Attenuated

This is a response to my brother's picture of my nephew playing his new Gibson Les Paul LOUD.   In my case, I have a valve amp with a built in attenuator so I am able to get the guitar to sound as it would if I was playing it with the amp turned up all the way, but at neighbour (not to mention Cathy) friendly volumes.  Its still not quiet - but no louder than, say, an acoustic piano.

In the main today has been a day of chores, as weekends often are.  Not that I mind particularly, there is something satisfying to undertaking the baking of the week's bread, and having a nicely vacuumed house etc.  

The particular chore that has taken the most time today has been converting spreadsheets.  I had Microsoft Office installed on the MacBook, but I realised this time around that I don't need to buy (or rent) that suite of software this time.  Both Cathy's work and my own have upped their security levels in the intervening years and we now both work via Citrix when working from home.  We no longer have kids at home needing those programmes, so we are able to use the free Apple versions - numbers, pages etc.  

The Apple products do not have the same feature depth, but at home neither of us need that.  We would also have to move to the latest versions of those programmes which neither of us is familiar with - work being what it is, we are both working on older versions of Microsoft's Office products. 

There is still a learning curve involved, things work differently - but all seems well at the moment.  The household budget spreadsheet has been re-written, as have various others - the end results are prettier than the Microsoft equivalents and (hopefully) will be every bit as functional.  

It is also rather nice to work with a (relatively) simple programme.  I have no doubt that the air would have been blue otherwise, where I would have been having to hunt through nested menus to find the feature that I needed, and which some Microsoft developer has decided to relocate somewhere new this time around in order to make room for the latest version of the Microsoft Ribbon or equivalent.  

As I read back through what I have just written, I realise that I am starting to sound like a grumpy old man!   :-)