All Change!

I've lost count of the number of times during the last thirty or so years that I've echoed the words attributed to Henry Ford, "If it ain't bust, don't fix it!" I certainly thought of them last Wenesday, as I mopped up what could only be side-effects of a two-hour Windows 10 update download the previous evening.  It seems that - with all due respect to my American readers - modern America has lost touch with Henry's sentiments.

One of my spreadsheet applications has over fifty individual graphs with two vertical axes.  Every one of them had been modified so that only one axis could be seen, and every one had to be individually corrected, by the same amount ... once I had searched all the menus to find out how to do it. That was no accident!

Furthermore, my favourite on-screen memo program, Sticky-notes, had also been changed.  Not only had the font been changed from something cheerily informal to a bog-standard Tahoma or Arial, but the line-selector enabling a quick cut and shift of whole lines at a time had disappeared!  When I explored a brand new menu icon and found settings for reporting my use of the product to ... who knows where? ... I realised that I'd found the explanation for an interminable wait for the effect of typing a single character to appear on the screen.  It was time for it to go!  I'm now using Evernote, which is also cloud-based, but seems to fulfil my needs with a sophistication, yes, that exceeds Sticky-notes, but at least isn't imperative.

Last week I reported delivering the awning that had been replaced by a fixed apparatus on my motorhome, and also an unexpected change-around of my lounge, two more recent changes that have been followed up.  The weekend saw the departure of the redundant bookshelf, and on Tuesday I drove three boxes of books to a charity warehouse in the town, leaving only the lamp-stand to go.  Three people were interested in this, but one after another dropped out of the running by neither appearing at the door to collect, nor responding to my e-mails.  The result was a further minor adjustment to my reshuffle, and the lamp has now been re-instated beside the dining table.

On the bank holiday, I visited my cousin and spent a pleasant afternoon chatting in her garden and enjoying the sunshine ... a pleasure usually denied to flat-dwellers like me.  During the course of my visit, she posed a question that I undertook to answer upon my return home.  The next morning, therefore, I faced the challenge of finding the requisite books from my re-arranged shelves.  To do this, I had to move a small storage cabinet, which I did without realising that on the top of it was an external hard-disk drive.  As its power-lead tightened, this fell to the floor, shedding its case in the process.  The case was fairly easily replaced, but upon testing, the drive was found not to work.  Its use hadn't been essential, and its apparent demise has eliminated what was really an unnecessary daily task, so I'm not unduly worried.

More significant came the last change I want to mention.  Yesterday, as I made to follow my usual habit of watching a catch-up TV programme over lunch using i-Player, I discovered the truth of a rumour I'd heard a week or so ago, that a change in regulations had now come into force, whereby watching such material, even long after it has been broadcast, now requires a TV licence.  I have no intention of spending almost £150 in order to accompany two meals a day, so today I bought a newspaper, and sat at the dining table with this.  By my reckoning, a paper will last two days (given my normal amount of available reading time), news the first day, features the second, and the total expenditure per annum should be less than half the cost of the TV licence!  And, considering the intellectual content of the material, I shall be better-informed into the bargain!

But don't ask me to sell the car and walk everywhere, please.  Even economy has its limits ... as yet!