The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Do I Have to Leave My Computer? Part II…..

Getting back to what I actually had planned to talk about yesterday…… before I started talking about magic markers and accordion lists… or whatever else you were able to get from that blog…

We are now faced with new travelling preparations. We now have the same old preps to make…. sunscreen, toothbrushes, favorite cozy mysteries, clean undies, alarm clocks (Forget those! We are going on vacation…… no need to wake up early… unless of course we want to beat the crowds at some of the high people-volume attractions.), comfortable shoes, our favorite mysteries for when we finish our favorite cozy mysteries, ETC. 

But in this computer age, we are faced with new preparations to make before we leave home. Remember Karl Malden telling us "Don’t Leave Home without It"… Well, that’s how I feel about leaving home without my internet connection! I have to admit that I am totally dependent on this little corner of our "play room." We used to have a Nintendo game station, the Fisher Price dollhouses, a Master of the Universe castle, and the Ninja Turtles’ sundry items in this room. Now we have portals into different worlds….. all at our fingertips…. at our computers. How can we "leave home without it"???

Is it just me who has become so obsessively dependent on computers? Just this morning I order some scented candles for the upcoming holiday season……… since now that I have this wonderful computer, how will I possibly have time to actually bake!?! Thus the necessity for "pumpkin pie" and the "warm apple pie" candles!

Oh, oh, I have gone off topic again…. More on the computer VS. vacations in tomorrow’s blog. (I am not doing this on purpose…. this is actually how my brain functions… when I try to wing it without a magic marked-accordion note!)

Do I Have to Leave My Computer?

‘Tis the season for vacationing…. and that usually means a lot of fun….. and "computer withdrawal" for some of us un-savvy computer users. Besides all of the usual travel preparations, we people who have become "computer dependent" now face new pre-travelling preparations. For me, it doesn’t mean a lot, since I am totally dependent on my husband and two children for all of my computer "knowledge."

So, why do I have the above-mentioned word "knowledge" in quotation marks? You would only have to see my computer desk to know why……… I have piles of stapled notes and scotch-taped notes…. (and, you-name-it-notes!) all over my computer desk area. I actually have a desk file and an end table right next to my computer with even more piles of stapled notes.

Whenever one of the computer-savvy in my household "teaches" me how to do something on the computer……. I get out my trusty magic markers and recycled note-taking paper, and write like a mad woman. I know that once they leave the room, they will expect me to know what I am doing …. since they have "taught"  me my new skill.

Thank goodness for the boxes of un-dried magic markers that my children’s elementary school teachers insisted they have at the beginning of the school years! I use magic markers because I just prefer to be able to actually see the notes that I take! And, being as compulsive as I am, I then tape the ends of the notes together making an accordion type of pamphlet, so that when I perform the new (learned) skill by myself, I can just keep reading down the accordion notes.

But, I have rambled on for long enough (off topic, again!)…. I guess I will have to "blog" about travelling preparations later…

Dalziel & Pascoe…. Why No DVDs?

I keep searching around for DVDs of series that were so down-right entertaining to watch that I can’t believe I didn’t set up my trusty VCR years ago. Of course, we no longer watch anything on the VCR machine, so I would have to check to see if my husband has disconnected it. Everything these days is in DVD form…. everything EXCEPT some of my very favorite shows.

I remember watching Dalziel and Pascoe on the A&E Network. It was so many years ago that I don’t even know when it was that I saw the delightful show. I do know, however, that I absolutely loved the show. Colin Buchanan and Warren Clarke were exceptionally well-cast as the two "hero" detectives. Clarke’s portrayal of brash, disgusting, bully-of-an Inspector Dalziel was equaled in it’s perfection with Buchanan’s upper-crust younger and "greener" Inspector Pascoe.

While typing up the 2001 Edgar Awards, I was reminded (once again) of how much I miss having access to this great British show. Did you know that this show won the 2001 Edgar Award for the Best TV Feature/Miniseries? I didn’t even know about the Edgar Awards back then, but I did know that it was a wonderful series, based on a wonderful series of books by Reginald Hill.

I keep checking on Amazon, Blockbusters, and Netflix to see if they have released any of the shows, but no such luck. I hope that they are planning to offer them soon. In the mean time, I have the next best thing………. I am listening to the unabridged books on tape. Although it’s great fun to hear the books, it would be even better to finally have access to DVDs of the shows.

Your Madness VS My Organizational Skills

I joined a forum a while ago, and then found that I was so busy with this site, that I forgot about the forum. I rediscovered the forum yesterday, and this morning, I put it on my computer’s desktop… which has way too many files on it now. I find that if I don’t put a site on my actual desktop, I forget about it. I have at least three different pull-down "favorites" lists on my computer, but I rarely use them. My desktop makes more sense to me.

It seems a little unorganized to my family members who see all of these files and wonder why I keep such a messy desktop. BUT…….. in the madness of my desktop, there is such a wonderful organization going on………. at least to me! I have "piles" where I put my site’s important "parts," I have "piles" with my Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon, Audible.com information/sites, I have other "piles" with my needlepoint/bead information sites, and even more "piles" with miscellaneous sites. I know exactly where to go when I need to find something. And, since I have renamed most of the sites, they are easy for me to "understand."

I have to admit that to the "untrained eye,"  my computer’s desktop is a mess. But to me, all of the cluttered "piles" of sites make my life easier… and isn’t that what we all want?!?

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