That's the Way It Crumbles, Cookie-Wise

[Nancy Hart]

4/16/26
The bluebird pair brought 2 babies to the deck today. They were several days out of the nest. Only 2 would be par for the course for them, but maybe there are more. I'll keep checking.

The male bluebird entered my bluebird house earlier this morning. Bluebird males check out several possible houses and show them to the females, but the female is the one who finally decides.

 

[Mary Stetler]

4/16/26
The bluebird pair brought 2 babies to the deck today. They were several days out of the nest. Only 2 would be par for the course for them, but maybe there are more. I'll keep checking.

The male bluebird entered my bluebird house earlier this morning. Bluebird males check out several possible houses and show them to the females, but the female is the one who finally decides.

As it should be!

 

[Nancy Hart]

As it should be!

Yes. The female builds the nest all by herself. Occasionally the male will bring a pine needle, but she puts it where it belongs. In fairness, the males do more than their share when it comes to feeding the little ones.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Sphaerobolus stellatus ("sphere thrower") The Artillery Fungus (aka, Shotgun Fungus)

Washing this Ranger has evolved into a 3-day learning experience. One day I might rival Cliffy Claven as an encyclopedia of useless information.

When you do a good job washing a vehicle you are forced to inspect every square inch. There are hundreds of little black spots on this truck. Some so small they are only noticed by feeling with your fingertips. I meant to get them all off. They might be what's left of old spores from the Artillery Fungus (see above video). I always assumed the specks were left by bugs.

As soon as the truck dried off, hundreds of little white flies congregated all over it. Turns out they are a species of water bugs, attracted to highly reflective light sources, in particular red and black (Go Dawgs?).

"Research shows that red reflective surfaces create a specific, highly attractive horizontal polarization pattern that strongly mimics that of water. Water insects (including bugs that may appear white or light-colored) are "red-blind" in this context but react heavily to the light reflected from shiny red surfaces."

Next. There appeared to be no molding around the windshield. Just an empty channel. Did they forget to install the molding? No, they now glue windshields to the body and leave a crack around the side. There is tiny molding attached to the glass. But urethane glue is what makes a watertight seal.

This crack fills with numerous seeds, oak blossoms, pine needles, dead bugs, and various other decayed matter. It can be forced out with water from a hose. This actually may be a good thing because that old rubber molding was one of the first things to deteriorate, and it just traps moisture and causes rust. Trash in the channel traps moisture also, but that puts the onus on the owner to wash it.

Finally, this truck does not like to be washed. Various lights start flashing. It appears to be especially ticklish around the door handles. You need the key fob to open the doors and the tailgate, but apparently you have to hide the fob to wash it. If I hide the fob, will it then think I'm trying to break in and start tooting its horn? Some cars now have a "washing mode" setting. You only have to memorize the breadcrumb steps to set it up on the infotainment system.

There is much, much more, but this is getting 'way too long. As soon as I get the tires washed and shined, I may post a picture. Meanwhile, it's lawnmowing time again.

 

[Nancy Hart]

(4/21/26) Tuesday

A third baby bluebird showed up. I think that's all. The female was there too, but left just before I got the camera going. Yesterday one of the little ones took a bath in the red jar lid. So cute.

Sorry for the poor quality. Camera phone has a "fake" zoom.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Back in March another power outage caused both my new and old desktops to shut down. When I finally turned the old one back on it was running very slowly, for example---one hour just to restart. The Settings Menu in Win 10 didn't work at all.

This kept bothering me, because the old pc never caused a problem in 11 years. It waited faithfully until I got everything transferred to the new one before it started to die. The least I could do for it in return, is try to find out what specifically was causing the problem.

In the last 3 days I have learned more Windows 10 workarounds than Carter had Liver Pills. Then immediately forgot most of them, but at least I know they exist now. I finally found a 3rd-party app, CrystalDiskInfo, that monitors the health of HD and SS drives. It indicated a failing hard drive, with one uncorrectable error. I think that means information on one sector could not be recovered. My guess is some of the Windows 10 files were in corrupted sectors?

Learning how to replace the hardware on a pc has been on my bucket list for years. I'm tempted to use this old one for practice, if I can find the identical parts. Modifying equivalent parts to fit is above my paygrade. I've also been wanting to try Linux OS. I'll think about it tomorrow.

 

[Joe Riley]

That sounds like a Windows 10 downgrade to Windows 9.

 

[Nancy Hart]

That sounds like a Windows 10 downgrade to Windows 9.

There are projects that require experience in order to be successful. There are some that also require talent or certain physical attributes. Then there are those that just take perseverance. I love this 3rd kind, because I have no talent or experience, and plenty of perseverance and patience. But by definition, I can't let them go.

Diagnosing this old pc problem is one of those. I am finally trying a Hail Mary---a factory reset and reformat the hard drive. It will take 2 days, and I expect it to say... unable to complete the process ... giving no useful information. To say I've been down a rabbit hole, is an understatement. More like an ant hole.

 

[Joe Riley]

There are projects that require experience in order to be successful. There are some that also require talent or certain physical attributes. Then there are those that just take perseverance. I love this 3rd kind, because I have no talent or experience, and plenty of perseverance and patience. But by definition, I can't let them go.

Diagnosing this old pc problem is one of those. I am finally trying a Hail Mary---a factory reset and reformat the hard drive. It will take 2 days, and I expect it to say... unable to complete the process ... giving no useful information. To say I've been down a rabbit hole, is an understatement. More like an ant hole.

I guess I think of it as beating a dead horse. somewhere, I once had a "My Uncle Has an ant Farm" thread.

....they don't look like Giant Ants!

 

[Nancy Hart]

I guess I think of it as beating a dead horse. ...

I'm curious ... Does the post come across as complaining about this, like in wishing it was over and done with? On the contrary, it's one of those things that makes me want to pull all-nighters, just to see what happens next. But that's just me. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good writer.

 

[Joe Riley]

I'm curious ... Does the post come across as complaining about this, like in wishing it was over and done with? On the contrary, it's one of those things that makes me want to pull all-nighters, just to see what happens next. But that's just me. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good writer.

I missed the mark as well...I was not totally serious. The " Windows 9" reference was to be a joke. They skipped that and went to Win 10. "Inquisitive minds want to know"!

 

[Joe Riley]

World's 1st PC rediscovered by accident in UK house clearance nearly 50 years after last sighting​

"Two Q1 microcomputers, widely considered to be the first single-microchip PCs, have been found by house clearers in the U.K. The discovery brings the total number of known surviving units to three in the world."

The Q1 microcomputer is often viewed as the precursor to the modern desktop computer
(Image credit: Just Clear)

"Employees from the house-clearing company Just Clear found the two Q1s buried under several boxes while clearing out a property on Dec. 18, Just Clear's founder Brendan O'Shea told Live Science in an email. These two models were last used by an oil drilling company in the 1970s, and the other known model's location is thought to be somewhere in Scandinavia, O'Shea added."

"Just Clear employees initially had no idea what they had found. O'Shea then consulted with an expert, who told him these devices were the world's first fully integrated desktop computers powered by a single-chip microprocessor."

"The Q1, made by the American Q1 Corporation in 1972, was an industrial computer with an orange and black design and a plasma display, and it's viewed as the precursor to the modern desktop computer."


Related: World's 1st fault-tolerant quantum computer launching this year ahead of a 10,000-qubit machine in 2026

"It marked a significant milestone in the development of computing. Computers before the Q1 were fitted with multi-chip microprocessors — but this machine was the first to be designed and powered by a single chip, the Intel 8008."

"There would be no PCs, no Macs, no Apple or Android phones without the Q1 Corporation," Paul Neve, professor of computing at Kingston University in the U.K., said in a statement. "The early pioneers in the 1970s and 1980s laid the foundation for today’s 'everything' device — the modern computer, which is so ubiquitous in everyday life."

 

[Joe Riley]

The forgotten Q1: The world's first microcomputer?​

Q1 Corporation

 

[Nancy Hart]

My first pc was a Commodore 64. It came with an external tape drive that used standard audio cassettes as storage, before floppy disks.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Linux was easy to install on the old pc. It comes with the Firefox browser. The Mint version is set up almost like Windows 10, except you can't see the old C: drive anymore, just a folder!

The only hard part was disabling "Secure Boot" on the old pc first. You need to get into that Dell (BIOS/UEFI) thing. You know... that process where you turn on the computer and start banging on the F2 key like a dunce, because if you miss the time window you have to start all over, and a little screen comes up that works like it was created in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it sometimes requires a password, which I know for a fact I never set. There is only one workaround, short of calling Dell support and submitting proof you really do own this computer. You have to pull a two-hole jumper off of pins 1 & 2 of a 3-pin connector on the motherboard, move it over to pins to 2 & 3, then restart. Move the jumper back the way it was, before rebooting the next time.

I have tortured this hard drive more in the last 2 weeks than all the previous 10 years put together. It still bothers me that there are only 77 bad sectors (out of 244 million) over 11 years and it has to be replaced. In dog years that's about my age. I have several bad or failing sectors but I'm still kicking. Most of the bad sectors on the HDD are adjacent. Maybe a no-see-um gnat got inside the hard drive one day and left a deposit. But what do I know.

Anyway, the cost of a new hard drive would be less than a one-night stay at a Holiday Inn Express. Even better, I discovered you can add up to TWO extra hard drives to my NEW pc. I can stick it on the old pc first, just to find out what happens. Then eventually move it to the new pc.

I've already ordered a new hard drive. It may sound like I know what I'm doing, but it was a very steep learning curve, and I'll forget everything next week. If it weren't for this diary thread, I would never have sorted it all out. I may explain next time. It's not what you think.

 

[Joe Riley]

Linux was easy to install on the old pc. It comes with the Firefox browser. The Mint version is set up almost like Windows 10, except you can't see the old C: drive anymore, just a folder!

The only hard part was disabling "Secure Boot" on the old pc first. You need to get into that Dell (BIOS/UEFI) thing. You know... that process where you turn on the computer and start banging on the F2 key like a dunce, because if you miss the time window you have to start all over, and a little screen comes up that works like it was created in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it sometimes requires a password, which I know for a fact I never set. There is only one workaround, short of calling Dell support and submitting proof you really do own this computer. You have to pull a two-hole jumper off of pins 1 & 2 of a 3-pin connector on the motherboard, move it over to pins to 2 & 3, then restart. Move the jumper back the way it was, before rebooting the next time.

I have tortured this hard drive more in the last 2 weeks than all the previous 10 years put together. It still bothers me that there are only 77 bad sectors (out of 244 million) over 11 years and it has to be replaced. In dog years that's about my age. I have several bad or failing sectors but I'm still kicking. Most of the bad sectors on the HDD are adjacent. Maybe a no-see-um gnat got inside the hard drive one day and left a deposit. But what do I know.

Anyway, the cost of a new hard drive would be less than a one-night stay at a Holiday Inn Express. Even better, I discovered you can add up to TWO extra hard drives to my NEW pc. I can stick it on the old pc first, just to find out what happens. Then eventually move it to the new pc.

I've already ordered a new hard drive. It may sound like I know what I'm doing, but it was a very steep learning curve, and I'll forget everything next week. If it weren't for this diary thread, I would never have sorted it all out. I may explain next time. It's not what you think.

Good job! Think of it as adding new synapses to your brain. Synaptic Pruning, however, is another topic all together!

 

[Nancy Hart]

Good job! Think of it as adding new synapses to your brain. Synaptic Pruning, however, is another topic all together!

Synaptic Pruning reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet.

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”