Everything sublime is as difficult as it is rare. Baruch Spinoza

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Storms & Spilt Water

We have had quite the summer. As you know, I live in a state with weather extremes and extreme weather. This is the kind of place where climate change is more easily evidenced. I am, like so many of my fellow Minnesotans, a weather geek. I am also in many ways still old school, meaning I use a paper calendar. That calendar is my record for the year, what appointments I had, who visited, when I vaccinated & wormed the horses and what the weather was doing.

Because of this, I have a long record of our Minnesota weather and I can tell you it is changing. The winters are not as cold, but the snow has been falling earlier, we have more frequent snow storms and we have multiple melt/freeze cycles. Ice has become a serious problem on my farm. Our summers are very hot and humid, with big storms carrying lots of rain. Yes, all of this has happened in our weather over the decades, but this is becoming standard. With that said, we had a storm yesterday that roared through and dumped a lot of rain, at one point it was raining horizontally. We are all tired of the humidity, the heat and the storms. I am thinking it may be how it will be and then some.



That afternoon I spilled water onto my keyboard, making it behave like a crazy thing. I was unable to write anything until this afternoon, after I replaced it. I was in a serious state of withdrawal! As you can see, I have a desktop Mac, which I bought four years ago. My how fast technology changes, as now a Mac is almost an anachronism as it is replaced by all of the mobil technology. This is my original keyboard, the one that behaved badly simply because I spilled water on it.
This is the new, slim version. And yes, I am still connected by wire. I read the reviews on the wireless keyboard and they were more so-so, to unflattering, than good. I am connected to the desk anyway, so I don't see why I should care about a wireless keyboard. Obviously, I am not a techno.
Technology moves too fast for me and I found it easiest to let most of it go over my head. I don't know what I will do when the time comes where I will be forced to own a smart phone. Just the very name of it gives me the willies. I don't want a phone that is smart and will only succeed in making me feel dumb.

There is my story, a weather geek who uses a paper calendar and a wired computer. Please don't think any less of me, it is beyond my control.

6 comments:

will said...

About technology ... I recently visited an Audi showroom and one of the features the salesperson touted was a 6 CD changer... I said, "Huh? Who uses CDs? Where's the iPod connection?"

If you haven't upgraded to Lion, read everything you can before buying. While it has superior security features, the variety and number of OS changes requires a different mindset from Snow Leopard and earlier OSs.

Using Lion, I get the feeling that touch screens (like the iPad) will soon make the ubiquitous mouse obsolete.

Deb said...

We humans are full of contradictions aren't we! I say, whatever works and makes you happy! I think there's a place for it all...love seeing pics of the farm...beautiful when wet!

Sandra said...

Bill, I have not purchased Lion yet. I have read a lot of opinions and many of them are not good. I don't have the iPad and I understand it is much like that? I am OK with Snow Leopard and don't think I want to tax my brain with figuring out something new, especially when this one seems to be iffy. There is a part of me that wants to do it, but I resist!

Deb, it has been awful here. Today is starting out nice, which is a very welcome change.

A.Smith said...

The weather. Here in Oregon the summers are moving further and further away from June. Today Barry brought me some roses and believe it or not, this being August, the most fragrant sweetpeas ever. From the patio, in August. Ten years ago you would have died of shock if you found a single sweetpea by the end of May.

And the tomatoes still growing, the peppers are sort of getting there and so are the eggplants - all five different kinds since I am an eggplant lover - the strawberries were dismal. Maybe we got five or six altogether;
Remember last year the harvest of those delicious peaches, enough to can some and to make a couple of pies? This year there is only one.
One peach. Hanging in there for dear life I guess just like the rest of us...sigh.

After a glorious blooming of all the trees in early Spring or whatever that was several weeks after the last expected frost we got up to find our Mason bees shivering and the blooms burnt to a crisp from the ice that descended from hell I suppose,
since it killed everything in its path.

But there is no global warming and the Earth continues to be flat.

Sandra said...

...and there isn't a revenue problem, there is a spending problem. What a world.

I'm so happy to see you up and about again Allegra.

Ganeida said...

Why would I think less of you? I have only owned a money card in the last 12 months & I still own a passbook ~ an anochrinism that makes my bank hate me. They don't want to do passbooks anymore! And I've only just got a laptop ~ & only so I can do Dearest's bookwork when I am away from home ~ so year, not overly thrilled to bits. lol

The weather is weird all round. Don't get me started on ours!