OK, I do love my new laptop. I really do. The old one died after ten years of faithful service. We had to replace it for summer school, and possibly grad school (fingers crossed).

But let me tell you the transition to Vista has not been easy. And for the record I teach computer science, this really should not be so difficult. In all honestly I probably haven’t played with it enough. But I am a busy girl, and I have important knitting to do. I want the darned thing to just work.

It has a whole host of things that bug me, but the main thing has been learning how to turn off the laptop. I learned the hard way that using the icon that looks like the shutdown button does not shut it down, but instead sends it into hibernation.  I do not need it to pass the winter in a torpid state. I do need it to turn off so it still has power at the end of a 12 hour drive to say, Florida.
So rather than stay annoyed I did a Google search yesterday and found Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report. Ed is my new hero. Right after the Yarn Harlot. There, in an organized list, was everything I need to know to control this thing. Even things I didn’t know I wanted to do.

I am wondering if Ed does tubular cast offs…that’s the next thing I need to fix.

I’ve been playing with how to get a bit more out of our camera. It’s a dinosaur, and stinks at indoor photos. Nevertheless it seems a total waste to just toss it for a new one. So I built this:

Honestly build is overstating, It’s just a lamp and some fabric. And with it I got:

These are the first radishes out of the garden. I really like the effect of the photos.

Things I learned:

1. I need to do this away from a window or with the curtains drawn. I got too many shadows.
2. Radishes are probably a bit too dense for this…Our bluebells are blooming, so I plan to ry some of those tomorrow.
3. I need to iron the fabric first. Wrinkles!