Scattered Thoughts . . .

O ne of the things on my very long to-do list is to build a small observatory shed next to my outdoor telescope pier and then fence the entire area to keep out bears, bobcats and skunks.  I have sketched all sorts of plans but, between continuing health issues followed by the pandemic and lack of available lumber, I have made absolutely no progress in actually building this shed/observatory area.  Well...  I did build the telescope pier and the foundation for the shed but that is all that has been accomplished thus far.  My plan was to use an old Hewlett-Packard desktop computer for controlling my astronomy gear and it would be housed in this astronomy shed.  This old computer is in the eight to ten year old range and hasn't been used at all over the past two years.  When I purchased a new computer two years ago, I saved this old computer specifically for the purpose of using it in my new observatory.  I recently started loading astronomy programs onto this old computer to get it r

My five year old desktop computer was constantly crashing earlier this month. This old HP computer would suddenly go black... then the HP splash screen would appear... followed by a Windows reboot. This would happen whether I was simply typing email, or working in Photoshop, or working on a video, or even when no programs were opened. I knew that some component was failing.  At around five years old, this computer was already beyond its average life expectancy for a computer workstation. If there is any good news in this story it is that I was already shopping around for a new computer long before this one started to fail. Whenever Sheila and I would window shop, we were always impressed by the Lenovo computers whether they be desktop computers or laptop computers. Actually, Sheila has been drooling over their top-of-the-line Yoga laptop but we decided it would be overkill for reading books, reading magazines and accessing social media. Since her cellphone is a Samsung, we opted