I had a good friend down to Princeton for the weekend so that we could enjoy a couple of concerts at Richardson Auditorium – the New Jersey Symphony in Ravel (with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, on Friday, and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky (with violinist Leila Josefowicz) and Tchaikovsky’s “Manfred Symphony,” on Saturday – and so that he could get to the bottom of my sustained computer woes. (As you may know, my laptop died over the holidays.) So there was a lot of toil (for him), a lot of fun (for me), and very little sleep (for either of us).

The end result is that he somewhat tamed Windows 11 and Microsoft Outlook, so that at the very least I again have email capability. Also, it’s helpful to me to have a rudimentary understanding of how the enraging new system works.

But alas, we had to throw in the towel, finally, and send the old drive out to a “clean room” for high-end data retrieval. The owner of the walk-in service we had to resort to, once my friend reached the extreme of his rather considerable knowledge, seemed very capable. Moreover, he was laudably transparent in explaining everything he attempted, including taking the computer around to some of his geek friends to have a look at it. But in the end, he too was flummoxed. The files are still detectable (thankfully), but no one can seem to access them (unfortunately).

I don’t feel the same sense of freedom and exuberance I once did when working on my old laptop – I don’t know why the Silicon Valley bastards always have to mess with everything – but perhaps with time I will become inured to the pain of the new. For the present, it is going a long way to reining in my internet addiction, as being on the computer now is such a negative experience. I’m also not very fond of the new laptop (going from HP to Lenovo). I recommend nothing about it.

I apologize for such an uninspired, utilitarian post, but I am wasted from the weekend. I’m wading into a second cup of coffee now, but I suspect, when it comes to any kind of skill in euphoniously stringing together words, today is going to be a wash.