I am really lucky, this fall, to have two jobs that I love.

There I was with a perfectly good scanner. It sat idle in a closet until this summer, when I got the chance to use it again for an entirely different purpose.

I like taking photos. I’m not going to pretend I’m any good at it. I’ve just always figured that if I take a lot of pictures, I’ll luck into a good one or two.

One or two people have remarked that I could have avoided a good deal of the setup on my new laptop if I’d only bought a Mac. “It sets itself up,” said one of my friends on Facebook.

Did your friends ever set you up with someone they just knew would be perfect for you? Yeah, that's me and Mac computers.

I'm setting up a new laptop that will be my main computer and offer these tips in case they help someone else. (All of this is for a machine running Windows 7.)

I have a new computer, a laptop. It is going to be my primary computer, a desktop replacement. While I have way too many a few other machines, setting them up has been pretty easy: Install a word processor, a web browser, maybe some movies and tunes, and off I go. I've had the same desktop machine for about five years.

I'm not about to let Meg Dickinson have the last word in our little discussion about our new arrivals – a dog for her and a laptop for me.

Hey, Meg:

So Meg Dickinson and I are both waiting for something new for our homes.

Both are things we’ve wanted for a while.

So I rooted my phone.

This is the third Android device I’ve rooted. A couple of Viewsonic tablets, and my phone. And it’s still amazing to me just how simple the process is.

When I was a kid, my grandmother gave me an old clock that no longer worked. I was just sure I could get it to work. I took the case off and looked at all the parts and got my first clue that mechanical repairs of any kind were not going to be in my career path.