racoons had got at the bin from the side of the shelf, and did this to the lid, managing to get the bin partly off the shelf in the process.
*sigh*
At least the bin was already mostly empty. I’m glad I didn’t refill it instead of putting the bags away.
As for the kitties, they were more than happy to see me with the kibble container! We top up their kibble in the late afternoon, but not too late, because we want to feed the cats, not the racoons and skunks. This time of year, the other critters will clean out every crumb by morning.
I tried to do a heat count and I got to 28! I might have counted some twice. It took a while, but I did see the bitty baby. It was under the kibble house again. I’m concerned the racoons might have scared it – and all the other cats! – out of the cat shelter. I could just see it, but couldn’t catch it. It just exploded with spitting noises at me, and went further under the cat shelter.
While doing the rest of my rounds, I took the time to pump the tire on my mother’s car. After 4 or 5 days, it was completely flat again, but it should handle the trip into town this afternoon, though I plan to leave quite early, just in case I end up on the side of the road or something.
The good thing is, we finally got my new phone set up and activated. Last night, I’d been able to get pretty much everything I needed going, but the one thing I couldn’t get working on the phone was… the phone. The instructions were simple enough. Go online, find the mobility options and activate the new phone. Simple enough.
Except the option wasn’t there.
Now, we are on a family plan, and it’s under my husband’s name. I can log in, but it’s his account, so I don’t like to mess around with it. That’s why, after I’d settled on a couple of possible replacement phone choices, I left it to him to actually go through the final details, then order the phone.
On top of that, my phone number is technically his. When he replaced his old phone, he took that opportunity to get a new, local number and was able to find one that was almost identical to my childhood phone number. So when his new phone came in, we traded sim cards. I got the new phone number, he got the new phone. That was a couple of years ago. Then we ended up trading phones – and sim cards – more recently because of the Bluetooth problem my older phone was having that was not an issue for him.
Odd that it would be the newest phone in the household that would develop a swelling battery and need to be replaced!
Unable to activate the replacement phone, I finally turned it over to my husband so I could work on other things. It took a while, but he finally found the activation option.
Under our daughter’s phone number.
Somehow, when he went through the upgrade process to purchase the new phone, he ended up doing it under her number in the group plan, instead of what the account sees as his number.
Once he got the new device activated, I got the sim card from the phone that was being replaced, my daughter got the new sim card, and her old sim card is now in the phone that’s been replaced. So we all have the same phone numbers, but I have a new phone with an old sim card, while my daughter has a new sim card with an old phone.
The main thing, though, is that we now all have working phones!
Because the new phone can’t support an external memory card, I wasn’t able to transfer everything over from the old phone. So last night, I started transferring everything on the micro-SD card onto my external hard drive. I expected it to take a long time, but it stalled at 16% and stayed there for hours. It ended up locking up my desktop, and I had to do a hard shut down. Even after restarting it, there were issues. After much fighting, I got everything unlocked, then started going through individual folders on the card and transferring them. I knew where the problem was – my photos! I simply have too many of them on there. When I’d set it to transfer everything, it got to the photos folder, and just froze. I have them organized into folders by year, then in sub folders by month, and I’m now having to transfer each month over, individually. Even then, it still takes a while, but at least it’s not freezing my computer!
So that’s something I’m going to have to slowly work on tonight, when I can be around to monitor it. Then, once that’s backed up, I’ll do the same thing with files that did get transferred to the new phone, and see how much storage space I can free up. It’s not an issue right now, but with how many photos I take, it’ll fill up fast. Especially if I’m also taking video.
For now, however, I have a few things to get done before I have to head into town and get my mother’s car in the garage. Thankfully, we’ll be having a nice warm day today, so I will be able to walk around town and do some errands while it’s being worked on.
I’ll be so glad to have that tire fixed, and not have to rely entirely on one vehicle again!
After making my last post, I had to lie down. I hate doing that so late in the afternoon, as I know it will mess up my night, but I just didn’t feel well. I do feel a bit better now for it, so I guess it was a good thing.
Before getting my daughter to do the driving for our dump run and trip into town, I was able to go through the trail cam files. One of the cameras did not behave normally when I switched out the card. Basically, it didn’t “wake up” when I took the card out, nor could I turn it on. Usually, when that happens (the camera is getting older, so it has a few quirks), I can just open the battery case enough for the batteries to lose contact, then close it up again. After that, it usually “wakes up” on its own, or using the power button works. Neither happened, so I just switched the cards and made sure to check that one first.
This is what I found.
What a mess!
Judging from the large files, you’d think it was recording video as normal, but I don’t have it set to video. It’s set to stills only.
Of course, I couldn’t actually view any of the files. My computer just couldn’t open them. So I tried to format the card, but that didn’t work, either. The start button wasn’t even active. After several failed attempts, I tried renaming the card to what is usually reads (SDHC), and that worked.
It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had a camera do this. I can’t even remember if it was this camera, or the older one – which, amazingly – is mostly working again.
I really hope the new camera with the build in direct solar power works well in the winter. There are a few minor things about it I find irritating – like the fact that it shuts itself off while in set up mode, when the card is removed, but doesn’t turn itself back on when the card is replaced – but it’s working well so far, and the batteries are still at 100%.
As for the camera that did this, if things are at all like when it happened before, I should be able to get it going again by changing the batteries. Sometimes, the camera gets triggered and, instead of just taking a photo or video, it says active until the batteries are completely drained. Usually when that happened, there’s nothing on the card at all. I don’t know why sometimes it does this, instead.
I’d better head out and do that now, while it’s still light out.
There is also, most definitely, a second grey and white tabby. I spotted it running around in the sun room. Unlike this guy, who will now come up to me for attention, this one ran away. It seems to be a bit bigger, has more white, and the tabby colours are more defined and grey, without any of the brownish fur this one has on his face.
I had to make a run into town this morning to pick up more dry cat food. If I’d had more to pick up, I would have gone to the city for the much better prices, but it wasn’t worth the cost of gas. As it was, when I got to the grocery store, there was only one large bag – 8.5kg – left on the shelf. The guy stocking the shelf nearby saw me looking and told me they simply have not been getting dry cat food. They had been getting them weekly (finally, after more than a year of shortages), but now, nothing. He added that he didn’t know if the other grocery store had any. I’m glad he did, because I forgot that store existed. Where we usually go is on the edge of town, while the other is in the middle of “downtown”. I bought their last big bag of cat food, then went to the other store and was able to get another 7kg bag. We should be good for the rest of the month, I hope!
Yesterday, I tried making a video with the before and after pictures of the day’s wood chipping, using my new Movavi software. There was a new update when I opened it up, which I downloaded, so it was a while before I could start. I was able to record voice over within the software, though the only microphone I have is on my headset, so the sound quality was not the best, but it’s handy not having to open other software to do it.
Then I tried to save the finished video in a format that I could upload, and kept getting an error message.
The new update has a serious bug!
So I tried again, using the default photo/video viewer that came with my computer. It’s little more than a slide show, quickly put together, but this way it doesn’t take up more space in my WordPress media.
They got the job done just in time! Not long after, a thunderstorm rolled in and actually hit us (unlike all the other storms and rain that passed us by). Heavy rain continued through the night. The garden is just loving it!
We’re bright and sunny and hot right now, so I’ll be waiting for things to cool down before I start mulching the highbush cranberry and silver buffalo berry. It’ll be good to do that after such a heavy rainfall.
The Re-Farmer 