t’s been a while since I’ve posted. So the world copes with the ravages of the novel coronavirus, most Apple Stores remain closed, and speculation is rampant on whether or not new products will appear on time.

Where is ET when we need them — it?

Despite the concerns about delays in new Apple gear, the iPad Pro has received a fairly comprehensive upgrade, in large part based on iOS 13.4, which adds fairly capable support for input devices, such as trackpads. It thus becomes more of a laptop replacement than ever, but it’s also closer in concept to the mythical toaster oven and refrigerator by dint of its touchscreen and keyboard/trackpad capability.

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As usual, I’m going to take a little time to get to the point, but there are reasons.

First, a little more time has passed than I expected since my last column appeared. And, no, it has nothing to do with any illnesses. As with most of you, I am being careful nowadays, staying away from people except when it’s necessary, and washing my hands — a lot.

As I write this, Apple has closed all retail stores outside of China until March 27th, with no guarantee that they’ll reopen then. New products and services are expected to be at least a little late.

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Once upon a time, I had three “full service” phone numbers, plus my mobile number. Two (including the mobile number) were used for business, another number for personal calls, and the last for faxing.

Yes, faxing.

Faxes, of course, are yesterday’s news for the most part. But some companies and some individuals still use them, so I needed that capability. I also wanted to keep the other phone numbers active to separate personal and business activities.

But there was the cost of maintaining extra phone numbers, and I wanted to cut costs. My solution is as economical as I can make it without giving up those numbers and faxing capability.

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Just the other day, a client alerted me to the fact that this site was no longer available to visitors who use an ad-blocker. Forget for the moment that I’d prefer that you check into our ads, since we get paid for clicks and, sometimes, for orders.

Unfortunately, they got a blank screen for their efforts. Now I don’t know exactly what changed in recent weeks — except for a minor WordPress upgrade — but I spent several hours of trial and error seeking errant code on the custom theme we use for this site. It turned out to be two lines of extra code that was left in the “header” template. Perhaps it was there to enable a function no longer used, or the upgrades to WordPress made the entries incompatible.

Regardless, removing those two lines restored the site to full operation with the ad-blockers I’ve tried. This site has been here for 20 years, and we’re here to stay.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to Everyone!