Of Two Computers and Many Saints

Only a couple more days off here since last posted remarks. Most of the past waking hours have been spent finally purchasing and setting up the laptop that will take over my work functions as of Monday.

More of those hours have been waking than I would have liked. Overnight into Thursday morning, the state road crew returned to the scene of the noise on the 290, where a few weeks ago they shook our house to its foundations. The work this time was on the eastbound lanes a bit further from us, or maybe the new windows and insulation helped, so no shaking. Still kept me awake from 3 a.m. on.  Thursday night into Friday was much quieter out there, but insomnia still came at about the same hour and had me dragging again early that day.

That was part of the reason I didn't even begin the process of setting up the new computer until late yesterday morning.  Also, work being very busy both days, although having a molasses-infested laptop didn't help with that.  Finally, though, I got the process going and, with a couple of exceptions that I'll get to, it's done and the yet-unnamed computer is good to go.

It’s largely the same model as the Dell I've had since 2017, but with twice the memory and I finally upgraded into the 21st-century with an Office 365 family subscription that will last us through February 2023. It is still an adventure carrying over some of my ancient work programs- my primary bankruptcy software still runs through Internet Explorer- but oh my some things are infinitely easier. Every prior time I’ve tried to carry over Outlook from a previous computer, it took hours of configuring back door settings for TCP, SMTP, I GottaP, with ports and server addresses that had to be perfect. This be all, hi what’s your email address and password? A minute later, BOOM, here you go.

It doesn’t have an onboard optic drive, but it’s almost impossible to find one anymore. We have a good one at home that seems to be working nicely with it.

Life’s little victory: even though I had no way of knowing this, it uses the same power supply as the previous one, which means I can leave plugs for it in all three places I need them.

Less than a little victory: even though it’s the same brand, model and size as the previous one, computer manufacturers seem determined to deposit the home, end, pgup and pgdn keys in completely random spots on the keyboard. This one splits them two on the top row and two on the bottom to the left of the keypad. It makes sense ergonomically, I think, and I’ll get used to it on a week like I usually do.

It connects wirelessly to my old office printer in the house in the new office printer in the office. I never did get the printer to connect to our home wifi, but after three trips to the AT&T store, I got our plans upgraded and I now have a mobile hotspot coming from my phone that I've been able to connect the laptops and printer to each other through.  There will be a fourth trip to that store tomorrow, because Eleanor quickly noticed that our two phones' plans went down quite a bit but a third emergency "burner" phone actually went up in cost. We're probably going to ditch the thing altogether and replace it with a real prepaid burner for times a phone is lost or broken. Even before that, though, our plans went down around $30 a month and I expect will go down even more once we kick it out.

Next Tuesday, I configure the laptop with the printers and wifi in the other office. That's going to be a full day of phone hearings, client appointments, and a run to beautiful Wyoming County to file something and, oh, a cleaning at my own dentist to finish the day off.

But I have no complaints about things as of now. OMGOMG THIS COMPUTER IS SO FAST compared to the last one. I had a Zoom meeting today that went fine (people said my video was much improved) and one with the dreaded Teams on Monday. I can’t wait to see how much better THAT one goes.

The only things I haven't done yet, just to avoid pushing my luck? The easier one is finding and downloading the blogging software that I use to post here. I'm sure it will work fine, but I haven't had the energy to root around for the download location and all the needed settings, so I will either post direct from DW through the browser or go back to the old one as I am doing right now.  The other evil beast of my prior acquintance? FuckingITunes.  I only need it for work to sync my work calendar with the one on my phone, and I will first explore if iCloud can do that without making me even crazier than fIt does.  It will otherwise be a scary bear trying to transfer 20 years of music over from this one to the new one, and since I only add a CD maybe once a month, I'm fine doing that from here even at its now-painfully slow speed.

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One other thing that works fine on the new setup is HBO Max. We even got a free subscription to it when I upgraded my phone to the new plan, so Emily can likely cancel the one she's had and we've been using.  We've been watching a lot on it together- Awkwafina's series, the Daniel Radcliffe/Steve Buscemi medieval comedy, and a Stanley Tucci food documentary that got us both wanting to have spaghetti carbonara tonight for the first time in years.

But the Home Box also brought the simultaneous delivery, along with theaters, of David Chase's long awaited prequel to The Sopranos titled Many Saints of Newark. Set in the troubled racial times of 1967 northern Jersey, it is Tony: The Previous Generation Played By The Next One. Janice, Junior and Livia all return as their younger selves, played by actors who are so far nailing their depictions without parodying them. Others star who we either never saw in the prior series or who only made brief appearances, mainly the lead role of Dickie Montesanti ("more saints" in Italian). His son, a baby here, who we knew as Christophuh for most of Tony's run, narrates part of the film. But the show is stolen by James Gandolfini's own son Michael, playing his father's signature character as Young Teen Tony. I've only watched a few moments of it so far, but he is so much his father's son in appearance.

I suspect there will be more side stories of this crew if this one takes off, which it likely will.