Reflection

 No that's not what's kept me busy for the last few weeks.  I had no intention at all of staying away that long, but computers being computers...

So, true story - my main machine is nothing to ... well, burp at, honestly.  Back about twelve years or so now I was in a position where I needed to replace the daily use computer with something ... well, something that booted up.  Because the one I had had decided to follow the dodo down the rabbit hole and not come back out.

So I ran to Bloomington, my favorite used-computer shop, and spent a whopping $40 on the computer to my left here.  It was a huge improvement over the 1 GB box I'd been using, as this has a whopping 4 gigs of RAM.  Which was, ten years ago, impressive.  Even more so about twelve when I picked this one up.

But as things do, this one is now rather long in the tooth.  It does what I need, which is fine for early morning and late evening browsing.  I have little time for much else.  Or, frankly, that either.  But it does enough to keep me going.

Back, though, about two weeks ago, entering the busier season, I noticed that my Macafee MMSSHOSTS.EXE service, as it appears in my Task manager - what, you don't keep a task manager window open all the time?  Oh, probably too much memory.  Anyway, noticed that the application had blorped up from the usual 15,500 K of RAM it normally occupied to nearly two full Gig.  Just a little under.  And it wasn't letting go.  

I get it - thanks to the scum and pus that have figured out how to use the internet, we have to use this sort of protection, but I do wish stuff ran better.

But I can dream.  Like winning the lottery and buying a half-dozen or so top-of-the-line Alienware laptops with 64 Gigs RAM, among other things...  Yeah, I'd share some with family, but keep two backups.  Just in case.  Or more realistically, since it appears that my local supply of used computer retailers have all gone the same way my previous computer did, I might find a trustworthy used computer supplier, because let's face it - I definitely do not need the sort of computer which my son's friends assembled for him - let's just say that given the level of performance he gets on some of these fancy modern computer games, it would be pretty nice for solitare...  And other games I putz around with.  I do have to admit I sure do miss SimCity - that was my crack, back in the day, 33 years ago, when it first hit the market.  I know.  That and Populous were a whole lot of fun.  For me, at least.  

Anyway, I'm still here, still trying to hang in there.  The next few weeks are going to offer even less free time than I've had thanks to year-end/year-beginning with so many patients needing renewed authorizations for on-going services.  So yeah, the overtime's really nice. 

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