Last weekend the Eagle arrived in Tampa for the Tall Ship Fesival. In part because of conditions in the Gulf, we only hosted three tall ships, but fortunately, one was the USCGC Barque Eagle. The Auxiliary escorted her in and out of port. I was assigned to camera duty at the Tampa port when she arrived, but crewed for one of the vessels that escorted her back out on Tuesday. The Eagle is so beautiful! (And, yes, I am biased!)

I knew my old PC was on its last legs. It was a $225 refurbished e-machine that I bought last year in an emergency because my old PC crapped out on me while I was working on a newsletter. By last week, I could not shut it off because it refused to 'see' the HDD when it started up again. Any of you geeks out there know what causes that? Anyway, I bought a new one and it arrived on Friday. I backed up almost everything to an external HDD just before it took its final swan dive. Problem is, it died before I could de-activate program licenses and now it will be Monday before I can contact the vendors and get some critical programs installed on my new PC. Adobe is the worst and I use a lot of Adobe products. Try as I may, I cannot activate programs like Acrobat or Photoshop. Hopefully, this PC will last a while. I got a decent processor and a graphics card w/ 512MB of memory and 6GB of system memory so it should not pose such a drain on my system anymore. (Just realized that they sent the wrong graphics card-- I paid for 1GB... sigh!)
Now, it is back to newsletters. Try as I may, I cannot get the 'look' I want. I want something that says, WOW! -not something that is 'nice'. Problem is, gradients do not print well and bleeds cost extra. Oh well. I will have to settle for 'nice'.