On the Two Year Anniversary...

Of the last time I posted on this blog.  For 2 reasons- life is busy and I don't really have anything of great value to say.  I believe many bloggers lack anything of great value to say, but that fails to stop them, so, why not me?

No the real reason for my foray back into blogging and practicing my typing is the fact that my long overdue, beloved Toshiba NB 250 Netbook has been returned to me.  I have always loved this little machine for its portability, functionality, and convenience.  I bought it many years ago (we were still living in the old condo!) at a cost of around $200, and it allowed my a way to follow NFL Sunday fantasy football statistics from the living room couch without having to haul my larger, less portable full-sized laptop downstairs.  (weak logic I know, but in the days before we had kids, this was the kind of thing we could spend out disposable income on.  Now disposable income is just a myth...)

So anyway, the netbook came along right in a very narrow window when laptop computing became very compact and very light, but tablets had not yet exploded onto the scene.  I own an iPad now as well, a Christmas gift several years ago, which I get a lot of miles out of, but it never had the same practical computer functionality that this netbook had.  Specifically, the keyboard.

The onscreen keyboard of a tablet has never done it for me other than for composing very brief emails.  And the keyboard attachment that most tablets offer seems ridiculous to me, even though my wife owns one.  Want a small computer with a keyboard?  I already have one- my netbook!

So my netbook hummed along for quite a few years, never carrying a critical computing load like saving pictures or doing budgets (those jobs were saved for the full-sized laptop) but a useful companion nonetheless.  Then one day it crashed.  And it failed spectacularly.  Startup was not even a blip on the radar; the hard drive was baked and there was no salvage.  However, since it was not required piece of equipment I tossed it to the side and forgot about it.

I am close friends with a "computer guy', Iron Mike, so named because he is a honest to goodness IronMan Triathele and has earned that nickname with blood and sweat.  And he offered to take a look at my old netbook and see what the deal was,  Seventy- seven dollars later and the old girls was humming again.  Well, not actually humming, since its a solid-state, but fully functional.

So here I am typing this out.  I missed this little machine.  Thanks, computer guy Iron Mike.

And a shout out to JT, who might be the only human in the universe to read this.  I say human, as perhaps a robot or an ALF might read it.  One can dream...