Status report
May. 4th, 2025 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrIt all started a few weeks back when a friend gave me a couple of "surplus" laptops They were part of a bunch that had been retired by a company he does tech support for.
Anyway, one had a virgin (re)install of Win 10 on it, and I played around a bit. It was designed to hook up to a docking station which had some nice extra. And they were cheap on e-bay. So I bought one. And when it arrived, I hooked it up to the monitors and keyboard/mouse on the kitchen table I use as a workbench.
This meantfayanora and I could resume our long lapsed weekly TV nights. We are way behand (watching shows from 2021 now) but we are making a dent in the backlog. Good thing because space was getting aa bit tight on the server.
This led to Fay wanting one of her own (my friend was willing to sell them *very* cheaply). So I bought one and let her use it here until she could pay me back. Which she did a few days ago, and I turned it over to her on our monthly Winco run on the third. She'd ordered herself a docking station which should arrive on Friday.
So this week's TV night she'll bring her laptop and plug it into my docking station and watch like we've been doing since I got it set up. Then she can take it home along with any files I have for her. much better than the old setup...
Anyway, amongst all this, I had gotten a replacement for the program I used to use to get stuff off Facebook but I'd made a few goofs, so I wound up with a *lot* of duplicate files. As if FB wasn't notorious for repeated posts anyway.
That led to my trying to use Duplicate File Finder to clean up the dupes. It works well if there are only a few, but as you get more, it gets cumbersome as you have to delete each file individually.
I think I posted about that before
My mousing fingers were getting quite a workout. I finally switched to my lefthanded trackball to give my right hand a break.
Seeing as I don't use it that often, I had to deal with things like thumb twitches making it hard to select th9ings. Reminded me of one lady in the building who had Parkinson's and asked me to help her with the computers in the community room. Except they only had mice. At least with a trackball, you can have it sitting stable on the table while you try to move the cursor to the right place. And you can lift your thumb if you feel a twitch coming on.
Then when the cursor is on the right spot, you lift your thumb and can got for the proper button without your movements affecting the cursor.
[accessibility tip: if you have folks with hand tremors, get them nice *big* trackballs!]
Finally found a program that does batch deletes of dupes. I wish it was a *tiny* bit more configurable about which ones it chooose when yopu "automark" files for deletion, but it''l
Duplicate Files Fixer. It's not free, but it's already saved me enough time to pay for itself.
In other news, my insurance company is trying to kill me. They aren't approving my insulin aor the dosages. Monday I'll have a few words with my doctor so *hopefully* I can get more before I run out...
Anyway, one had a virgin (re)install of Win 10 on it, and I played around a bit. It was designed to hook up to a docking station which had some nice extra. And they were cheap on e-bay. So I bought one. And when it arrived, I hooked it up to the monitors and keyboard/mouse on the kitchen table I use as a workbench.
This meant
fayanora and I could resume our long lapsed weekly TV nights. We are way behand (watching shows from 2021 now) but we are making a dent in the backlog. Good thing because space was getting aa bit tight on the server.This led to Fay wanting one of her own (my friend was willing to sell them *very* cheaply). So I bought one and let her use it here until she could pay me back. Which she did a few days ago, and I turned it over to her on our monthly Winco run on the third. She'd ordered herself a docking station which should arrive on Friday.
So this week's TV night she'll bring her laptop and plug it into my docking station and watch like we've been doing since I got it set up. Then she can take it home along with any files I have for her. much better than the old setup...
Anyway, amongst all this, I had gotten a replacement for the program I used to use to get stuff off Facebook but I'd made a few goofs, so I wound up with a *lot* of duplicate files. As if FB wasn't notorious for repeated posts anyway.
That led to my trying to use Duplicate File Finder to clean up the dupes. It works well if there are only a few, but as you get more, it gets cumbersome as you have to delete each file individually.
I think I posted about that before
My mousing fingers were getting quite a workout. I finally switched to my lefthanded trackball to give my right hand a break.
Seeing as I don't use it that often, I had to deal with things like thumb twitches making it hard to select th9ings. Reminded me of one lady in the building who had Parkinson's and asked me to help her with the computers in the community room. Except they only had mice. At least with a trackball, you can have it sitting stable on the table while you try to move the cursor to the right place. And you can lift your thumb if you feel a twitch coming on.
Then when the cursor is on the right spot, you lift your thumb and can got for the proper button without your movements affecting the cursor.
[accessibility tip: if you have folks with hand tremors, get them nice *big* trackballs!]
Finally found a program that does batch deletes of dupes. I wish it was a *tiny* bit more configurable about which ones it chooose when yopu "automark" files for deletion, but it''l
Duplicate Files Fixer. It's not free, but it's already saved me enough time to pay for itself.
In other news, my insurance company is trying to kill me. They aren't approving my insulin aor the dosages. Monday I'll have a few words with my doctor so *hopefully* I can get more before I run out...
