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We’re back at Gulf Waters

 Where we could get in trouble for skinny-dipping in the pool. Walked at Wilson’s cut this evening.  Drove out through the mudflats to the exact mudhole that captured the Jeep about a year ago. I took the line to the left back then. I should have gone right.  I can tell you that the line to the left includes a submerged post that brings even a losing effort to a sudden halt. I decided this was the perfect spot to turn the Jeep around, park, and begin my walk.  (It’s a good place to walk wearing water shoes.)  I walked out until the sun set, which gave me thirty minutes of fading light to find my way back to the car. Brown PelicanGreat Blue HeronGreat EgretLittle Blue HeronWhite IbisRoseate SpoonbillWilson’s PloverAmerican AvocetWilletLong-billed CurlewLaughing GullGull-billed TernBlack TernForster’s TernRoyal TernSandwich TernBlack SkimmerMourning DoveCommon NighthawkBarn SwallowRed-winged BlackbirdEastern MeadowlarkGreat-tailed Grackle A good walk. 
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Tech Gurus

 That Tech Guru job I had them working on; the one to insert letterhead into a document.  I fired them, but they keep calling me back.  Now I’ve fired them three times. Back when we were working together, they had access to my computer by my permission.  I had to log them on and type in a code each time.  As soon as I fired them, I made sure to disconnect them so they wouldn’t have access to my computer anymore.  Later, I was working at my computer and the screen flickered a couple times.  That didn’t seem right, so I went looking for them.  I found them groping around in my computer trying to get at something.  They had made this great pretense about having me grant them access each time, while behind the scenes they had created a back-door so they could get on my computer any time they wanted! I checked the programs loaded on my computer and found “Log-me-in” was still installed.  I selected it and clicked “uninstall”.  When I stopped moving the mouse, the cursor on my screen moved over and clicked “cancel”.  They were trying to prevent me from disconnecting them! I shut the computer down and started it back up without an internet connection.  I deleted *both* installations of Log-me-in before I turned access to the internet back on.  Since then it has all looked normal, no more signs of illicit access, but I don’t feel good about leaving my computer unattended yet.  If they’re in my computer I can tell, but only if I happen to be looking at my screen.  Now I disable internet access whenever I leave the room, just in case.    
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Update!

 It occurred to me late last night, while I was supposed to be sleeping, that I don’t need a Word expert at all.  All I need to do is go back to the printer that did the letterhead in Word format for us in the first place, and have him do it in two pieces, a header and a footer!  No problem. After that, it turns out we have people on staff that already know how to assemble the Word and Excel pages in Adobe so we can print the entire report in one finished piece! In the meantime the suggestions and kind offers are flooding in, but now we’ve got this one figured out.  I’ll try to think up something more challenging to be confused about next. Thanks all.  
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I took one for the team

 We issue audit reports that are a combination of pages printed from Microsoft Word for the narrative part, Excel for the actual financial statements, and with one page printed on letterhead.  So after printing, there is assembly and proofing to make sure everything gets put together in the right order.  After all of that, we turn around and scan the report back into digital form.  For years, I’ve been wanting to streamline the process by combining these individual parts digitally before printing instead of manually afterward, but the skills required are beyond our basic word processing ability at Taylor, Roth and Company.  I thought maybe over time we’d accidentally hire the skills to figure this out ourselves, but we keep hiring accountants and not word processing experts, so that hasn’t happened yet. I decided to handle this myself.  There are two parts to the challenge:  first, somehow combine Word and Excel pages into a single seamless document and second, insert the letterhead page digitally right into the document instead of having to separately print one page on letterhead.  I decided to attack the second challenge first; one page of letterhead inserted digitally into a document.  How hard could it be?  We even have a digital copy of our letterhead already. I pressed F1 in Word for help.  I searched for “letterhead”.  I read the results.  I couldn’t understand the options.  I Googled “how to insert letterhead into Microsoft Word documents.”  Still too hard.  I don’t want to spend the time learning to be an expert in word processing so I’ll know how to do it, I just want it done. I Googled “Help with Microsoft Word”.  I’ll just pay someone who already knows how to do it to do it for me.  The point-and-pay method.  $79.  A bargain. It didn’t turn out to be quite that easy.  It took three separate tech support sessions spread out over three days, with my computer held hostage for hours altogether while the tech worked on my screen instead of his own.  But finally, we have it; the result. And the result is:  I fired them.  Most of the work was by live chat, but when we talked on the phone I couldn’t understand them.  When I explained what I wanted, they couldn’t understand me.  What they produced was wrong and I couldn’t get them to understand why.  I gave up.  I meant to fall on the tech support grenade for the good of the team, but my effort fell short. I still think this is a 5 minute job for someone who knows what they’re doing; I just haven’t found that person yet.  Once we figure that out, we’ll move on to the harder question about combining dissimilar files into a single document.