Back it up

The preceding discussions have gotten me thinking about calendars, and how arbitrary they really are.  Our modern de facto calendar is the Gregorian, but there are many other calendars in use for religious or cultural purposes.  The Chinese, Jew, and Muslims will all give different answers when asked, "What year is it?"

In light of that, I propose a new calendar in which we are in Year One of the Dark Times, or DT which is also the initials of you-know-who.  If Dark Times is too pessimistic perhaps we can call it the Dumb Times.  Doofus?  Dumbfuck?

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Those ancient astronomers were really something.  Here we are, thousands of years later, still pondering their work.  I wonder what they would think of modern photography and images of the sun traversing the sky.  If you haven't already, take a peek at the shots of the analemma, the figure-eight pattern that the sun traces.  Or the pinhole camera images that track the sun over a year's time.  The sun is never in the same spot during the year; there's an imperceptible shift.

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Had a close call today, and it may be time for a computer replacement.  This afternoon my laptop suffered a catastrophic failure, and was functionally dead.  The screen hinge has been a little out of line but the machine ran fine until it got a major jostle (operator error!); there was a very granular flickering screen, no wifi connection, and I couldn't find the cursor.  There was no output from the HDMI port, so I couldn't use my TV as an external monitor.

I started writing a post with the iPad, but that's a very clumsy operation and I gave up.  I have a backup from about six months ago, which would be fine; there haven't been any new programs installed and anything else could be easily replicated or isn't important.  But Jeez!  How would I get old stuff from a dead computer onto a new, fresh system?

Before I drove myself crazy trying to figure out that dilemma, I decided to power it down, wait a few minutes, and fire it back up to see what happens.  Well, whadda'ya know?  Started up with a message saying it wasn't shut down  properly and I had a choice to restart it as normal, which I did.  All systems normal, but I haven't seen that kind of glitch before nor do I wish to see it again.  Time to start looking for a replacement, just in case, and to do another backup.

Replacing the computer is not something I look forward to; too many old programs that may not run on a newer OS.  But at least I'll be in better shape with the old box still running and data transfers should be relatively easier.  Hell of a way to start the new year.