The sound of one hand surfing.

An update to yesterday's posting.

I have become - by default, most likely - the computer "expert" in the family, which means that I'm the one who gets the questions of how to make some software program work right - and it's usually some program I've never seen before (such as my father's genealogy program). And usually I can get away with a response that is some flavor of "I don't know - what does the manual say?"

Over the past three days, I've been involved with moving that genealogy data from my parents' old computer to their new one. It's gone pretty well, except for the biggest database - the one dealing with the Stoner family, which is (not surprisingly) the one my father most wants to transfer. Most of the data transfer consisted of copying files onto floppies and then re-copying them to the new computer. But that big database was too large to get onto one floppy, and there's no other data transfer medium in common: the old computer has a ZIP drive and the new one has a read/write CD burner. And because the old computer is a couple of generations of operating systems old - Windows 95 vs. Windows XP Home - I couldn't get the Backup utility to work properly to take a backup off the old machine and restore it to the new one.

I eventually ended up with a successful, albeit jury-rigged solution: I emailed the file from the old machine to my home account, and accessed that email account from the new machine and downloaded it there. You know how I mentioned yesterday that dial-up is slow? I had further blocked out the memory of old modems and the old computer's 28.8 dial-up speed.

The good news is that the cat is getting more comfortable here, and is hiding under the bed only about a third of the time. Just when she's completely comfortable, we'll leave.