FYI: Farmland to Solar Farms, Not just in Texas:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/solar-capacity-grows-some-americas-most-productive-farmland-is-risk-2024-04-27/

I have never seen anything to that extreme, but I have seen serious photographer put their tripod in salt water, with their multi-thousand dollar camera setup just a few inches above the waves, and though to myself: Well, I guess that's why I will never be a serious photographer.

Something else that occurred to me as I wrote this: Back in the day, cell phone carriers used to charge ~$50 (or whatever) to move your number to a new phone; because most people didn't know that all they had to do was move the SIM card. Once people learned that, the carriers missed out on that service charge. They would grumble about it; but from a technical standpoint, they couldn't stop you (they might have claimed contract violation).

Now with the new eSIMs, I don't (yet) know how to move an eSIM to a new phone without help from the carrier... I see number transfer service charges coming back....

Correct: if it doesn't work, just move it back to the first phone.

That is not correct. The SIM card primarily holds the phone number and the ability to use it. It is possible to store a few contacts on the SIM card, but most (android) phones don't do that by default. Other data such as pictures could be stored on a SD card, but most android phones don't do that by default (and iPhones don't support internal SD cards).

Moving the SIM to the new phone "should" move the phone number and the ability to use it to the new phone. But, a few caveats: the new phone must be unlocked. Also (a little harder to explain), but for best results, the new phone must support the protocols and should be optimized for the frequencies used by the carrier in your country. Look on the description of the new phone to make sure that it is compatible with your cell phone company and country. If you get a phone that is optimized for a different region (like Asia), it will probably work where the cell coverage is strong, but may not work well where the cell coverage is weak.

Also, you have to make sure that your new phone has a SIM slot in the first place. Some newer phones (some versions of the Samsung S23+, for example) only support eSIM (electronic SIM: a soft copy of the SIM data), and don't even have a SIM slot.

I agree, it "performs" fine, I guess... I haven't noticed it being significantly slower (as major windows upgrades seem to be... to make you want to buy faster hardware). But, they move things around to make them harder to access. Things, that used to be one right click away, are now two levels down, or moved into system settings. All that blank space at the left of the task bar, if you don't use widgets. There is probably some 3rd party software somewhere that move it all back to where it was with win10, but I haven't found it yet.

When my hardware gets too old, I load Linux on it (which runs fine on older hardware), but I don't need that many Linux machines and I use Windows as my primary user interface (since too much software isn't available on Linux, or is too much of a hassle to load).

If they were both slow, my first guess is that, for some reason, the writing to the USB HDD is slow.

To verify (or disprove) that, use CrystalDiskMark, or similar, to test the speed writing to your USB HDD.

I haven't used EaseUS ToDo, but that is much much slower than Macrium Reflect would be. (still sticking with the free version but I need to find an alternative since free version of MR is no longer being updated)

There are a lot of things to check... To start, use CrystalDiskMark, or similar, to test the speed writing to your USB HDD.

Yes, same here... but I wonder how I could get that $99 for 3 years that red6 mentioned.

There was a limit of 2TB with some devices (and 2GB) that caused various problems, but I'm not aware of anything between 500GB and 1TB.

I ignored a unknown caller from my cell phone last night. It turns out that it was the police calling to say that they found my wife's Drivers License on the sidewalk. So, we had to drive back into town to retrieve her DL.

I guess that I should have at least checked the voice mail that they left....

If you push the "current" button, it cycles the charging current from 200 to 500, 700 and 1000. This works for all modes, the corresponding discharge current being half of the charge current. If you have the time, the slower you charge them, the better it is for the batteries, but 500 isn't too bad.

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We have a reservation for a place in the path of totality, but right now, the forecast for next Monday in Texas is... 90% cloud cover and rain.

I think: Political Promises are the opiate of the masses