Work day for Mom/Mother’s day gift

I helped Mom get a few jobs done though the day had a few glitches.

Mom wanted to me update the back up on her computer and clean up the laptop files.  Mom could not find her backup hard drive.  These things happen to everyone. You think you have a thing in a certain place and then it is not there! The drive is somewhere in the house it will take a bit of time to find it. I was able to take some junk files and bloat ware off the laptop. Mom says the laptop seems aa bit faster, so one job done.

I brought out my weed eater to help Mom cut down the weeds around her wood pile area and Mom’s weed eater finally died after acting wonky for a couple of weeks. I will tear the bad weed eater apart and see if it is a pulled wire or in line fuse popping like my Ryobi limb saw.  I got to use Mom Bushwalker weed eater after some cussing getting it going for the first time this year. We had all the issues. Flooded carb, cable to engage the cutter acting a bit wonky. Normal stuff you deal with getting gas powered equipment going after it has sat for awhile/6 months.

I cleaned out Mom’s wood stove stove cap and it was a little gunky with creosote but not as bad as I expected. I think Mom’s chimney will need to be clean from the top/roof down to the wood stove rather than from the wood stove up. I’ll need to add a few tools to remove the top pipe of the chimney but I think it will actually be an easier chimney cleaning compared to working the cleaning pipes through all the angles from the bottom up.

I gave Mom a few tomato, bush bean and pepper plants from the local farm store to start getting her garden planted. I gave her a few seed potatoes for her to plant. I think she might plant the potatoes in planters rather than the garden.

We didn’t get everything done that we wanted but we still got a lot done!!  Laptop files cleaned up and running faster. Wood pile area cleared of weeds and ready for the wood delivery next week. Garden weeds knocked down so a person can  get to the garden beds and a few starter plants ready to be planted. The plants don’t care if you started them from seed or you bought plants at the local mega-mart/greenhouse.  Never let “perfection” be the enemy of good enough.

I’m going to update/upgrade my PC and I bought an okay for upgrading though the MOBO is old it can still get a boost in performance adding newer components. Sad to say that most folks can’t get away from using Windows OS but I think I have a plan to stop the OS from “phoning home to Microsoft” as much as MS wants. I want to set up a Linux OS on one of my older PC’s and see how well it can work for a basic computer for Email, web browsing, Word processing and just to see how an older PC can still do a lot of things outside the norm of gaming or using up to date software and are there work arounds. Ease of use for the average PC user will be the focus. I I’m hoping I can make a Linux system that is close to a Windows OS with a bit more control if you want to get into Cmd lines and a little bit of programing.  I doubt I’m the only person with an old PC or laptop that can not be upgraded to Win 10 or Win 11. You might as well try some sort of Linux OS to keep using that PC.