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| Image: PC Repair |
My family loves pizza. It’s official. When Gail was given the choice of where she wanted to go for her birthday meal she chose Pizza Express on Leith’s Shore. She made her decision shortly before we left, and so I wasn’t surprised to see it was full when we got there. Wednesday’s are “Orange Wednesday” where you get 2-for-1 if you are a customer of Orange, hence the Leithers all out in force.
What to do! After a quick call to Directory Enquiries I booked us a table at the Pizza Express on Holyrood Road. A much nicer venue if you ask me, opposite The Scotsman building and off-set from the street. It’s where I went to an art opening a couple of years ago (free food and bevy) so I have fond memories of it.
It was nowhere near as busy as the Leith version and more pleasant. Their Bruschetta was delicious; flumpy garlic bread with tomatoes, red onion, pesto sauce, rocket and drizzled in olive oil. Most nice, it was, and works really well with a bottle of Nastro Azzurro. For my main I plumped for one of their new pizzas. I can’t remember its name but it had Parma ham, black olives, capers, anchovies and boiled eggs on it.
Anyway, in the past three days we’ve had a Dominos delivery on the couch in front of the telly for birthday #1, and a trip out to a pizza restaurant for birthday #2. For my birthday in September I’m going to insist on somewhere new. Papa John’s perhaps.
I left wife to sleep off her grub when we got back, which gave me some time to get my PC back in order. I dumped a few applications from the reinstall list to slim things down, mainly web development tools I’ve installed to trial in the past and then let expire. The home network is sorted and I’ve restored all my personal files, including the all important writing folder.
The only application I couldn’t get to install was, would you believe, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.) and I may have a problem restoring my emails to their most current. Which could pose a problem with regards to issue 11 of the Ranfurly Review; no emails = no idea who has been accepted/rejected and it also means I may not have the full and proper queue of who is still to be read. Nightmare scenario, but I’ll find a way.
Note it is only the Microsoft products giving me the hassle.
Speaking of the Ranfurly Review, I did manage to get the new issue uploaded and published. Click here to download a free copy.
Until tomorrow, peace and out!
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Freedom from the Mundane 
Of course it’s Microsoft, it’s always Microsoft. As soon as you can afford it, I suggest getting a Mac for home use and either getting the version of Office for Mac (the simple one I have) or getting the full Windows boot camp thing and quarantining a section of the Mac so it can run all the Microsoft applications, but they won’t taint the Mac stuff.
This way, you’ll have the ease of the Mac, and its versatility — and Time Machine, which, in my opinion is the greatest invention on the planet — and yet, you’ll still be able to interface with any PC work you still need.
Having a Mac will help your writing life enormously.
Also, suggestion — once you’ve decided on Ranfurly submissions — I don’t know if you do a spread sheet or just a list — but print it out. That way, if you run into this type of problem, you’ve got a hard copy list. While Time Machine on the Mac helps one move towards paperless office, anything Microsoft demands three times the paperwork because it’s so unreliable.