I have my own computer!

Paul got me a Surface Pro 3 tablet computer! I haven't had my own personal computer since my iBook G4 died over 5 years ago. So I've spent a lot of time over the past two days getting to know Windows 10 and downloading apps and setting up favorites and organizing my "active tiles" in my home screen. It was unconscionably difficult, for example, to figure out how to create tiles for specific web pages, but I finally figured it out, so now I'm close to finished with my initial setup.

Anyhoo, I'm hoping having my own computer that is not a desktop living in our cold basement will help me to finally get on top of some internet-dependent stuff, like ordering prints of the professional baby photos of Max and our family photos; finally, FINALLY setting up and sticking with YNAB (because we really, truly do need a budget!); and blogging a bit more regularly.

I got Amazon Cloud set up on my phone and tablet to sync those photos, and need to get it set up on the basement computer too, because then I can get access to all the pics from our real camera that are currently living on the basement computer. Amazon Prime offers unlimited photo storage in the cloud drive, and for $60/year you get unlimited storage of any and all files, which is what we're currently paying for a separate backup service, so I think we might switch because Carbonite can only be hooked up to one computer and only does backup, not storage, so you still have to have the files stored on your hard drive too.

This is all really cool to me, because I'm starting to see the functionality that, five years ago, Paul and I would talk about "this is how things SHOULD work." Files and photos that I can access and edit from my phone or computer and it's all synced; a full-powered computer that has a touchscreen so you can have the best of both worlds; accounts that all talk to each other and feed into each other. That last one is still far, far from perfect, because now I have a Windows tablet PC and an Android phone, and since Microsoft and Google are competitors, they don't offer you cooperation on a silver platter, but it works out OK with a little finagling.

Here, have a gif of PJ in the snow:

PJ throwing snow: January 23, 2016