Learning to Like It

Hello, blogees. It's been a while.

I'm taking a much-needed vacation this week. It all started with a trip to the big air show in Cleveland this past weekend. Well, actually it began on the Friday before when I had to drop Milo off at the boarding place. Boo hoo.

The trip to Cleveland was quick, but still fun. We did in fact go to the big air show, and it was fine, lots of flying aces and derring-do. We saw the Blue Angels, who were excellent, even though I actually liked last year's headliners, the Thunderbirds, better.

The disappointing part of the trip, well, besides having to leave so quickly, was that on our arrival, Mr M was going to take me to Sokolowski's, a local diner with great ethnic food and the added plus of being where Anthony Bourdain took Harvey Pekar when "No Reservations" went to Cleveland. We got there, and it was closed for the Labor Day weekend.

Anyway, there will be a picture of the closed Sokolowski's, and a few others, later this week. I didn't take a lot of pictures on the trip, so don't get all excited, and I can't upload them tonight.

And the reason I can't upload them tonight is because I'm not at the Poderosa. And it's kind of the reason for tonight's blog. I'm doing my first-ever remote blog via netbook. Betland has picked up and moved, for this blog, one state to the south.

It's a bit of a story, me and my netbook. I don't think I've ever mentioned it here.

See, it all started when I came into a bit of a windfall around Christmas. I'd decided that I would bank most of it, but keep enough out to get myself something special. Something I wouldn't normally buy for myself. I was thinking laptop or netbook. And after realizing what I'd be wanting out of the machine, a kind of secondary computer, something to take on the road to Mr M's and surf the net, I realized that the netbook would be the way to go. So I ordered one.

And when it came I was very excited. I immediately named him Neddy Booke, opened him up, and looked around a bit. They keyboard was small, the screen was small, well, Neddy was a small guy all over. I despised the touch pad method of navigation. Of course not much was loaded into Neddy, so I basically just played a game of Freecell and called it a night. And it stayed that way for a while.

I soon got the networking system I needed to be able to access internet in other parts of the house, like from the Comfy Chair. I downloaded the chat program the Poundsqueeze gang chats on, but I never once joined chat from the netbook. Mostly because of the small keyboard and screen, and the fact that, to me, Neddy always seemed a bit slow in the performance department. A lot of url links fly around during chat, and I just imagined myself being mired down in them, all the while hitting the backspace key over and over again from all the mistakes I'd be making on the tiny keys.

Oh, sure, I've lugged Neddy to Mr M's every trip, and I spend a half hour or so on Facebook, and every once in a while I'll open it up in front of the TV and Mr M and I will chat a bit. But I just don't use it like I thought I would. Certainly not like other netbook users seem to be working theirs.

And so finally I came out to the world. I was just not that happy with having a netbook, and wished I'd have gotten a full-fledged laptop instead.

A couple of weeks ago an opportunity presented itself to me to buy a used laptop at a very good price. I was seriously considering it. Still am, to be honest.

Then I stopped and took stock. I'm not really in a position lately to be throwing money around, even the very good price I was offered.

And it wasn't really fair of me to chuck Neddy overboard when I really hadn't made a concerted effort to like him. It was the electronic equivalent of dismissing a possible friend with a wave of the hand because he has crooked teeth. So I tried a few things.

The first was to install Firefox. I hate Internet Explorer, and why I didn't install Firefox the very first day Neddy arrived, I have no idea. Surfing around in Firefox is a great improvement.

The next thing, I got a wireless mouse and put that damn touch pad to bed. And that really helped, even though as I type this, sitting on a hotel bed in North Carolina, said mouse keeps moving and rolling all over the place and I can't catch it.

Then I downloaded an email program. It always pissed me off that Neddy didn't come with one already included, but why I didn't install one till now, I have no idea. I guess I forewent lighting a candle so I could curse the darkness. I'm not sure it's the best program in the world, but I have gotten emails on it, and can send an email without having to go to my provider's website.

And the other stuff, the smallness of the keyboard and screen, not much I can do about that. The only thing that'll get me used to that is more usage, which is precisely what I'm trying to do right now. Remote blogging from Neddy, which is one of the advantages I'd imagined of this thing at the very beginning.

So I'm trying. We'll see how it goes. Maybe once I've loaded a few more things in, like Text Twist, Neddy and I will become even closer friends. But we're working on a relationship.