In the past week, I have done little more than blog, watch, listen... think. A lot of thinking is going on. Have to get myself geared up for 2026. Somehow, 2025 has floated by, leaving me a little adrift and feeling that I have definitely not achieved anything very much. Is this a factor of fading into age? Is it just me? Having a sense of purpose is important, and I may have fallen off that track this past year. I need a bit of a reset on my daily spiritual practice; I need to finish the almost half-dozen WIP crochet items I have waiting around BEFORE I start anything new ... oops, already failed on that one!
Anyway, safe to say my brain is on overdrive as my 67th year looms and a sense of urgency to make the most of each and every day has been occupying me since returning to The Hutch. It doesn't have to be monumental or attention-grabbing. All that is required is that at the end of each day it is possible to lie down and say truthfully, 'good work today, lass.' As opposed to the more recent, 'rats, you forgot to do this, that, the other...'
Most of you have gathered that I am the cerebral type. I can easily get deeply engaged with philosophy, science, literature, art, music, and crafting... but all this serves as a great way to avoid dealing with daily life. The Hutch needs attention. I need to pay that attention. Even though I'd rather be learning about the esoterics of how wrong is wrong, and if there is a limit to the length of a string.
Anyhoo. One of the things that was becoming apparent was that my little OctoKan, who is nearly four years old now, was starting to show signs of reaching end of life. Lots of glitches, lots of go-slow, and sometimes unresponsive. To be fair to it, something that was intended purely as an intro product to laptops and Chrome-dedicated equipment, it has surpassed expectations. I have worked that wee machine to the same daily, almost non-stop extent that I did the much larger, more powerful and stronger, Voo-Voo the Vaio - who lasted me ten years. Black Friday loomed...
Welcome to Spinner, the Acer Chromebook Spin 314. I have moved up from OctoKan's 11 inches to a rather luxurious 14 inches. Look at that screen clarity! Blinding. It comes with 8GB of RAM, which means faster screen adaptation and better task performance.
I would have been happy to have had another Asus product, but this one was on offer for 40% off the regular price... £250 was not to be passed up! I'd like to think I will get at least five good years of work done on this machine. Nothing is ever going to be as solid or match up with the stalwart presence of Voo-Voo, but as long as I can keep blogging, the occasional video, lots of photo processing, researching, listening and watching, at the cost of fifty quid a year, I will not quibble.
I stuck to Chromebook because, despite having a background in IT, I am at that stage in life where continuation and familiarity are important - and add in the fact that Chromebooks come with ten-year support. If I got ten years from Spinner, then pop the corks!!! All one has to do is open up, let it set up, sign in with a Google ID, and then all that's left is a bit of fine-tuning for complete personalisation. Everything is synced from the Google platform. (Much as Apple did with Macs.) All I had to do was transfer the storage files native to OctoKan to Spinner. To do that, I zipped everything from Downloads (all my blog, crafting, puzzle, household, etc, files are 'children' of Downloads) and then put it into Google Drive. Then downloaded it into Spinner from there. Voila!
That was one 'daily life' item ticked off.
Another was to try to get some festive mood going. I dug out the tree. I couldn't deal with putting the two bits together, so I only mounted the lower half, then stuck the table tinsel 'tree' on top. I only used the crochet and knit ornaments this year, and did haul out the lights. It actually came out well, and as I look across at it whilst typing, I find it does bring a little smile. Now to get some candles... how is your Christmas prep going?
It's so easy to get distracted and not do the chores we know we should be doing. I hope your new Chromebook serves you well. Your holiday decorations are great.
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