The usual mixture of pleasant and unpleasant surprises has accompanied this weekend's computer upgrade chez Spencer Alley. The old 3-in-one printer-scanner-copier went out on the street and was taken away by some anonymous Mission passerby within ten minutes. I had intended to keep it for use in tandem with the new photo-printer. But that proved to be impossible because the new operating system refused to recognize the existence of such an antiquated piece of hardware. So I ordered a new scanner and it will arrive sometime later this week to make a forced marriage with this picky system. Graphics and video suddenly appear on the monitor looking far crisper and cleaner than before due to some specialized little piece of circuitry recommended and inserted by the techno-guru (the original cardboard box containing this component had war-like cartoon superheroes all over it because the device is primarily intended to enhance the virtual worlds of serious game players, though it was chosen for me not for that reason but because it attracts all the display-work to itself, leaving more power and space free for other tasks elsewhere inside this cumbersome mechanical brain). Overall, responses are considerably faster. The machine no longer makes groaning noises. Those facts are all on the upside, but on the downside the new photo-editing software from Adobe provided free on a disc with the new printer turned out not to work at all. "The Photo Editor Has Stopped Working" it kept telling us, which is a good example of deceptive computer-speak, because it was never working in the first place, and you can't claim to have "Stopped" if you never "Started". Google showed quickly that thousands of others had faced the same blank wall with no ready solution on offer, and my paid helper decided not to bother with it but instead went quickly to work selecting & downloading a good piece of freeware that does the same thing. And it actually works, even for me. And the adorable photo above is the first fruit of today's experimentation with that new tool, where the contrast and color were not of the best in the original, but could be nudged toward a version slightly worthier of its celestial subject matter, bless her heart.