“You can bet your bottom dollar I’m renaming that sucker”

GG1 #4896, on my rationalized ‘pyooter desktop. (Screenshot of ancient photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Pentax Spotmatic camera.)

The other night (Saturday, July 11, 2009) I took a screenshot (pictured above) of my ‘pyooter desktop, for my “Consummated” blog.
The desktop-picture on my computer monitor is good old GG1 (“Gee-Gee-one”) #4896.
If anyone reads this blog at all, they know I think the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG1 electric locomotive is the greatest railroad-locomotive of all time.
This is because I saw so many as a teenager in northern Delaware, and every time I did they were doing 80-100 mph.
Plus they lasted 40 years; twice as long as diesel-locomotives, and longer than steam-engines (which last maybe 30 years).
Plus the crews loved ‘em. They were awesome.
I saw #4896 many times, even got shown through it once at midnight at Washington Union Terminal in 1966.
#4896 is the only GG1 I got shown through.
But I only got this one picture. It’s at Pennsy’s electric maintenance shops in Wilmington, DE. —The shops are now Amtrak.
After processing with Photoshop Elements® I saved it (“Save-as;” so as to not overwrite the original) to my ‘pyooter desktop as “desktop.jpg.”
This included resizing down to 5.6 inches wide, the column-width of Blog-Spot.
My ‘pyooter monitor is over 16 inches wide.
I have another 4896 picture sized at 26.056 inches wide, probably scanned from the negative.
It’s also named “desktop.jpg,” so I know it’s the picture to use.
I keep it in a folder.
The other night (Sunday, July 12, 2009) Apple wanted to update their Safari® browser.
I never use it (I use FireFox), but okay.
The upgrade took about 10 minutes, and wanted a restart.
Okay, I can spare a few minutes.
“Taa-DAAAH!” Apple’s opening chord.
“Aw man.......” I said. “My desktop-picture is all mud again. Have I gotta reset it again? That Safari upgrade sent me into the ozone.”
Linda walked in. “Windows never does that.”
“This happened once before,” I said.
I set about resetting my desktop picture — find “desktop.jpg” in that folder, and set that.
BAM! Back to fabulous picture of 4896 it was before; non-mud.
But you can see where this is leading.
My screenshot was also named “desktop.jpg,” so that’s what the restart grabbed and reset as my desktop picture.
Blow up a 5.6-inches-wide picture to over 16 inches and it goes all jaggy — mud.
Plus all the folder icons were exactly as before, except for a muddy halo.
Plus a Windoze Media-Player icon had a smear of blue lipstick (cue Sarah-baby) around it.
I.e. every icon was exactly where it was in my desktop, because my screenshot which had become my desktop was an exact duplicate of my desktop.
“You can bet your bottom dollar I’m renaming that sucker,” I said.
Renamed to “NotThis.jpg.”

• RE: “‘Old guy’ with the SpotMatic.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). The “SpotMatic” is my old Pentax SpotMatic single-lens-reflex 35mm film camera I used about 40 years, since replaced by a Nikon D100 digital camera.
• I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.
• “‘Pyooter” equals computer.
• In northern Delaware, our family lived about eight miles from Pennsy’s Wilmington Shops.
• This blog is at “Blog-Spot.”
• “Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.
• A “browser” is what you browse the Internet with on your computer: Microsoft Internet-Explorer, Google Chrome, FireFox, and in this case Safari®. Another is Netscape; and I used both it and Internet-Explorer a while, but now I use FireFox.
• “Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. —She drives a Windows PC (Personal-Computer — the most popular personal computer architecture).
• A picture sized down to 72 pixels-per-inch and only 5.6 wide can’t be expanded. Doing so blows up the pixels. They become so big the picture becomes “jaggy.”
• The “muddy halo” was caused by actual desktop icons sitting exactly on top of the same icons on my screenshot, but the screenshot icons were all “jaggy;” they had become “mud.” —The “Windows Media-Player” icon on the screenshot was highlighted, so therefore bright blue. Blown up it looked like smeared harlot lipstick.
• “Windoze®” is Microsoft Windows. The scuttlebutt among Apple-geeks is that Microsoft is inferior. My siblings all use Microsoft Windows computers, but since I use an Apple Macintosh, I’m stupid and of-the-Devil.
• “Sarah-baby” is Sarah Palin.