The other reason I’ve been incommunicado for a bit has been Harry Potter.

Like everyone, I waited with baited breath to get my midnight edition on July 21st. Like everyone, I finished the book by the next morning.

And now… I’m mulling things over. I have thoughts, ideas… and more thoughts.

I started to reread “The Deathly Hallows” again but stopped.

I switched to “Bloody Jack” by L.A. Meyer only I couldn’t read the first one as I’d loaned it out. I contented myself with reading books 2-4 and I must say that I totally love Clarissa Worthington Howe as probably the most marvelous “villain” of all times. If you haven’t read “Bloody Jack” and are looking to fill your Harry Potter withdrawal, I suggest you give it a try.

I know, I know! My silence has been deadening.

So… some news.

I built my own computer a while back. A desktop unit. A long, long time ago (1986, I think) I swore that I’d always have a laptop and so I have. I started way back with a 8086 Toshiba, moved to a 386 (I think), then on to several Sony’s, over to an Alienware, then to the Hypersonic (ouch!), then finally to the built-it-yourself Clevo which I acquired through RJTech.com.

The last computer I’d built was waaayy back in 1993 or so and was a 486 (remember those?).

Anyway, this time I wanted to try my hand at building a really sophisticated desktop computer. And I did (more on that later or elsewhere).

In the meantime my beautiful Clevo had been loaned to my bookkeeper (I should get it back in time for Dragon*con) which was okay — I still had the Hypersonic which was my main computer then, anyway (but I’d bought the Clevo because the Hypersonic was acting weird and running hot).

Then my daughter notices the Hypersonic and suddenly I find myself working on the desktop unit.

And so, slowly, I migrated myself to the desktop.

Very slowly.

Like I’m still doing it.

First came Word, Excel, the usual. Then came other stuff.

But only recently did I remember that I needed to migrate my bookmarks and remember my password for the website.

Hence, a large part of the time I’ve been out of touch has been explained.