a new brain

My laptop - my personal laptop, not the one on loan from my employer - is showing more and more signs that it's 7-year-old. It's slow, for one thing. It's heavy, for another. Replacing parts is starting to turn into an expensive proposition for such an old clunker.

Its replacement willl probably run Windows 7. Is "7" a distinct improvement over the ghastly Vista, and is it not-a-step-down, compared to "XP"? Also, do softwares that run under "XP" experience compatibility problems under "7", and vice versa?

leaves & lights

The leaves of the ash in front of the house finally all fell off so this morning I swept them up. Weather was quite balmy, and, most important, there was no wind. By the time I was done, there was a stack of 8 very large garbage bags.

Besides that... I knew my wife would say no if I asked, so I took advantage of her being away with some friends to wrap strands of lights around the many trunks of the tree just outside our kitchen window. I then wrapped some lights around one of the posts by the backdoor.

Sneaky, me? Heck, she thinks that November is too early for Christmas trappings to show up, and I wanted to do it on Halloween.

She pushed me into act of sneakiness, your honor! Truly!