Thursday, February 27, 2020

Last night I went to bed at 10:30pm, got up twice during the night, finally waking/getting up at 7:30am.


Teresa left the apt for her gym class at 9am and I left 15 minutes later.  I had a 5-10 minute wait for a bus.  At Ayura station I took the metro to Poblado station.  I walked to Monterrey mall and went up to the 2^nd floor.  I had checked online for Sucom and Google stated it was in local 269 and 296.  I saw local 296 at the top of the stairs and it was empty.  I walked to the other end of the floor and found Sucom at local 269.  I asked the lady inside about buying and installing an internal hard drive and was told they don’t sell them.  Outside the store I saw a couple young men talking and I asked them the same question.  (Juan had told me there are a lot of stores that could do it.)  One of them guided me into the store and I inquired about sizes and costs of solid state internal hard drives.  He showed me 3 different Kingston drives and I chose the middle size – 480GB.  (For comparison the original hard drive in my notebook is 128GB.)  I gave him the little HDD Upgrade Kit that came with my notebook, he opened its back by removing about a dozen small screws and quickly stated there was no space for another drive.  Finally, he figured out where it would go, he briefly removed a communication room, installed the HD and put the cover back on.  (Which probably voided my Acer warranty because it wasn’t performed at an Acer Service Center.)  He changed some software setting and the new hard drive was now recognized by the notebook.  I insured it was working by having him copy a few photos to my new D: drive.  The total cost was 270mil or about $80 and I walked out of the mall an hour after I walked in.  (Btw, like all things sold here, the 270mil included a 19% tax included in the price.)


I took the metro back to Ayura station and caught a Pedazco bus back to the apt.  I stopped in Exito and bought a couple bags of milk.


It took me less than 30 minutes to move all my pictures to the new hard drive, freeing up a lot of space on the original hard drive.

I still haven’t figured out exactly how to get my files off OneDrive.  I set each folder to “Always Keep on this Device” and I’m hoping that is a step in the right direction.


I left the apt at 12:15 and met Chuck, with his shitzu puppy Sofia,  outside Percimon at 12:30.  Chuck wanted to go to Na Pizza because its 2 for 1 Thursday.  When we got there the fine print said only between the hours of 6 to 10pm but the owner’s mother was there and he begged her to allow us to have the discount price and she relented.  We each ordered separate pizzas, medium size, and I ate half mine and he took my remainder and half of his to go.  In the meantime lots of girls stopped and fussed over the puppy.  Chick magnet!


We walked over to Aymara where we had coffee until about 2:30 when he returned to his house and I returned to my apt.  At 3:15 I picked up my chess set, notebook computer and walked to the Otra Parte library.  Juan Castro soon arrived.  Over the next 2 hours he helped me proceed further with downloading and installing ChessBase and related files and showed me some tips on using it.

At 5:45 I returned to the apt.


Teresa returned about 7pm from her doctor’s appointment.


I completed the downloads and installations of programs, databases, and magazines for ChessBase but I was unable to successfully navigate Chessbase like Juan Carlos demonstrated for me.


7,800 steps today.


Joke of the day

Hilarious responses to public notices:

Public notice: Warning.  This (vending) machine takes your money and gives you nothing in return.

Response: Just like my ex.