It seems like a couple of years since I sat on the screened back porch on a late spring morning, sipping mocha cappuccino and blogging with my Dell Inspiron netbook.

A parade of colorful birds is visiting the bird feeder - cardinal, bluejay, blue bird, finches of various hues, titmice, and of course the ravenous squirrel.

Even with the sound of a wood chipper a mile or so distant, I can still hear the flutter of their wings when they flit to and fro.

It occurs to me that my netbook, purchased in March 2009 when netbooks were the "next big thing," has served me longer than I ever expected. It's still running the Windows XP operating system that came with it, even though Microsoft no longer supports XP. I figure the longer it continues into obsolescence the less likely it is to encounter malware or viruses targeting XP, the bad guys having moved on to Windows 7 and then Windows 10.