Yes, I did fall off the face of the earth. Ok, not me, but my external hard drive, which is where I store all pictures and files (my computer is old and maxed out!). I'm not sure if it fell on the floor, which is possible, or just fell into a state of dysfunction. I've purchased a new one and, hopefully, will have the old one fixed in the next few days (because OF COURSE I don't have all five years of pictures stored anywhere else ... dumb me. I have discovered that those little flash drives now come with a huge amount of storage, no excuse to not be backing everything up).

So, I had to check in and tell you about this site my son found ... govdeals.com*. It's like eBay for government items - like computers, ambulances, stuff left at airports, police cars, office equipment, boats, misc. books, supplies, etc.

I talked to a gentleman at the school district's office and he said they only use computers in the classrooms or for the kids until the warranty runs out. Then they replace them and list them on govdeals.com. Basically, they clean out and replace when the computers get to be five years old.

I scored a laptop for $117 at govdeals.com, which wasn't the lowest price they were going for, from our local school district. It's a terrific little laptop too. It came with nothing but Windows XP on it. Perfect for customizing to meet my needs. Finally I have a computer in my sewing room ... I've gotten a fair bit of exercise over the years running up and down the stairs checking patterns, orders, shop and blog information, etc.


In a wonderful case of perfect timing, Clark Howard had a little blurb on Facebook the other day about free office suite software, OpenOffice.org. He says it's what he uses, so I'm sure it'll be wonderful for my little laptop (and free, at that price even less than wonderful A-Ok).

The pictures ... random bow ties not yet in the shop (but on my new external hard drive). I have crafts and teaching ideas to share, as well as more ties, but they're stuck in the other hard drive.

 
*I'm not affiliated with govdeals.com, just giddy about my new laptop.