Scattered Thoughts . . .

I haven't written in a while so I'm long overdue for an update.  I was going to write about a few different things in this blog entry that have kept me away from typing here and I actually started typing but I quickly realized that the first thing I was typing about really should have a blog entry of its own so I'm going to stick with this morning's topic...  my latest computer upgrades.  I'll write about other topics in separate blog entries sometime later.  My primary desktop computer that I use every single day is now about five years old.  It is still a powerful computer even by today's standards but it needed some preventative maintenance as well as a few upgrades.  Five years of daily use is a long time.   The primary issue that needed to be resolved is that my C: drive was almost full.  It was so full that just browsing the internet for a few days would collect enough temporary files that my C: drive would move into the red warning area (less than 10gb&

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