Such Days Make One Week ... or Weak?

Most things don't conveniently end at the end of the week and many's the time when I sit down to write another blog and pick up the threads of what I wrote the week before.  So let's do that.  Monday and Tuesday were quite routine, except that on Tuesday plans were confirmed for the execution on Wednesday of the favour that was the subject of that phone call last Friday afternoon.  A well-known high street company had offered some end-of-line stocks for sale in our local charity shops ... provided we collect them from their head office site.

It was agreed that a van would be hired - of a size fitting to the job - and that I would drive it, accompanied by another volunteer, to collect the goods and bring them to our warehouse.  I may have been right when I surmised that it was in consideration of my background and my abilities that I was asked if I would do the job.  It happens that, in my courier days, I had previously visited the company in question on a number of occasions, and thus knew precisely where I was going ... no fiddling about with an unfamiliar SatNav, or the hassle of transferring my own to the van.

The journey was a piece of cake.  My 'shotgun rider' - someone I'd not met before - proved to be chatty, resourceful and helpful, and the roads presented no hold-ups.  The only minor difficulty was the generosity of the donor.  The amount of goods we were presented with exceeded by 100% the amount specified.  This meant that, instead of bringing back the bins we'd taken, neatly packed with goodies, the van was piled to the roof with 'goodies-plus'.  But we weren't complaining.  It was a most satisfying day and, home once more, I felt justified in doing very little else.  The 'payback' - not that it was intended thus, of course - came yesterday afternoon in a text message telling me thanks for my efforts, and saying that the van I usually help on had to go to the garage today, so I could have a day off!

The other 'big event' of the week has been on the domestic front, where I've had to deal with not one, but two desk-top rebellions.  I replaced the ink in my printer ... a necessary and, one would think, innocuous task.  The printer, however, had other ideas and refused to have anything to do with the new black cartridge I'd installed, despite its being physically identical to the one I'd removed.  In desperation, and thankful that it wasn't quite empty, I replaced the old one and things are OK at the moment.  New ink has been ordered and hopefully will arrive before the old black cartridge finally runs out.

Like many others, I imagine - certainly two users I know have shared their experiences - I suffered severe delays a couple of weeks ago as a result of a mammoth update to Windows 10.  For many years I have been a happy user of a program called Windows Photo Viewer.  I like it because, by simply rolling my mouse-wheel, I can enlarge a picture virtually instantly, instead of engaging a menu, selecting the magnification I require and then probably finding it's not exactly what I want.  This instant magnification facility is very useful when I'm transcribing census documents, which I receive as a .jpg file.

Windows 10 doesn't have, as standard, the choice of using this program to view these files.  It has been replaced by Photos, which doesn't have this capability.  I discovered this with my old computer when I upgraded from Windows 7, and was able to recover its use after an online search for information about the problem and its solution.  Somewhat annoyed that, having been using it on my new laptop for well over a year now, suddenly it was gone, I resorted to the internet once again and, an hour or so later, I am now able to use Windows Photo Viewer once more.  I freely admit I'm not exactly sure what it was that I installed, but I followed the instructions from the screen, and am satisfied.

I realised yesterday evening that, if I download a number of photos at once - as I shall have to when I receive another batch of census pages - they now arrive in a different format from the zip file I'm used to, and the 'compressed file' abilities of Windows Explorer are unable to extract them.  I see more troubles in store as I try to overcome that one in the coming days!