Asides

Favorite Book: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Ann Dillard

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

I’ve started reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for the nth time and am enjoying it so much!

Moving my focus from Microsoft, Windows and Office to Linux and Open Source Applications

In my quest to move away from Windows and Microsoft, I bought a used Windows 10 laptop that I will use to learn what I need to know about Linux. I plan to set up the laptop to run both Windows 10 and Linux and then use it to get some hands on experience with Linux.

I have several friends and family members who have Windows 10 computers that are not upgradeable to Windows 11. I hope to get all my Windows computers converted to Linux and also help them convert their computers over to Linux in the next several months. This laptop will be my test case.

I’m a little nervous and a bit intimidated by the learning curve, but I am looking forward to success with Linux

Important Information for Home Owners

This article showed up in my RSS feed today. I trust Clark Howard, he’s a well known consumer advocate who lives in Georgia and I’ve read him and listened to his podcasts for several years.

How to Avoid Home Title Theft

The article mentions, “In Georgia, the Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority offers the Filing Activity Notification System (FANS). This voluntary system sends homeowners notifications “when certain real estate and personal property records are filed with, indexed, and data is transmitted by Clerks of Superior Court throughout the state of Georgia,” the website says.”

The link to the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority website where you can set this up to receive any notifications is: 

Filing Activity Notification System (FANS)

Georgia Magazine: Stitch in time

The April 2025 edition of Georgia Magazine has a great article in it about lacemaking and highlights the Atlanta Chapter of the International Organization of Lace. Two NeedleNerd members are mentioned in the article:

Sandra Eichelberger had been a regular participant at our meetings when she lived in Douglasville, but she moved to Decatur several years ago and so we don’t see her very often these days. I hope that she’ll find some time in her schedule to come out to one of our meetings this summer.

Yvonne Taylor has recently joined our group and I hope to see some of her lace-art pieces in our upcoming meetings.

I’ve uploaded a copy of the PDF formatted article to my Dropbox account and if you’d like to read it, you can download it by clicking this link: Georgia Magazine: “Stitch in time”

NeedleNerds meet on Monday, May 5th, from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, at Panera Bread

Our NeedleNerds May meeting is Monday, May 5th, at the Panera Bread restaurant on 2868 Chapel Hill Road, Douglasville, GA.

I hope to see you there. Be sure and bring pictures or items you’ve been working on!

Please Note: I’ve stopped using MailChimp to manage and send NeedleNerds email messages. This and future emails will be sent directly from me from one of my personal email accounts (I’m still figuring out how to work this out)

Knit in Public Day 2025 is June 14th

At our last NeedleNerds meeting we talked about the annual Knit in Public Day that occurs every June. I think it would be fun to coordinate a time and place for us to gather together to knit or crochet or tat or embroider in public on June 14th. I am aware of 3 or 4 different groups that meet around the county at various days and times during the month and think it would be fun to include these groups into this coordinated event.

Several NeedleNerds thought we could meet up at O’Neal Plaza in downtown Douglasville for this event, but we’ll need to check with the Convention Center first to learn if anything has already been planned at the Plaza on that day. Even so, we could probably still meet up there unless something private is going on there – if a festival is taking place there on that day, we could bring our yarn & needles and enjoy the show, but I don’t think we’d want to crash a potential wedding if that has been scheduled there on that day.

What do you think?

Reading: Caesar’s Women

I’m currently reading Caesar’s Women, the 4th book in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series:

  1. The First Man in Rome – spans years 110 through 100 BCE
  2. The Grass Crown – spans years 97 through 86 BCE
  3. Fortune’s Favourites – spans years 83 – 69 BCE
  4. Caesar’s Women – spans years 67 – 59 BCE
  5. Caesar – spans years 54 – 48 BCE
  6. The October Horse – spans years 48 – 41 BCE
  7. Antony and Cleopatra – spans years 41 – 27

I collected all of the books in the series and started reading them, in order, several years ago. I’ve read books 1 through 3 and am now reading my way through book 4. My reading has stalled due to personal reasons and my attention has gotten pulled into other activities, but I’m back to reading and hope to finish this book soon.

Moving things around

I signed up for a paid account at ProtonMail last weekend, set up my own email for my personal domain (funfoodlife.com), and have been having a gay ole time changing all my logins to my new email or to a new alias email addresses.

This is going to be an ongoing, lengthy process but my goal is to migrate my files, email and other cloud oriented things away from Microsoft and Google and regain some control of my online presence & privacy.

I’ve already removed most of my personal files & photos from my Google & OneDrive accounts, and I look forward to the day when I can delete my Microsoft accounts (I have 3 of them) and turn off all the free emails addresses I currently use.

(I was a Microsoft MVP for 8 years so I’ve had a heavy investment and dependency on all things Microsoft for a long time).