Today I reformated my laptop and it is nice and squeaky-clean. On the inside anyway. The keyboard still has it’s fair share of chocolate and cherry turnover crumbs stuck amongst the keys. That’ll have to be tomorrow’s job. I had to reformat because something sinister had managed to get into my system and cause the left click key to cark itself. I couldn’t even click on the start button any more.

I quite like reformating. It’s a bit like spring-cleaning. You grit your teeth, um and ah and finally toss out some old thing you’ve been hanging on to forever but haven’t touched in ages. It feels awful the moment you are chucking it, but once it’s gone, and you realise the world hasn’t imploded without it, it’s quite cathartic.

And so it is with getting rid of all those files you stick away ‘just in case’. I always create a tidy folder because I hate icons on my desktop, and I shove everything in the tidy folder. I have no idea why I kept half the crud I had in there. But, anyway, it’s gone now, and I’m feeling quite pleased with myself about the big clean out. If only I could start on my wardrobe…

So now, as I said, I have a squeaky clean laptop, but there’s one problem. I have so many passwords, which were all saved on the computer before I wiped it, and now I’m having trouble remembering them. I’ve been pulling my hair out going through all the possible combinations I might have (cleverly) used in the past – all the way back to the kind of passwords I used when I was a naive internet virgin. (Passwords like ’123abc’ or ‘Lucy’). Not a lot of luck, although I was able to remember the password to this site (obviously). One day I shall invent a password so clever that even I will remember it.

This is a story my dad told us when we were kids.  Somehow, I don’t think it’s true, but ah well, it does explain things…

Once upon a time there was an important meeting held at the council hall for all dogs to attend.  Dogs turned up from all over the world, and on arriving at the conference they were asked to take off their butts and  hang them on a peg in the foyer.  The meeting was halfway through when the building’s fire alarm suddenly went off.  Blind panic ensued, and the dogs raced out of the building, quickly grabbing any butt they could find as they passed through the foyer.

Once they were all safely out, they began to realise that they didn’t have their own butt.  From that time onwards, whenever a dog meets another dog, he checks to see if that dog is wearing his original, wayward behind.

The End (hey, that’s a pun!)

One could be forgiven for thinking Armageddon had come to our city this week.  A huge dust storm cast Brisbane in a weird orange glow and coated everything with a layer of red.  The dust apparently came from western New South Wales.  Here’s a picture of what our street usually looks like (on a Thursday – bin day!)…

And this is what it looked like all day during the dust storm…

Apparently there’s another one coming tomorrow.  I was driving along this morning under blue skies, but above the horizon in the distance I could see a definite line of the dust haze which is probably the encroaching dust storm.