Alice entering Barnes and Noble

I uploaded a picture of Alice entering the Barnes and Noble, in La Crosse. It's our favorite hangout, but I feel guilty when I spend too much,there. Not only do they have an almost limitless supply of books but their food is good, too. I especially like the cheesecake. Key lime is my favorite. You can spend hours there just leafing through books and drinking coffee. It doesn't take much to get me to go to La Crosse. Rochester has two Barnes and Nobles. I like them all.
I went to a movie, this afternoon. It was (Paul Blart Mall Cop). I enjoyed it. The guy playing Paul Blart was in surprisingly good condition for someone with a weight problem. All the running around that he did would have wrecked me. I've been kind of avoiding this movie because I felt it would make fun of overweight people. It did to a degree. I think the most objectionable part was the drunk scene. It was where Paul got drunk and made a complete fool of himself. Of course, it could be argued that there are people with that kind of drinking problem. Anyway, it was a fun movie and I'm glad tha I went.
I bought 3 more old Gateway laptops. I had enough parts for most of one, so I figured that I could fix up a few more. I like the Thinkpads better but I have troubles with the sound on them. This will be the last time I bother with laptops so old and slow. I need to get something over 1.3 GigaHerz. for the sound and video. I'm not sure about that being fast enough.
Jim and Sherry just walked in. I'm at the co-op and they'll be stopping here after they've done their shopping.
That's it for now.

I uploaded a picture of Jim and Sherry at Bookends and Beans. Jim and I get together for coffee and conversation every Monday. Sherry is Jim's wife.
Today we talked about starting a book club with Alice and Lula as well. We'll be reading (The Left Hand of God). It has to do with how the religious Right has taken over politics and how Liberals shouldn't feel that they have to be left out.
Well all of my computers that can run, are running. I only had one Gateway to scrap out and I think all it really needs is a keyboard.
I bought 3 more Gateways. That will give me something to do, next month. I do like to keep busy with the laptops. Now, however, I've gotten into the groove and I might not need to spend as much time getting them fixed.
Maybe it's time to get serious about the garden. I've been neglecting it. The grass is overgrowing the onions. And volunteer lettuce is starting to grow.
I took my car to a Chrysler dealer, this morning. Even with the (Cash for Clunkers) program, and their rebate, I would have to come up with $10,000. If the house sell, I'll do it. I'll just turn the car around for a profit. But it's free money. I don't see how I can refuse it.
Talking about money, which is one of my favorite topics, here are some ways to reduce your outlays.
1. See about subsidized housing. There are programs that help put poor people and the disabled into nice apartments. It never hurts to look into this.
2. Don't forget food stamps. If you are poor enough, this will pay for your monthly food. If your disability is too high, you might not qualify.
3. Walk or ride a bicycle. You would be surprised at how much money goes to gasoline and car repairs.
4. Quit drinking. Boose is just too expensive. This is especially true if you go to bars. Coffee is bad enough. I combine surfing the net with coffee drinking. I found that if I cut out the cinnamon roll, first thing in the morning, I can save close to $100/month. I may still have to curtail my coffee drinking.
5. Like I mentioned yesterday, eat at home. I covered that yesterday
6. Buy at thrift shops. Charity thrift shops, like Goodwill, will save you a fortune.
7. I would avoid auctions. You have to wait for hours for your item to come up. Then someone else is likely to bid it up, anyway. It's too tempting to start bidding on things you don't really need.
8. That brings up, don't buy things you don't really have to have. We live in a consumer society. We have to fight the programing that we all have to buy and buy. Just get by with what you have.

I uploaded a picture of a band, doing it's thing at Nordic Fest.
I went to La Crosse that day. Alice and I went to Barnes and Noble and leafed through some books.
Today I've been fixing old laptops. I finally got the Gateway to work to my satisfaction. It had an intermittent monitor. and the nine key quit working. It turned out that my replacement parts were worse than the originals. The keyboard and monitor problems were both caused by my not getting them plugged in right. I also had port problems on the PCMCIA ports and the USB ports. That was caused by software. I loaded a live form of SUSE and it worked so I reloaded the operating system. Now I have a laptop that I feel I could give away. It's even got a good battery. I'm using that, now. I'm in front of the co-op, blogging away on battery power.
About poverty and disability. Unless you have another source of income like another pension or investments, you cannot afford to dine out. So stop now. Eating out can cost hundreds of dollars a month and a person on Social Security has to face the fact that he's too poor to spend money like that. Eating at home is the only way to go. I've cut back my eating out to having a banana at the co-op. That only costs 40 cents or so, and I also get to use their internet. I do have a lot of coffee at places I use for internet. A person has to spend a little money for them to justify having free internet available. But other than that forget eating out.

I got up early, today. Java John's opens at 6:30 so I went there to upgrade a computer. I uploaded a picture of Java John's front door. It's one of my favorite coffee shops. I like to go there when I wake up early and everything else is closed. They also open up at 7:30 on Sundays. I'm not a deep sleeper so, when the birds start chirping, I wake up. Nordic Fest is in full swing. The streets are crowded and 3 or 4 bands are competing with each other in making noise.
Alice and I went to La Crosse, today. She lives on the main street, here and she likes to get away from all the noise. We went to Barnes and Noble. Neither of us bought anything. I also went shopping for a nicer camera. I want one that would link up to a usb memory card. Unfortunately, they don't seem to make any. They have a lot that would hook up to a computer. I think I would have to have Windows loaded to run them. I'll keep after it. I would like one with a zoom lense as well.
I took a few pictures of Nordic Fest and Barnes and Noble but I have to put them on my Windows desktop to transfer them to a memory stick, and then to my laptop. I forgot to do that, just now.
I overate at Barnes and Noble. I had one of their turkey and cheese sandwiches. It was almost twice as much as I usually eat. So much for my diet.
I've been neglecting talking about disability lately. I've been running out of topics. Today the topic is poverty and disability. The two go hand in hand. Politicians seem to feel that it would be just terrible for disabled people to live comfortably. Therefore the system is geared towards keeping you at a low level of income.
If a person is poor enough, there are all sorts of programs to help him. If you Social Security check is low enough you might get SSI (State Supplemental Income). You can also get food stamps, heating assistance, Medicaid. If you get a decent Social Security check, you lose all of those things. That has a tendency to keep you at the same poverty level that the poorer person is in. Another thing that might happen is that you might lose you rental assistance if you get a job to supplement Social Security. It's a trap. If you can you might want to get a decent job and get out of the disability trap. For many of us there is no way out so I'll discuss things a person might do if he is in that situation later.

A rainy day in Decorah

I uploaded a picture of Magpie Coffee shop. It's been a Decorah institution for years. The internet,there, goes to a cable modem,
so most of the time it's really fast. Occasionally, I've had problems getting on line there. They are opened between 10 and 4 on Sundays. When the co-op is too slow or doesn't work, this is where I go on Sundays. Too bad, I couldn't get a picture without a car in front.
I got the last Thinkpad to working. The strange memory problem turned out to be related to a bad CMOS battery. I don't know how that can be. The problem went with the battery. Now I think I'll load SUSE on it, since I can better fix the sound card problem with SUSE.
I got the computer that I sold to Dave from WRAP, back. It had a bad hard drive. I put in another drive, and got it to work. I downloaded the updates, this morning. It's working really well. I saved the hard drive by putting it in the Thinkpad and loading Mint Linux. That partitioner worked better. It still sacrificed half of the hard drive but the other half seems to work.
It's raining on the Nordic Fest festivities. Nordic Fest is in full bloom. The downtown area is blocked off and food stands and music stations are set up there. The parade is tomorrow. Alice and I are going to LaCrosse to avoid it. I don't get many chances to get to LaCrosse, so I jump at any chance.
Tonight I'm helping to set up the float for the Democrats. It'll only take an hour or so.
I'm bidding on 3 Gateway 9300's. If I get them I should be able to get one or two good laptops out of the batch. I've got a lot of left over parts from the last batch. If one of them runs right off the bat, I'll have the ac adapter and hard drive for it. Maybe I can get a good battery out of them.
That's it for now. I gave up on the lottery.

Yesterday was bad for old laptops

I'm sorry that I didn't post a blog yesterday. I was busy with old laptops.
Dave W. returned his. It was all locked up. The menu icon was missing. I think he fouled it up by shutting it down wrong. He also didn't know how to access the internet.
The internet in town has been rather spotty. I've had troubles everywhere except Bookends and Beans. I don't know if he had troubles with the machine or with somebodies internet service.
I also had a Gateway that quit accessing the hard drive. Today, I took the processor out of one of the Gateways and put it into the other. Now, I seem to have one good machine. It has troubles with the lights not working on the leds. I also left off some decorative trim on the telephone and network ports. I'll see about fixing that latter. I'm just happy that I got one out of two to work.
I'm having troubles with the ram drives as well. Maybe I just need to boot up with one of them in the slot. The screen flickered a bit as well. Maybe I wasn't as successful as I thought with the transplant.
I uploaded a picture of the flowers, in front of the hospital, on Montgomery Street. I think I already uploaded a picture of a bee from that day.
About the disability section. A lot of people who are disabled don't like to be defined by their disability. By that I mean a blind person wants to be seen as a person first and blind, secondarily. Of course, I'm grateful for my Social Security check, but there is more to me than just a schizophrenic person. I'm also an investor, a homeowner, and a repairer of old laptops. There are other things about me that I feel are important. Some of these include, being a Democrat, a spiritually developing person, and a major consumer of coffee. Something that is also important to me lately is loosing weight. I'm missing the WRAP meeting. Later

The Gateway is toast

I got a CMOS battery for the Gateway with intermittent problems. It didn't fix it. I'll have to scrap it out. I'll probably get another shell from Ebay and put the drives and batteries into that. The trouble with that is that it will cost more for shipping and handling than it will be worth. I like the Gateways, however. They are almost fast enough for streaming video. They work pretty well with audio. And, of course, they are just fine for surfing the net and word processing. I may have to do the same thing with the bad Thinkpad.
I went to a free movie, today. It was a promotion that the local banks put on. I think it was mainly for kids. The name of the movie was "Hotel for Dogs". It was silly. Totally impossible, but fun.
Afterwards, I went to Jim and Sherry's for lunch. I overate. I'm trying to lose weight but I ate 2 turkey and cheese sandwiches. For me, that is overdoing it. I'm trying to keep my dinner light, by only eating a bowl of soup.
I updated a couple of computers, today. I was surprised at how long it took. I must have spent two and a half hours updating the good Thinkpad. The good Gateway only took two hours. That is just too much time. I updated them last week so that was 1 weeks worth of updating. I was under the impression that Linux wouldn't do all the updating that Windows does. That was one of the advantages of the operating system. SUSE Linux seems to update more than Windows. I could select the things I want to update but I'm not certain that I know enough to make informed decisions. So I update everything. When you have 5 computers, that means that much of your time is spent updating things.
Alice picked out a picture of the reading room at Java Johns for the blog,today.