Man and his Computer

One of my big frustrations is my computer, not the computer itself but the use of it. My wife says I am married to my computer and I love my computer more than I love her. This is not true of course but I spent too much time on my computer anyway. It went so bad that we were fighting about it. I had to drastically reduce my time or I was looking at a divorce.

I have a computer already since the early days of the home computer. My first was a big AT (IBM) box with an amber screen. You had to physically type in the program you wanted to use and it did not have a hard drive. The medium used where floppy’s. I had a lot of them with small games and programs.

One of those early games I can remember playing a lot was, Xenix or something, you had to bounce a ball and make the play ground smaller and smaller until he ball was captured. A little ball eater was running around the play field ready to eat your ball. You could have many balls bouncing in the field to make it more difficult. The program it used was PC Dos 2.

Later on I bought a computer from a friend, a XT 386 which had a color screen and the games where in color as well. It also had a hard drive with the crazy amount of 10 Mb. The operating system was then Windows version 1. This was of the early Window versions for commercial use I think. There was no Ram; you only could do one task at the time. Although the computer had some memory of its own the total was 386 kb. It could used floppy’s and stiffies.

All this was around 1985. After that, the development of the personal computer went really fast. Your new computer was already old when you left the store. I am not at all a computer expert but by now I know my way around. I think the computer is the smartest invention around, you can do so much with it.

At the moment I use my computer mainly for e-mail, banking and updating my blogs and browsing the net.

I bought my wife a laptop about a year ago and she learned to work with her laptop quite quickly. She is mainly into Facebook and spend a lot of time on it which I don't mind. She is a Facebook lurker.
She is part of a new breed of social media users called Facebook Lurkers.

Facebook Lurkers are perfectly happy to spend time delving into lives of others, but they seldom update their status, write on a wall or like anything. They are takers, not givers. They scanning your albums, clicking on your videos. In fact a recent survey said that 68% of Facebook users are Lurkers and half of those are on Facebook every day. That is a lot of loitering. 

I also do the cooking more regular and have a bit more time for since we are retired.

The recipe I am busy on right now is something special because I bought a slow cooker and I want to try it out.

All day Slow Cooker Delight   

2-3 lbs. boneless chuck, cut into 1 inch cubes

1/2 cup. flour 

1/4 cup. butter 

1 onion, sliced 

1 tsp. salt 

1/8 tsp. pepper 

1 clove garlic, minced 

2 cup. beer 

1/4 cup. flour 

Coat beef cubes with the 1/2 cup flour. Brown in melted butter. Drain off excess fat. In slow cooker, combine browned meat with onion, salt, pepper, garlic and beer.   

Cover and cook on low 5-7 hours (all day) until meat is tender. Turn control to high. Dissolve remaining 1/4 cup flour in small amount of water. Stir into meat mixture, cook on high 30-40 minutes.

Serve with rice and salad.