The return of the school girl

Hi.
This is the first entry of September because I took a few days of from blogging cos I was going to be away for a few days so needed to use my time differently.
The first thing was packing cos I had a new once piece travel case as the handle on my old travel attache case broke which took some getting used to was it has a short compartment at the front for things like my tickets and timetables, a middle compartment for things I need immediately on arrival and a generous core for other things with a total weight capacity of 2.5 kg together with wheels to drag it around.
That meant I only that had my hello kitty hand luggage carrying bag which I kept Katie Kitten in as she helps me deal with social anxiety, cellphone, outbound ticket ready for inspection and hello kitty purse.
As we had had heavy showers up here, I did have my Peter Storm waterproof jacket with me too.
Given I didn't need to be out early I caught a later local bus to join the service calling at the North-west Midlands leading rail hub to travel down my friends.
I had a few damp moments between connections but despite warnings about signalling issues on the train, that went very smoothly with the train being on time so having come in at the station in this part of South Staffordshire, I was met and walked to the parking lot just beyond the station before a short car journey to their home.
Upon arrival I changed to my middle uniform a black tunic with a zip having my hello kitty slipper socks on over my white 3/4 white socks with bows.
Over the period I did a lot of colouring  taking my new pencils as well as my Frozen colouring with me to work on as well Lucy one of my dollies to play with which probably says a about why I spend my time with and at littles meets here in the UK.
It's to be in (for me) middle headspace, just enjoying things more associated with actual middles without the sophistication's or concerns of groan ups during that period, just some point where I'm focussed on small things  and not like being preoccupied with news or adult interests.

So it was a welcomed surprise to be working sat at a traditional school desk and chair in uniform  doing my colouring, something that mentally took me back in time, feeling very much that child in class in view of groan ups. It's a feeling I feel very comfortable with, bring back many memories  from my past.
This is so much me.
We had a lovely chicken roast and home made plum pudding for our evening meal enjoying a sing song and quiz in the evening until it was time for me to sleep on the couch in front of the fire which I quite like anyway.  It's the feline in me!
I had a good nights sleep after about twenty minutes ready for the next day.
I got up sometime around 7:30 which is actually a bit later than normal for me, had a wash and got dressed in good time for everyone to be up drink and talk.
As is my want I did play at being a cat making the appropriate movements with my paws and meowing between colouring.
We had a cooked breakfast that was much appreciated before I left to join my train on the way home.
After Auntie Andi had dropped me off at the station, I caught the 13:20 that calls at our rail hub and as I was feeling tired I got a taxi off the rank straight home to cut out the waiting in very good time, directing my driver who was from Mid-Cheshire.
Thanks to Jennifer and Susan (no other name or Gah!) for their cooking and hospitality and Auntie Andi for giving me  a lift back to the rail station,

Rewinding to ones computing past

I'm not feeling that great today to be honest with what feels like a winter cold coming on that I hope clears in just over a weeks time but be that as it may, I was looking a bit at the statistics Google give you about what posts people read, where they're from, any sites they used to find this blog and so on and one thing that struck me was actually some of you do read the older posts. It was that which got me thinking.

I think must of us are aware of how our experience of the Internet has changed over the years, how that's fed into what we use to access it and the different programs we've had connected with our use of computers.

I suspect many of us have what you call a desktop that after some seconds, comes up often with a colourful design.

Well as some of you have been reading posts from 2008, here's one of mine from December that year that tells you quite a few things.

To start with like now in 2008 I also was in love with Miss Kitty so I made it the main image rather than that bland Windows XP Pro  screen.
Also look at the dimensions specifically the aspect ratio, it's 4:3 that tells you I had more traditional CRT monitor the time compared to the near universal 16:9 or 16:10 Widescreen Lcd ones we have today.

Also, it's resolution is 600x800 which is very low by modern standards.
Looking at the toolbar you'll spot firstly Microsoft were highlighting an urgent security issue with that shield with ! mark and Skype was set up on the machine although I didn't use it much.

Like today you'll spot the Avast antivirus program (the blue ball with an A) that I've always used, a program for a separate webcam I no longer use, the Nero 6 Smartstart cd writing program and Yahoo messenger that I suspect a good number of us had back then as we used Yahoo's services like Geocities, messenger and email. I seldom log into Yahoo today with services from Google being that much better overall.

Also you'll spot a trio of Mozilla Foundation programs such as the browser Firefox which was much better at the time when it came to security and features than Internet Exploder 6  (I.E to some), the email program Thunderbird which I used with a lousy Internet Service Providers (I.S.P.) email services until I moved to web based mail exclusively, that organized my mail and allowed me to have coloured backgrounds and text that help my dyslexia and Sunbird, a desktop based calendar to help me with organizing my life which is effectively replaced now  by the Google cloud based Calendar.

I now use Pale Moon a Swedish forked version of Firefox as my main browser on my laptops and the old desktop is gone!

The keenly eyed will also have spotted the installation files for the free cd copying program, dbPoweramp and the shortcut for music player Winamp both of which are installed and much used on my newer laptops. There was no iTunes installed as the machine was incapable of running it although it was very popular back then.

I wonder how many of view still have pictures of your old desktops and can tell the story behind them?