Sunday, July 13th, 2025
          
          
               It has been a very long time since I have written an entry 
          on this phlog. Looks like the last published entry was December 
          2022, but I haven't been publishing regularly since December 
          2020. I used to really like writing these, and it seemed to help 
          a lot with keeping my thoughts focused. I guess I kind of use 
          Mastodon for that type of thing nowadays, but that isn't a great 
          platform for more long-form thoughts.
          
               I am writing this on my HP Vectra VL2 4/100, using a 
          legally-acquired secondhand copy of Textra 6. I was checking out 
          some of the entries I made using Textra 7 in Textra 6 and they 
          don't really look right, which seems strange to me because I 
          always made a point of saving in a raw generic .txt format. There 
          are a lot of other strange things that happen when I'm using this 
          computer too, so maybe the problem is somewhere in the hardware, 
          even though it passes every test I can throw at it.
          
               If you have read my older entries, you may recall that I had 
          to pretty severely curtail my retro-computer activities as a 
          result of my old computering space developing a moisture problem. 
          That is still a whole thing, though I am actually working at 
          resolving that issue finally, after several years. I made a point 
          not to store anything too terribly sensitive back in that part of 
          the house once I knew we'd be abandoning it, but still I'm 
          concerned about the condition of the stuff that is back there now 
          that we're trying to move back in.
          
               For the time being, I'm at my old desk, in a corner of the 
          living room. It's an interesting turn of events that allowed me 
          to get the Vectra set up here. I packed away my 'main' computer 
          as well as my Atari and Amiga stuff a few months ago as part of 
          puppy-proofing the house. The only computers still accessible in 
          the house were a few laptops. The puppy is now old enough to know 
          this corner is off-limits to her, so I decided to pull out the 
          Tandy 2500XL I got some years ago but never really had been able 
          to use. When I retrieved it from the old-computer closet though, 
          I discovered a roof leak had opened up directly above all of that 
          stuff. Thankfully it seems only my 486 tower has suffered any 
          real damage from that, but I had to remove everything from the 
          closet so I could repair the damage to the house, and that meant 
          piling it in the corner next to my desk.
          
               Well, I was pretty determined to not lose any more ground in 
          my headspace to the slow-motion failure of my house, so I set up 
          the Tandy 2500XL on the desk, but discovered it needed some work 
          to get into bootable shape. Again I was determined not to give in 
          to despair so instead I plopped the Vectra on top of the Tandy 
          and decided to use it instead. I realized that I had enough space 
          under my LCD monitor's riser to fit the laptop I use for work and 
          a full-size keyboard, so now I have my deskspace configured with 
          both a reasonably-modern computer and a vintage machine both 
          ready to go at a moment's notice.
          
               The guy that came to check out the roof discovered that it 
          really wasn't a roof leak as such, but that a ventilation shaft 
          from the bathroom wasn't sealed very well and some snow melt had 
          made its way in. No major repairs should be required, just fix 
          the plastering in my closet and reseal the rooftop vent pipe. I 
          asked him about the moisture problem in our sunroom / my old 
          computer space, and his response was kind of a serious facepalm 
          moment for me - "It looks like you just have a condensation 
          problem. A dehumidifier should be good enough until you can 
          reinsulate." We had at no point in the last however many years 
          even thought about trying to get rid of our moisture problem by 
          just getting rid of the moisture, and had convinced ourselves we 
          would need to rebuild half the house just to make it livable.
          
               It is now getting quite late and I'm getting quite drowsy, 
          so I think I will stop my entry here. I'm hoping this time to 
          maybe stick with it and make entries a little bit more frequently 
          again. If you read this and found it interesting, please feel 
          free to email me or let me know via Mastodon.
          
          -prokyonid