The NTT IndyCar Series is now on something of a break. After four races in five weeks, this upcoming two-weekend break is well-earned. I’m also assuming this will be welcomed by the teams, with the grueling Month of May looming ahead. The Month of May actually gets an early start in April with the upcoming Open Test on the IMS oval on April 28-29.
I plan to attend that test, and we will also be onsite for all three weekends in May as we always are. That means Susan and I will both be posting daily in the Month of May through the Race Weekend.
If you’ll recall, back in September – I made the switch over to Mac on my home desktop computer. My old Windows 10 HP computer from 2017 was on its last legs, but I wasn’t going to wait until it totally crashed before buying a new one. I found a new one on sale at Best Buy with Windows 11.
I wasn’t excited with what I felt were unnecessary changes from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Remember…Change is Bad! But I figured I would get used to those changes over time. Then, after less than a week of usage – the new computer started rebooting for no reason. I would be typing a Word document, and right in the middle – the computer would shut down and re-start. Sometimes parts of the document I was working on would be saved, other times none of it. A quick Google search of this particular model showed a well-documented history of other users experiencing the same symptoms.
I boxed it up and took it back. Since I have been a loyal iPhone and iPad user, I had become an Apple fan. I’m not usually an early adapter, but I had the very first iPhone when it was introduced in 2007 and have had one ever since. Susan has been a Mac user all of her adult life. A Windows PC is foreign to her. I had been toying with the idea to switching over to Mac, but had feared it would be way too different from Windows. When I took the new HP windows computer back – the iMac Minis were on sale for $150 off. I did some quick research over the next couple of days and bought one. After getting used to it over the next couple of weeks, I wondered why I had been wasting so much time on Windows for all of those years.
There was only one problem, and I have mentioned this here on this site – the software I used to load up this site, Open Live Writer, was originally a Microsoft product, with no Mac version in existence. I asked for help on this site, and tried multiple platforms, but I could not replicate the appearance or have all of the features that I had been used to for the past 17 years. For the past six months or so, I have resorted to typing my posts out in MS Word on my Mac desktop, then e-mailing them to myself so that I could use my still-Windows based laptop to load it up to the site.
With a much busier Month of May looming, I was not looking forward to those awkward extra steps. Now that I am retired with time on my hands, I sat down to my computer Tuesday morning, determined to find a better way. I think I have figured out my problem.
Essentially, this post is a test. I want to make sure this will work; with absolutely no change in the appearance of the site – without having to involve my laptop. To me it all looks normal. Please let me know on your end if there was any difference in what you see or how things behaved. Please no April Fool’s jokes. I am not a fan. If it acts as I hope, this will make posting a lot easier. I will also try posting this random photo I took in the IMS Museum one year, just to make sure that function works also.
The photo doesn’t stretch to the edge like it used to, and there is no longer an edge bordering the photos, but I am probably the only one that ever noticed that anyway. For those that are wondering, I still plan to post every day in May (up until the Monday after the race). I will also have another Triva Contest, as I am still compiling questions to have it ready to go by May.
We are less than two months away from the 110th Running of the Indianapolis 500. That special time of the year is almost here.
George Phillips
