General update

Since my last blog update much has happened.

Two more of the four LED light bulbs that claimed 10,000 hour life have failed. That makes three out of four. All 3 failed to last a single year of intermittent use in the bathroom. The old incandescent bulb that I never replaced still works well and that has been there for several years. The moral of that story has to be not to waste your hard earned cash on LED bulbs. The savings in electricity are more than offset by the cost of bulbs. Add to that, the bulbs are non recyclable and will quickly become landfill.

I bought a GPS data logger from Amazon. It's the DG-100 by GlobalSat. I put batteries in it and logged some of my journey home. Then I discovered the CD has only software that works on Windows. I downloaded a driver for Mac from the company website and managed to upload a copy of the log to my Mac. As there was no software other than the driver that would work on Mac, the company suggested using google earth. Needless to say, google earth won't run on my Mac. It comes up with runtime errors.

Turning to the manual, it said the Windows software wouldn't run on Windows 8 and according to reviews, won't work on Windows 10 either. Luckily my lady had an old Windows 7 laptop. I dutifully loaded the software and it wouldn't recognize the device.

So, in order to use this $20 marvel of technology, it appears I have to read the file using my Mac, transfer it to a memory stick. Then visit milady to beg use of her old Windows 7 laptop then somehow get the software to read the memory stick file. That seems like a horrible lot of hard work, running from one computer to another in order to work around incompetently written software. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in calling this device a scam. I don't think it has a snowflakes chance of working!

In other news, I had the sad news of my mother's passing. I'd promised to visit this year but in the early part of the year couldn't leave my job to do it. Then in the summer I couldn't afford to go dye to outrageous air fares. Then I got a new job so was planning to visit at Christmas. Airfares are still outrageous at $1000 for a flight at a time when fuel prices have never been lower! Airlines are definitely price gouging!