Not a Christmas gift, but also exciting

It's been a good week for Elizabeth.  She has been saving her money for months and was able to buy a Kindle Fire today.

She was thinking about an iTouch all along, but at the last minute we got the idea that a Kindle Fire might be a better size for her.  It is lovely and just right for her.  I'm pleased she had the self-control to focus on a big goal and accomplish her goal.

Look carefully at this computer screen

Do you notice anything strange about it?

That is the stand at the TOP of the picture!  Dd spilled some water on my keyboard and when I wiped it up, suddenly everything on my monitor was upside down!  I must have accidentally pushed a sequence of keys that changed the orientation of the screen.

I didn't have time to figure out how to reverse it, so took the obvious approach--turned the monitor upside down!

When dh got home he ran a quick search and found out all I had to do was push 2 keys, then a 3rd and it righted itself.  I was glad.  Hehe.

Technology

Last night dh and I were listening to "The Bridge" on Sirius radio. It's "the softer side of Classic 60s and 70s music." We were reminiscing about music. I remembered being on the Music Committee of the church youth dances in about 1977. As a committee we decided on new music to purchase. Every other dance was a "record dance" which meant some adult spun records on the PA system hidden on the stage in the gym. No DJ chatter or anything like that, but it worked fine.

The ultimate reward the year or so I was on the music committee was that I got to keep the music box at home. It was filled with about 150-200 vinyl 45s. That box of 45s was one of most precious possessions I owned! In my room I had our family's portable record player, so I could play any song I wanted, any time.

That is when I fell in love with Bread (everything they sang!), Radar Love (Golden Earring--one-hit-wonder), Cherish (The Association), Dancing in the Moonlight (Van Morrison? Thin Lizzy?), Precious and Few (Climax Blues Band), and Stairway To Heaven (Led Zep). You get the idea. Great stuff.

The music box was homemade out of wood and painted in pastel colors. It was made of 1x8s I'm thinking, so it was tall and wide enough for for a 45 to stand up. It was quite deep with a long lid fitted with a heavy-duty handle.

Dh and I laughed as we compared that box full of records to an MP3 player a DJ would carry in his pocket today, holding many times that number of songs.

Today I ran across an article about IBM in the paper. Look at the storage unit from 1952 compared with one from 2011. Stunning, isn't it?

I love practically everything technology has brought to me in my life as it brought me my husband and much more!

Terrified girls

A new GPS arrived for me in the mail. I took it to the garage to try it out and sat in the car for about 15 minutes fiddling with it. Suddenly two girls came at me from different directions, one through the open garage door and the other through the laundry room door. "Mom! Come quick! The house might burn up!" You can bet that got my attention! I ran into the house to my office where they had been playing on the computer. Nothing happening in there. I asked what had happened. "Sophia cut the computer cord and lots of fire came out and your Korea phone won't work!"

I settled the girls down and took a look. Here is what I found:

Notice the smoke marks and burned out part of the scissors? I assume when she cut the cord it sparked and threw the breaker. That explains the fire they saw and why the phone wouldn't work.

I went outside and flipped the breaker back and everything was fine with the office machines. I had a stern chat with Sophia about the wisdom of cutting electrical cords and sent her to bed. Dh had an extra cord so he just swapped them out. It actually was kind of funny, and I'll bet not a one of them ever cuts an electrical cord again!