Week 24 Doves and Spiders

Wow another week has gone by!  It has been slightly hot here and I have been working outside most of the week so being inside today has been fabulous.  I have been able to take some pictures this week with my camera and finally was able to get my Macro lens out again.  But before that I finally was able to see the dove that we keep hearing in the neighborhood:

I happened to look out my studio window and see it on my car of all things.  So I grabbed my camera and big lens and carefully went outside with Sophie in tow.  The dove flew to the tree and I set myself and started taking pictures.  Definitely was wondering what I was doing!

So I was out on the ranch this Saturday.  We are winding down for summer break.  The heat gets pretty brutal so we put off projects, unless they are urgent, until the fall.  The spiders have been out in mass and I was busy knocking down webs.  And then I found a dead one.  Ginger was not exactly thrilled, though I had it in a closed container.  You never know what boys will bring home.  Anyway, it allowed me to pose it and get a couple of shots on my light board.

This is known as a Rabid Wolf Spider.  Nothing rabid about it other than when alive they move pretty fast.  Hey the last spider I did this too on my light box was a Black Widow, so at least this one isn't poisonous!  (Mom will not like this spider regardless!).

So in the past week I have had the opportunity to work on two computers, one a desktop and one a laptop.  I was approached about fixing them.  The laptop was moving really slow (disk running at 100%) and the desktop had a formatted drive and needed to have windows 10 installed but for free because it had windows 7 on it at one time.  Well, since I have been studying.....  Let's just say that since getting my Electronic Engineering Degree in 1989 and having been in the computer business until I switched professions, I was eager to see if I still had the troubleshooting prowess I had before.  Don't get me wrong, I have built my own machines, switched out parts, upgraded software and hardware, so I have stayed in the game so to speak. 

Well the laptop was expert level madness.  But 8 hours later I had the machine purring like a kitten.  I had to pull out a whole bunch of tricks because at first I could not even get anything to run.  But I just go back to the lessons my Dad taught me on troubleshooting, take my time, be patient, and success is to be had.  The desktop, believe it or not, was a keyboard issue.  Changing keyboards and using a USB with an ISO image I was able to make short work of the desktop.  But I loved every little minute of it.  I had my desktop up researching, my laptop burning ISO images, and our dining room table covered with computers.  It also helped solidify why I got into computers in the first place.  And after scrapping paint off a porch all day Friday with lacquer thinner, plastic and a 5 in 1 scrapper, sitting troubleshooting computers doesn't sound bad at all!

Well, Ginger is cooking dinner as we speak, so I better wrap things up.  Things are good here at the Peterson household, Ginger is reading a good book and I am taking pictures of spiders, life is good!

Baa