It's all new

Meet the new Acer which now sits proudly on my desk in all its shiny glory.  The purchase was necessary or at least I thought it was, because I desperately needed a system upgrade, having been warned repeatedly by Microsoft that it was "orphaning" XP, my very well used operating system.

My old Acer lap top is seven years old, still going strong, and has given me very little trouble...well...other than the time it crashed under the weight of a nasty virus, but really, once we had expunged the bug, it chugged on and actually continues to do so.  However, its operating system, the very popular XP, does not and I'm sad about this. I imagine a lot of people are.  XP was a good system, easy to navitate and I had learned it well.

The new Acer is running Windows 8 - a bit of a learning curve.  Where are my files, where is my e-mail, how do I get from here to there?  And the most disconcerting thing is that this system seems to have a mind of its own - deciding for me when really I want to decide for myself.

The cursor, for instance, moves itself around at the most awkward times.  I really have to keep my eye on it to keep it in line, rather like learning to make a dog heal beside me if you get my drift..

I like the machine though, and if this new Acer is as much of a workhorse as my old one, I'll be happy with it.  I like the bigger screen, and the lighter weight of it.  And my fingers are getting used to the new keyboard...mostly .

Anyway, this has been occupying my time for the past week, first while I set it up with the help of my wonderful son who, although he doesn't look it, is super geek when it comes to this stuff.  Then we had to migrate all my files over to the new machine.  Then I had to learn where everything was - and I'm still learning all that, and then...I had to figure out what didn't come over, and re-install it.

So, excuse the temporary absence from the wonderful world of blogging.  However, I'm back and if I can keep the cursor in check, I should be able to post this without any problems.

I'm keeping myself sane by knitting -. 

This is a shawl full of lovely colour and texture in garter stitch using up odd balls from the stash .  I cast on 300 stitches on a 6.5 mm needle and am stopping at about 70 rows before I fringe the ends.  It has been a great way to use up some of the stash, although I did top up with some multi coloured wool - I changed colours every 3-5 rows just to amuse myself but it does have a sort of theme going on.  You can do this with just about any colour combination and just about any weight of yarn.  When it is finished, it will be donated as a prayor shawl to someone in need of comfort. 

OK.  There is a strange blinking light I have to figure out.  Talk soon.