Oh, gentle reader, what I am going through for you. Spent yesterday obtaining British Pound Sterling, buying new walking shoes, and acquiring a new carry-on satchel that will hold my new laptop. The last time I bought British currency was when I went to England in 1984. The bank-lady that handles these international transactions at my bank was the same lady that handle these transactions in 1984. In 1984, my bank, BMO-Harris, was not BMO-Harris, it was M&I. But, like Constantinople, you can’t go back to M&I because M&I isn’t Constantinople, it’s Istanbul in a manner of speaking.

Nu! I hear you Leo Rosten aficionados say. So let me get to the point of this posting which is really about HAL junior, my new laptop. I am trying to do as much as my limited technical skills allow to prepare the HAL Jr. for Roger Venden’s manipulations this afternoon. What this means is that I plugged the computer in and managed to find the “Power On” button.  So far, so good. No mouse, of course, so I began the journey into learning about touchpad gestures: the two-finger pinch zoom, the one-finger slide, the three-finger swipe, the four-four finger tap, etc. Some gestures worked, others didn’t seem to do much except irritate me which gave rise to the middle-finger thrust. I found myself using the middle-finger thrust quite often. I’ve got that gesture down pat. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have much effect on HAL Jr. I understand that you can buy a mouse for this machine and I may well do that. “Ballin’ The Jack” may work as a dance, but isn’t easily translated to the world of HAL Juniors.