A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Look! My new laptop! (Photo by the author) Hi there, Dear Reader. Just a quick update to let you know that the Odyssey of the Wayward Laptop is over. Yesterday, Best Buy handed the replacement of my lost   Lenovo – IdeaPad S340 15″ Touch-Screen Laptop over to UPS, which then shipped it to Louisville, Kentucky in the afternoon, then – apparently – flew it from there to Jacksonville, Florida. This morning, the   Lenovo – IdeaPad S340 15″ Touch-Screen Laptop was sent to Lakeland, Florida, which is roughly 25 miles away from here. There, at 9:36 AM Eastern, it was placed on a UPS truck and marked Out for Delivery. Sometime after 3 PM Eastern, it arrived here, along with the 2018 Jurassic World Five-Movie 4K UHD/2K Blu-ray set with all five currently-extant films in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World series. It’s late (10:27 PM Eastern) and I’m tired, so I’m going to close for now. I just wanted to let you know that I received my new laptop (even though UPS has not explained why the first at

   "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." – Murphy’s Law Hi, everybody, how are you all doing? It’s early afternoon here in West Florida on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Currently, the temperature outside is 90 ˚ F (32 ˚ C) under sunny skies. With the wind blowing from the west at 13 MPH (18 KM/H) and humidity at 55%, the heat index is a whopping 97 ˚ F (35 ˚ C).   Today we were supposed to get light rain, and we still might, but as of right now all we are getting is broiling sun and heat. The high is expected to reach 91 ˚ F (33 ˚ C) by 3 PM Eastern. Tonight, the skies will be partly cloudy and the low will be 71 ˚ F (22 ˚ C). I’m writing this as an update to May 3’s Update from New Hometown post. That’s the one where I mentioned the purchase of a new Lenovo – IdeaPad S340 15″ Touch-Screen Laptop. If you recall, I wrote: Apparently, Best Buy does not have any laptops of my model in stores close to New Hometown, so my new  Lenovo IdeaPad S340 15" Touch-Screen Lapto

  Photo Credit: Lenovo, via BestBuy.com  It’s early afternoon here in New Hometown, Florida on Monday, May 3, 2021. Outside, it is a hot, almost summery day; the temperature is 92 ˚ F under sunny skies, but the heat index is 98 ˚ F and the light rain promised in the forecast for our area is nowhere in evidence. The afternoon is still young, though, so maybe we’ll see a few showers and a blissful bit of a cooldown later. Well, the trusty Compaq laptop that I bought – somewhat presciently – in 2009 and used to write many of the pre-2016 posts I wrote at my old house in Miami “died” on Saturday of old age and because it was running on an operating system (Windows Vista Home Edition) that Microsoft no longer supports. (Official mainstream support for Vista ended on  April 10, 2012 , and extended support ended on  April 11, 2017 )   I was able to use my old Compaq on safe mode for a little while late last month; I recovered several drafts of reviews I wrote for Epinions between 2003 and