Terradillos de los Templarios to El Burgo Ranero, then to Mancillas de las Mulas

Hello, everyone.  We've been caught in a local(ish) internet outage the last couple of days. The places thought they had wifi internet but while the wifi was working the internet wasn't. At the second place, the lady told us that one of the internet providers had suffered a fire and lots of things were messed up. Even her house had lost its service, and many places that might ordinarily accept card payment were on cash only.

We left Terradillos and walked to El Burgo Ranero, a smallish village. The lodging situation has been more difficult than it was 10 years ago, so we surrendered and called ahead on this one. The lady told us when we got there, after 29 km, that she'd been sold out until shortly between called, and someone had canceled. So we got a place to stay from their cancelation. 

We ate the Menu del Dia there and I was blessed to have a really delicious pistou: squash, onions, peppers, maybe some eggplant, in a tomato-ey sauce. She put a whole plate of that in front of me and I didn't even take a photo. My second course was a very nice filet de ternera, a beef cutlet that was a large serving with plenty of flavor. 

 The next day we walked to Mancillas de las Mulas, where we stayed at an albergue that was supposed to have wifi but this was when we heard about the fire. We had the planned meal there, too, but it wasn't quite as good. 

We did find another bar in town at Mancillas, where there was internet, but we didn't think it cool to spend the entire day there sipping on coffees and using their internet. 

Wow the formatting went crazy in here

 Hello, everyone.

My computer shows the pictures I uploaded--did that post from my cell phone--but they're huge and the sidebar things are displayed on top of the photos. I have no idea what happened, but I think the people in charge of maintaining Blogger have messed around with something (to "fix something") and it broke something else. Documentation is our friend!

A photo from May 2023 for today, to test the way it will appear when posted:

I believe this is one of the Holy Week parade platforms in Sevilla. Anyone who knows, please correct me if I have gotten this wrong. Note the beautiful shells on the right hand figure's robe.

Edited to add: this was posted from my desktop and it came out fine. Maybe the issue is in the Blogger app?

Window box flower

Hello, everyone.

I have a photo of the first blossom in the "trough" window boxes. This is a canna lily, a tropical tuberous plant with huge leaves.

Also I am trying to learn how to get readable text while posting from my phone. The working theory is that I need to learn some HTML to do this. So we'll see what happens!

New stuff

 Hello, everyone.

As things go, one of the plastic legs on my keyboard broke. (I loved that keyboard!)

As y'all can see, the little plastic pin that holds the leg out gave out, and tape was required just to use the keyboard. (I used some of my sewing tape as it was not too wide for the job.)

Sigh. I loved the feel of the old keyboard, and I was used to the amber backlight that told me the keys were powered up even if nothing was going on elsewise. 

After reading about keyboards in the internet and hunting about for a mechanical keyboard to replace the broken one, I settled on a Logitech one at Best Buy. I had it delivered because it's a headache to deal with curbside pickup for small things. 

The new keyboard doesn't have the row of game oriented keys that were on the left edge of the old one--which I never used--and so it's an inch or two shorter across the front. As a bonus it also has a plug where the mouse can be attached and then a unified cable bundle carries the signals down to where the cable splits and each half goes into its own USB plug. I figure that it will keep down the amount of potential back-of-desk tangling that goes on.

The picture may not make it completely obvious, but the new keyboard has a white backlight thing going on. It came set so bright that I had to turn it down a couple of levels! Who wants a keyboard light so bright that they can practically read a paperback book by it?

A program note: sewing projects and embroidery projects are going on around here and I intend to describe them over the next few posts.

After a short hiatus, one needs to organize a bit

Hello, everyone.

The hiatus in posting was unexpected. I went with a group from church to the land of Israel. (More on that in future posts.) On the first day there, I went to make a blog post from the tablet.

Whoops. The tablet picked up on the local Google version, which is in Hebrew. It's possible to figure out how to click the sign in button, just remember that everything on the right before is now on the left. (It's one of those languages that reads right to left, instead of left to right.) The next screen, however, requested the password. In Hebrew, which the password in question isn't.

Well, when you travel, you learn new things.

For today, a picture of a dear pal:

Ready to play now?

I'm still getting back into the groove of the home space, will begin posting trip things soon. It was very educational and edifying.

About those Windows 10 updates again...

Hello, everyone.

A little while ago (like a week or three) Microsoft sent around a new cumulative update to Windows 10. Do they tell you they're going to break things with it? No-o-o-o. They just do it. And honestly if they were doing their jobs right they'd make sure that they weren't re-breaking things that they already broke once. (Or notify people, and maybe also software companies whose products are being trashed.)  Like Adobe Photoshop Elements. Which is unable to save a file.

The last time The Windows update broke Photoshop Elements, there was a lot of fussing on the internet about this stuff. A few weeks later, there was a sudden update to Adobe Photoshop Elements. And, lo and behold, the save function was working again.

Until this Windows update. Now it thinks there is insufficient RAM to save a picture. Again.

Really people? 😡

Anyway, I wanted to share a picture of a video game machine we encountered while walking after we left Tapia de Casariego. It was at snack time, and while we were sitting and having our cafe leche or whatever (I forget now) we saw this machine across the tiny bar.

The theme of the computer-pinball machine is "F-B-I" and the screen has a rotating series of silly pictures in the theme.

It was a surprise to see a game machine on this theme in Spain, on the other side of the world from where anyone would even think about that agency. But it's a small world and we never know what we will discover on the Camino.

Little surprises, software edition

Hello, everyone.

When we came home and I turned on the computer, it informed me that it needed to do an operating system update. Y'all probably know which Monster Sized corporation that was. Anyway, after it ran some new stuff appeared on my taskbar. And oddly enough, one thing disappeared. I rectified these little bits and thought things were okay.

They weren't. The update messed up the Photoshop Elements. It no longer saved an edited file. It's hard to crop pictures when you can't save the cropped, smaller file.  After much fussing and web searching, I reverted to the previous version of the operating system. The one that worked just fine up until we left on the pilgrimage.

Then I opened up Photoshop Elements to check whether it was finally working. It is! In celebration, a picture of some airport art that I liked:

This is a largish file even in "save for web" but that's probably because of all the bunches of butterflies and crystals.

Changes to begin the new year

Hello, everyone.

The arrangement of the studio/sewing room/computer room/craft room has become overcrowded and cramped. Possibly the excess of stuff has something to do with it? ;-)

At any rate, the large desk/hutch that holds the computer was just taking up too much space. And its "corner" shape meant that the room really couldn't be rearranged.

We decided to take the old desk out and put something smaller in its place. It will keep me from piling heaps of stuff all over the place, just because there will be no place to pile things.

It's so cute!

The printer no longer needs to be within 4 or 5 feet of the computer, since it's on the wireless these days, and I moved the file cabinet across the room and put it there instead. It's possible that I'll find some little hanging shelf bits to put on the cross brace of this desk and move the speakers down there.

The picture on the computer screen is one of our pictures from the 2014 pilgrimage, a close-up of the zero kilometer marker at Fisterra. The things vaguely seen at the bottom of the desk are the router and the modem and a couple of bits of sometimes-used stuff.

During the holiday rush, daily life and maintenance incidents continue

Hello, everyone.

It's been an incredibly busy week at ye Olde Homestead. There were family duties to attend, there was a Christmas party for (dozens of) school children to work at, and in the midst of it all, the modem died.

It was a couple of days before I could find time to figure out why the internet wasn't working.

I had two very productive phone conversations with ATT tech support (my ISP) and at the end of it, and a quick run over to Best Buy, we have a new modem in place and working.

There was a cabinet in the way of the phone plug/line filter combination. It's a tall cabinet and it was stuffed with fabric. After moving it, I concluded that this whole incident was a message from above: organize the sewing/craft room first, before other desired projects.

Where the big fabric cabinet was. 

Maybe there is a better way to organize all the stuff. Sewing up some more quilts would help, of course! And using up beads.

But definitely, the new arrangement will not have a large, laminated particle-board cabinet blocking the computer bits!

A small programming note: a break for a few days

Hello, everyone.

My computer woke up with a dead monitor and until the new parts arrive I'm without my desktop.

Posts will resume when the comp is fixed.

Thank you for understanding.