My writing week (year) 4 (week) 2

Hi all,

After fixing my computer problems last week (I’m just asking for the thing to crash with a comment like that), I am feeling strangely over-confident and willing to strangle any challenge that wanders within arms reach.

Windows Vista was the Problem, Not My Computer

I did have some help from an excellent technician at Hewlett-Packard’s, but I did have to first believe him and then implement his solution. He told me, like someone who did not want to be overheard by Microsoft, that the problem was not with my computer but with Windows Vista, particularly its latest updates. So I did another recovery, but this time I stopped windows from automatically updating. Since than, five days ago, my computer has not crashed or stalled or turned itself off or come up with one of a multitude of error messages.

Safari a Better Browser Than Firefox

I was in the mood to experiment so I tried a couple of other web browsers in the hope that they would solve a problem I had with Firefox: a Facebook application was stalling.I installed Opera, but found it did not offer a solution, but than I installed Safari and the application no longer stalled. It also fixed another problem where my email stalled or failed to find emails. So my computer is like brand new now. Yaaaa.

Other Activities Last Week.

Apart from fixing my computer, I am spent a lot of time gardening last week. It seems that the so-far mild summer and plenty of rain, has lead to bumper tomato and bean crops. Last week I picked about 33 kilograms of tomatoes, including just under ten on one day, and about 27 kilos of beans, including 6.75 kilograms of climbing beans one day from a 3 by 1.5 metre patch. I have been spending about half an hour picking each day. Add this to the watering and weeding, and I spend about an hour and a half each day in the garden.

After a bit of consternation about whether to put the novella away for six weeks so I could then come back to it with a fresh view, I decided I wanted to get it critiqued as soon as possible, which means polishing it. But as soon as I started polishing it I started making changes. Looks like it could take a while.

I finished reading the very enjoyable comedy Solar by Ian McEwan. It is a short novel about a physicist whose private life wrecks his attempt to provide the world with clean energy. My last post is a review of it.

Graham.