A New Toy For Work . . .

When I got to work this morning, I had a new toy waiting for me. A new (to me) Dell OptiPlex 9020 Tower Computer for the Shipping Department.

New Work Dell Desktop Computer

It’s an i7-4GHz with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a DVD drive. Then before I started setting it up, I added another 16GB for a total of 32GB, and 1TB Hard Drive for daily internal backup of the SSD.

This computer, as well as all the other computers I’ve bought for work, and as my personal one at home, are Amazon Renewed, I.e. Refurbished with a 90 day full warranty. Then for $61 I add an additional 3-year warranty.

In pretty much every case these are computers that are surplused from business who often change out their computers every two years. Refurbishers buy these in bulk, check them out. and often upgrade them at the same time. Then they’re put up on Amazon.

Coming home I stopped off at the Verizon store at FM646 to see if they could figure out what was wrong with the text messaging on Jan’s phone. Or rather with Jan’s account.

We discovered this when we moved Jan over to my old S8+ and the text problem followed along. Then last week when the S8+ died and she moved back to the S5 the problem moved back too.

And after I finally convinced them it was not a phone problem, three techs spent about 20 minutes rummaging around in her account, using the phone, a computer, and a tablet before they finally found the weird setting that was causing the problem. And then after rebooting her phone, she has finally has texting.

Tomorrow we’re heading up to the Spring area to meet up with Debi and Ed Hurlburt for a our monthly get-together once again, this time at Razzoo’s Cajun Café. Then instead of coming straight home, we’ll detour back down SR99 to the Katy area where I’ll drop Jan off for a weekend of fun, frivolity, and dog-sitting while Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Sophie head up to Lake Livingston for the weekend.

Finishing up, I thought this was a really neat shot of the Pharaoh Khufu’s intact Solar Boat being moved from the Great Pyramid, where it has rested for over 4,600 years, to its new home in Egypt’s new Grand Museum.

Solar boats were buried in pits next to royal burial chambers in the belief that they would transport the departed into the afterlife.

The boat was commissioned by Khufu, a Fourth Dynasty monarch who ruled during the Old Kingdom.

The ministry boasted that the 42-metre (138-foot) long and 20-ton solar boat is “the biggest and oldest organic artifact made of wood, in the history of humanity”.

Pharaonic Solar Boat

Amazing!

I’ll come back and finished up our Museum tour in tomorrow night’s blog.


Thought For The Day:

The Power of Accurate Observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.