Blogosphere

Updated Blog Banners

House Current Appearance

The blog header image we were using here has become obsolete because the appearance of our house has changed quite a bit since eight years ago when the original header was created. I went out today and got the image above with a 17mm wide-angle lens on my Canon SL1. I added the graphic titles and cropped the image as shown in the new header at the top of the page.

The old header, shown below for reference, contained landscape items no longer seen and much less mature xeriscape items. We removed several creosote trees and added a retaining wall by the lower RV drive and in front of the house by the road.

Old Banner

I also updated the banner on our Food Blog.

Breaking In a New Laptop

New Laptop

Both of our computers are getting older and, as a consequence, not able to keep up with the latest things we see online or from our accessories (cameras, etc.) which interface with the computers. We’re used to our current Windoze7© operating system and it will be a little challenge to transition to the W10 version, but we’re proceeding with it. Which brings us to the new laptops; hers is this one shown in the image above and is one we bought a couple of years ago and postponed transitioning to it. But now it’s full steam ahead.

The one shown on the test bed (literally a bed) is a HP 15.6″ Touchscreen 15-g059wm Laptop (AMD Quad-core A8-6410 Processor, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD, Windows 10 64-bit) and is still available from Amazon Marketplace, although we bought this one at Walmart (whom we no longer patronize after their gutless cave-in on guns and ammo after the El Paso shooting episode). Her computer will be ready to go after I set up some of the fundamental things she needs, i.e. browsing, email, printing recipes, Fecesbook™, etc.

The laptop I ordered will not be here until Saturday, so I will not need to begin transitioning to it until next week, perhaps. The new one is also an HP: 2019 HP 15.6″ FHD IPS Touchscreen Laptop Computer, 8th Gen Intel Quad-Core i5-8250U up to 3.4GHz (Beat i7-7500U), 16GB DDR4, 1TB HDD + 512GB SSD, 802.11ac WiFi, USB 3.1, Bluetooth, HDMI, Windows 10. I ordered it from Amazon. My transition will be a little more involved since I have a large number of applications and several peripherals that Verna’s does not. I will get through all of it in time, I’m sure.

UPDATE 10/22/2019: As of yesterday, Verna’s new laptop system has been fully integrated into her desktop setup with a 22 inch external monitor as a second desktop. The transition was smooth and with few changes to the way she has to do things. The new operating system and the computer should make for faster loading on most applications and websites.

Integrated system

VernaBob Blog Now 13 Years Old

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It has been quite a long time since we first acquired the vernabob.com domain, so it’s not one of those suddenly we’re thirteen sort of days. In fact, we probably have had that domain name for nearly twenty years, but only started the WordPress© blog thirteen years ago today. I have the archives from the old websites on some media somewhere, but don’t really intend to revive any of them anytime soon, if ever.

Now that we’re retired and living in our lovely desert casita, we don’t blog as much as in the past. Social media and smart phone messaging keep us in touch with family and friends and let them know what we’re up to and can mutually know what they’re doing as well.

We intend to keep posting here for posterity (it is an online diary, after all) when the events or whims of the day seem like something we want to share or put in the blog for storage. Some photos Verna or I take are too good to not share in a couple of places, for example. We also plan to travel some and that activity ought to be recorded.

So we will be here sporadically until next year when we will post about the fourteenth blogaversary.

VERNABOB.COM 12th Anniversary

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Today marks the 12th year that we have been open for blogging. We don’t blog as much or regularly these days, well, because retirement finds so many ways to use your time and efforts otherwise. The following was our opening statement after converting from our old format to WordPress:

We’re now completely converted from the old stuff and functioning as an online diary/weblog (”blog”). We decided to convert our old website to the blog format of the WordPress Publishing Platform.

As we continue to add new posts here, we also plan to add new gadgets and features to this format. Most all of the features from the old website have been converted and are available in the left sidebar. Check out some of the Potpourri items or our “stuff.”

Eleventh Blogaversary

Pruned Mesquite

Our first post on VERNABOB.COM was on July 17, 2006. We put up a couple of photos of us taken in our leisure time since we were still reporting to work in those days.

We don’t blog as much or regularly these days, well, because retirement finds so many ways to use your time and efforts otherwise. Today, I took off a major upright limb from the mesquite tree by the RV driveway. I pruned off the remaining low-hanging branches that were almost reaching the ground. Click on the image to enlarge.

VERNABOB.COM 10th Anniversary

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It was ten years ago that we started operations on VERNABOB.COM. Our first post was about a visit to Point Vicente in California. Since then, we have mostly documented our doings from then to now. Our lives have been quite an adventure over the last decade and we hope to document many more over the next decade.