Blaze!

I am now the proud owner of a Logitech Marble Mouse. I know: sounds like a Disney toy, but it's not! What it is, is a trackball. I've never used one before (always been a Mouse-man) and it is taking some getting used to, but I think I may become a convert.
The cursor moves over the screen with grace and speed unseen prior to installation and my wrist isn't hurting anymore (although, in fairness, it wasn't hurting too much to begin with). I'm discovering all the things I could do with the wheel mouse are still mostly do-able with the trackball, although some (Open link in new tab) take a little getting used to. With the Wheel mouse, I had only to click on the wheel to open a website in a different tab. With the Marble Mouse, I must simultaneously click the two side buttons to do the job. And there was no documentation to tell me how to do this: I discovered it on my own. I must remember to notify the Logitech tech people about this.
;-)
Another interesting experience is scrolling. With the Wheel Mouse, I could hold down the left mouse button and use the wheel for scrolling wherever I wanted on a web page. I liked that. Can't really do that with the Marble Mouse, but BUT BUT universal scroll actually works beautifully with the Marble Mouse (it did not work so well with the Wheel Mouse). It does take some getting used to. Marble Mouse also is much more quiet than Wheel Mouse was.

Also, I installed 2 more gigabytes of Random Access Memory today. That makes a total of 4 GB (all my machine will allow) and things do seem to zzzzip right along where they just moved quickly before. Honestly, I can't tell much difference, but I like to think that the machine is now well oiled indeed. I just hope Windows (XP Home) is using it all to its best advantage. Shane or Ludie, if you're reading this, maybe you could give me some idea as to how to determine if that is so.

Busy week: Also received a banjo that I won on eBay. It's beautiful and has a great tone. I used to play fairly well (I know there are some who find that statement somewhat oxymoronic and I don't care), but one fine day about 12 years ago, I loaned my banjo to a painter (house, not portrait) named Bucky.

This was not wise. No. Not at all wise.

So after a recent revival of my guitar playing skills (also dormant for a long while), I began to pine for my long lost banjo. And I got one! It's a Washburn model B9 and it sounds great! My son hates it. Too loud for him. Ah well, he will learn...

Someday I'll do a post about music and our on-again, off-again love affair and tell you about my guitar collection.

Enough miscellaneousness for now.

Pax,
Nelson