Saturday November 17, 2012

Saturday November 17/12 update  # 289-2

We had a lovely Mediterranean supper at Joe’s Secret Garden, but time was against me.   Luckily for me, Joseph was willing to download my photos direct from the cameras which saves me about 4 hours work.

Our main computer is still acting silly so we have only the laptop to work with.  I have again simply used the Photoscape batch edit mode for a single dedicated enhancement to all the photos in my file.  It will have to do the trick for now until I get the big macjine working again.

We are off on a short trip tomorrow for a few days, so we will do our best to keep up with the blogs, but don’t count on it..

That was today’s excitement.  Hugs to all.    Enjoy the pics at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com

Saturday November 17/12 update  # 288

We made it to the morning start of the 2^nd Annual Expat Day being held at the Broken Bridge (Puento Roto) today.   There were many folks there that we knew but it seemed like a disappointing turnout. 

I did meet some new Canadians with English names, Janet & Ron I think, who speak French as well.   Janet would be interested in some photography lessons so I will wait for her to call.

There were many of my photographer friends there, and many new ones, who all seem interested in another tour.

You will note many photographs of children and dogs today.  Gotta love the Cuencanos.

There may possibly be a later blog today with photos from Joe’s Secret Garden, but time may be against me.   With my main computer on the blink, I am forced to upload with my very slow laptop.   I have very little time to process the photos so they are “batch” edited with a different program to selected upgrades.  Uploading here involves doing them painstakingly one by one.

We are off tomorrow for a few days so please expect a break in the blogs.

That was today’s excitement.  Hugs to all.    Enjoy the pics at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com

Friday November 16, 2012

Friday November 16/12 update  # 287

Today we met Jay at the bus station and took a trip to Gualaceo first.   Upon arrival we caught a cab to the Orchideria outside of town to see some of the 2500 orchid varieties they have.   What a truly beautiful experience.  I will try to upload a few just to give you an idea.

Then we went back to Gualaceo to shop for boots for Mavis, have lunch and tour the town square and church.

Next we caught a cab to the nearby town of Chordeleg which is famous for its silver and gold jewelry.   We shopped around for an hour or so, checked out the town square and the church here too before catching the bus back to Cuenca.

Note that I am going to post this blog first, before I attempt to upload just a few photos.  It may be too much for the laptop, so please forgive me if they don’t get posted right away.

That was today’s excitement.  Hugs to all.    Enjoy the pics at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com

Thursday November 15, 2012

Thursday November 15/12  update
Sorry, I honestly tried to upload a bunch of photos today from the laptop and it is just not working.
We got up early and went to meet Jay in front of the Old Cathedral to take a city Tour Bus, which we have never done, even though we have been here a year.
We were early and there was a red bus waiting so the the guy just told us to get on.  We could not see Jay anywhere.  One of the passengers said this bus leaves at 10am and we were supposed to catch a bus leaving at 10:30 so we did not know what to do.   Our arrangement was to meet there at 10:10 and the bus started to move away at 10:10, and still no Jay...    I tried phoning and he was not picking up.   The bus made the circle around Parque Calderon, back to the Old Cathedral, and still no Jay.  As it swung around again in front of the new Cathedral I spotted Jay on the sidewalk, so I motioned him to jump on as we were waiting in traffic, which he did.
I had the front seat on the upper deck while the others sat further back.   The bus took us to places we had already seen, including Turi, so I did get some good shots from the higher vantage point, and my intention was to show these to you as I spent all afternoon processing them, but Bill Gates and Microsoft and Google are conspiring against me.
Bella really enjoyed the tour while I thought it was barely worth the $5.  I felt he route was bad and the commentary very poor, and they only had one stop, at Turi!  Regardless I got a few scenic shots and many shots of indigenous folks.
When we returned we went to the Panama Hat Museum and Factory, then went to the Dies De Agosto market for a hornado lunch which was particularly good today.
My desktop computer has been struggling to upload all Microsoft updates but that is like pulling teeth.   I found my problem that the svchost process is claiming to be using up all my memory, so nothing else wants to work.  Updating the computer is supposed to be one of the cures, but I guess I haven't found the right update in the 42 crirtical ones, of which I am fighting to get the last 8 to upload.   I could just scream.
Gotta rush to a late supper at Julio and Paola's tonight...
That was today's excitement.   Hugs to all.

Wednesday November 14, 2012

Wednesday November 14/12  update #285

I had to fight with my computer early this morning to get photos, etc copied onto a memory stick so I could use my old laptop to upload and edit yesterday’s blog.   

Then I had to rush to Hearts Of Gold to sell more tickets to their Christmas Gala and to try to sell more raffle tickets.   Sadly we never had one bite while I was there but hopefully they will be more successful in the afternoon after folks have digested the GringoTree reminder.

The photos are now posted.   I am now trusting my old laptop to carry me through until I can get a computer guru to solve its problems.  I just hope we don’t have to reformat the whole hard drive since I do not have discs for most programs.  Richard said his son is really good at this and has programs that will help to narrow down the problem(s) so he is going to ask him if he will help me.

So please bear with me on the quality of the photos, today taken in boredom.    I do not have very great editing software on the laptop.

Bella and Mavis headed off to the weaving store for some pow-wow about something so we will be having a late supper of chicken soup.   Then, more movies to watch...

That was today’s excitement.    Hugs to all.   Please see all photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/

Tuesday November 13, 2012

Tuesday November 13/12  update #284

We all took the bus to the Book/Movie Exchange this morning while I exchanged 7 movies and Bella exchanged 2 books.  Another reason was to meet Gertie and bring her back home with us to give her instructions on watching the Boys while we are away next week.   Then we had to be home by 12:30 to open the door for Rosa to clean the house.

The computer had again been hanging on me all day despite all the work we had done to try to get it back to normal.
Bella and Mavis cooked all afternoon so we had a lovely "thanksgiving" supper and dessert.  We were joined by Jay and enjoyed a really lovely evening.

Sorry but I can’t upload photos or do anything on this computer for long.    I will be lucky to get it to post this blog.   If there are no subsequent blogs for a while, please understand.

I will attempt to copy some stuff onto a memory stick and work with my old laptop but so far this machine is not cooperating.
UPDATE - OK, I managed to get the images up on  souvenircuenca.blogspot.com

That was today’s excitement.    Hugs to all.   

Monday November 12, 2012

Monday November 12/12  update #283

I woke at 6:30 again, a result of the gas delivery trucks doing their beep-beep-beep as they criss-cross the neighbourhood trying to sell gas to people before they head to work.   Very handy but very annoying.

I seemed no further along this morning with the computer when I had to restart twice in the first hour.  I then decided to use CCleaner to clean the Registry and that seems to have really helped.  It showed only 308 issues to correct and it did that in a nanosecond!  We are crossing our fingers!

Well, it is not getting any better.   I had to fight tooth and nail to get 3 photos uploaded so I am probably going to delete all the extra programs that I have recently uploaded, and also those that I never use.   Hopefully something will open this up.  Word doesn’t want to work properly and neither does my Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, which I use a lot.  This is not fun at all.

Finally I deleted every program I had added recently or hadn’t used in over 6 months.  Then I did a defrag and a CheckDisk again.  It is not perfect, but it is working better.

We gave the puter  and our brain a rest while we had supper and watched 2 more movies.

No photos today either, sorry.

That was today’s excitement.    Hugs to all.  

Please see all photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/

Sunday November 11, 2012

Sunday November 11/12  update #282

Lest We Forget…  Remembrance Day.

I fought with the computer again all day.  After the hard kill I did a checkdisk scan and finally it seemed to work great again but that was short-lived.   ARGHHHH!!!

I managed to get my SC Blog off, finally, and then the CU one luckily.   Gosh I hope this sorts itself out soon!

Mavis went to early mass then the ladies headed to the International Food Fair at Mall Del Rio.   Bella missed out on the Baby Back Ribs at the California Kitchen booth but they seemed to have enjoyed their meals.  I didn’t go as I was still trying to get this computer operating with a semblance of normalcy and finally gave up at 5pm, after almost 12 full hours of battling, and countless restarts.

We all sat down and watched two long movies until almost midnight.

No photos today as a result.

That was today’s excitement.    Hugs to all.   

Saturday November 10, 2012

Saturday November 10/12  update #281

I tried installing Adobe Lightroom 4 last night and was so pleased that at least one program I bought was working.   Then it stopped and said I need to have Vista or higher to operate…   Bummer again…  I only run on XP so I will definitely be returning that software too.

Bella wanted some time off so Mavis and I headed downtown and went to return all the software.  The fellow tried to show me how to save the PhotoShop CS6 file to the Desktop, then to run the program and install the Patch.  He did take back the Lightroom4 disc and gave me an older version that is supposed to work on XP.

We headed for the escalinata where GringoTree said there would be some dance group performing.  Strange… Nobody was there, not even other shocked spectators like us…   So we wandered the riverbank and took some photos.   Mavis wanted a few shots of herself along the riverbank so I accommodated her.

We walked all the way to Otorongo Plaza where I spotted a fellow Canadian crossing the street, Joanne, from Vancouver.   She had left her husband Kevin to enjoy his coffee at a nearby restaurant while she went shopping at a nearby art supply store.  We joined Kevin and yakked for a while until Joanne returned.

The Mavis and I scaled the huge Otorongo steps to go to San Sebastian square.  We snapped a few shots then continued to the Jewelry Market on Mariscal Lamar where Mavis filled her bag with more presents for home.

We continued east to skirt a nasty looking rain cloud and made it to the Rotary Market unscathed.  Mavis again made a few purchases before we caught the #50 home.

I don’t know why I decided to try and load the CS6 on my computer again, but I did and that started a chain of nasty events.  I could not find the serial number to complete the normal installation so I asked to use the trial version.  It did not appear to want to work so I gave up.

We barely had enough time to get cleaned up to head west again for a BBQ night at Joe’s Secret Garden.   Joseph said he wanted more crowd shots, almost no individual shots so I did my best to accommodate him.   I warned him of the difficulty to get clear shots that way, especially as it gets darker.  Trying to balance focus and light for a wide range shot is almost impossible.  I also had to warn him that I would be away next week and maybe I could get him another photographer.   He said “No, there is only one photographer, and that is Al”!.   That made me feel pretty good.

Upon arrival at home I tried to get cracking on the photos and was shocked when they opened in the trial version of the PhotoShop CS6 but I must say I was not impressed with the upgrade.  The changes did not seem to be for the better.  But then it was playing with Jekyll and Hyde.  One minute everything is working good, then it is slow as molasses, then it locks up and won’t do anything.  I gave up around midnight.

At 5:20am I decided to give it a try and run the AVG scan.   For over 2 hours it was the whole Jekyll and Hyde things again until it locked up totally and I had to do a hard kill even though the scan wasn’t completed.     Frustrating!!!

That was today’s excitement.    Hugs to all.   Please see all photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/