Month: January 2026

Right now NE Iowa is in a very cold spell, this after a short interim of mild weather. I am in the process of replacing my old Mac Pro, nearly done but waiting on a few cables to finish. To save space on my host service I am trying a new photo format. There are a few things to cover!

I am writing this on January 24th. Wind chills this morning were -35° with an actually temp of -20°. Yesterday, the 23rd, the morning wind chill was -45°. It is frigid, and will continue that way for most of the upcoming week.

Thursday morning I was outside clearing a few inches of snow that had fallen Wednesday night. The snow was light and like powder, making shoveling a bit easier than normal. After a short problem with the John Deere LX 176 was solved (it required a new spark plug), it was put into service clearing sidewalks, our alley garage access, and around the mailboxes. Cat paths were cleared by hand, including those around the bird and squirrel feeders. All in all, the work took about 3 hours. Needless to say, I did not stay outside continuously during those hours.

I purchased a new Mac to upgrade my computer system. The new unit is a base Mac Mini M4, and along with it I purchased a Minisopuru brand expansion dock. The dock gives me a few extra ports where I can plug in external devices such as my scanner and external drives and allows me to use my existing mouse and keyboard.

Apple includes a utility program called Migration Assistant that is used to transfer programs and settings from one Mac to another. This worked quite well, taking some time and a few tweaks, but the majority of my programs and all my settings (passwords, links, bookmarks) transferred just fine. A couple utility programs had to be reinstalled or upgraded to take advantage of the new operating system, but these tasks also went well.

The biggest problem is the change in cable styles. My old Mac Pro used the common USB-A connections while the new Mini M4 uses USB-C. While I am making do with the old cables, running through an external hub for now, I am waiting on cables that can connect my external devices to the newer USB-C ports without using the external hub. The new cables will enable me to remove some cords, power supplies, and clutter from my work area.

I will use this new setup for a couple weeks then wipe the old Mac Pro and list it on eBay. This will help recover some of the upgrade cost and allow me to buy a few more upgrades, including a wireless keyboard and mouse.

As you can tell, tech work took up much of my time lately. Here is another tech upgrade I have been working on: photo formats.

For a long time, most photos I use, including those in various galleries, have been in the .jpg format. This is almost universal in web pages, not just mine. Technology changes, however, and a few years back Google introduced the .webp format. This technology yields high quality images at lower file sizes and is supported by web browsers since about 2020.

My web hosting service cost is based on capacity; currently I am on a 10gb plan and have used about 8.8gb. Saving space by going to lower file sizes is attractive, and I have begun converting iGallery images to the .webp format. The space savings averages about 40% per image. As an example, my “Yule” gallery images, in .jpg format, ran about 104.5mb. This was reduced to 62.3mb when converted to the .webp format.

Web pages using the .webp images load faster as a result of the smaller file sizes. It takes me less time to upload the images as well. Please let me know if you have any problems viewing these images!

We have settled into a winter routine. Pam maintains a food/water station for the outside cats and monitors heaters in the catio, as well as regularly letting the dogs outside and limiting their exposure times. (Plus cleaning indoor cat boxes and refilling their feeding station, of course.) I attend to the various outside feeders. Recently I finished distributing our fall-gathered supply of acorns and switched to putting out peanuts for the squirrels. This has not worked out as planned; Blue Jays take most of the nuts and fly off with them, leaving few for the squirrels! I may not be putting out more if this keeps up. The squirrels will have to make do with their cobs of corn for the rest of the winter.

One medical note: I had a 6-month diabetes check up and my A1C has fallen to the lowest level since I was diagnosed many years ago. The lab came back with an A1C of 6.0. I am quite pleased with this reduction and hope to go even lower in the future.

So, that has been it for the last couple weeks; tech upgrades, house cleaning, caring for pets and critters, and keeping warm. Hopefully this will be the worst of the cold for the season! Frigid weather “bursts” started around Thanksgiving, meaning we’re getting pretty worn down by the cold as it extends through January.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Only strictly controlled strength of will motivates me to go outside during subzero weather. If the catio and outside cat feeding stations were not operational, I would just monitor the dogs’ outside exposure. Period.

However, January is reliably an ugly weather month in NE Iowa. Mentally, I try to project forward through the month, appreciating how the daylight finally starts to last longer into the evenings. Looking forward to Winter Olympics coverage in early February.

Rock on, Minnesota. Stay strong in the frigid temps. Remember, in 1776, the Continental Congress was grappling with escalating violence as well.

Today’s Humor:

This will be a fairly short post as not much worth reporting on happened over the last couple weeks. We did have a spell of warmer weather which enabled us to take down holiday decorations and I began a new photo project.

With a few days getting warm, into the upper 30s, it was time to take down decorations. Outside lights, tree, and inside decorations were taken down, repacked, and stored for another year. There is always some sadness associated with this as I enjoy having the lights on in the evenings.

Snow receded from the edges of the sidewalks but the “cat paths” we use to fill the bird feeder, acorn tub, corn cob feeder, and the path to the LP tank became very soggy and muddy. One unexpected result from us reconfiguring the dog run last fall is that it is getting wet and muddy from moisture coming off the house. Next spring we will have to re-think where the dog run should be placed.

I began a new project concerning my old 35mm slides. Originally these had been filed chronologically, which works for some topics but not others. Family photos and events work OK, but generic topics, such as sunsets, fall colors, and national parks should be grouped by topic and not by date. I have begun to go through my collection with the goal of combining like subjects together.

Given I have about 15 each 3-ring binders, some of them of the 4-inch type, this is an ongoing project for the winter months. At the same time, I am throwing away many slides knowing I will never use them for anything and decreasing the work anyone may have going through them once I am gone.

The first result of this activity is a new Gallery of sunset photos. I like sunsets and, it turns out, have nearly 60 slides and many digital images of them. Here are a couple used in the gallery:

Eventually I will go through my negative files as well. Those are mostly of family so less grouping will be needed. Just like the slides, though, it is highly unlikely the kids will ever do anything with these as they already have scrapbooks with relevant photos in them. We also have a collection of family scrapbooks containing dozens of photos so the original negatives are now more of a burden than a resource.

Pam has kept busy with cleaning and re-arranging projects. We are now looking for a new storage cabinet for the kitchen, having moved a small corner unit up to my bedroom. A new small shelf was installed in the kitchen. Cat posts recently received new sisal scratching pads. The address book has been updated after reviewing holiday cards received. There always seem to be many small projects to keep busy, nothing major, all necessary.

Other upcoming projects include getting a newer Macintosh computer to replace my aging 2013 Mac Pro. It will not run the latest version of Apple’s operating system, 26.x.x. I have been using a software patch called Open Core Legacy Patcher to extended the Mac’s useable life but that appears to be at an end. I am looking for a good price on a used Mac Mini equipped with Apple’s M4 processing chip, introduced in 2024. Not looking forward to having to transfer and reinstall all my programs and files, but something that needs to be done. (Another winter project.)

We keep busy. We keep looking forward. The arrival of seed catalogs is something of a treat with the bright and hopeful displays they contain. Now, to get through February and March!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

USA 250th commemoration trivia: January 1776 was a pivotal month in the forming of the American democratic republic. On January 10, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” was published. It made a compelling case for breaking from Britain, convincing many colonists independence was necessary.

In this current troubled time, it helps me somewhat to remain calm as I review lessons of political turmoil in our country 250 years ago.

Rock on.

Today’s Humor: