New Computer 3

Ah changing computer systems is SO much fun. 

My Corel Photo processing software arrive in the mail today.  I will save installing that for later.

I am obsessed with the email problems tonight.  I finally CAN access cavebear2118, marksmews2118, and yardenman2118.  My problem now is that I have to log into one, read it, log out, log in to another, read it, log out, log in to the third and read that.  And each time, I had to look at "AOL Today" newsfeeds which are mostly clickbaits for ads. 

So I called AOL with 2 questions.  I had a tech support person on the line immediately; no complaints about that.  First question was "can I arrange my AOL mail display so that I go directly to my inbox"?   Apparently not.  I wasn't surprised, they make their living off ads.  They even admitted they understand that I may not read any ads and just go to the inbox, but they want their shot at my attention, so they won't let me  change my scene.

My 2nd question was about the annoyance of having to log in and out of accounts in order to read the mail in the 3 email accounts.  I had tried to log into one, save it as a bookmark, log into the 2nd and save THAT bookmarked.  It doesn't work.  The only AOL email address is non-specific to account names. 

They do have a solution to that called AOL password manager so that all 3 accounts (for I am already paying $5 per account per month) would show on a single menu for easy switching between email accounts.  For another $5 per month.  That might be total or per account, the tech guy wasn't sure.  OK, he's not in Billing...

And THEN, he surprised me.  My AOL help is free only for 30 days.  And guess what they want after that?  $5 per month.  They are obsessed with $5 per month charges. LOL!  He DID tell me (on prompting by me) that I can get a lot of the tech help for free if I call AOL in the US during their normal business hours. 

I'm going to look for a better email system.  I wanted to keep the verizon.net addresses for convenience (and I'm sure that is part of AOL business plan).  And I have to question the value of having the 3 email addresses.  I set up 3 on the Mac mail from verizon because it was free and convenient.

I discovered I had 12,000 saved emails.  Mostly cat blog and personal blog comments forwarded there.  I deleted those down to 500, mostly so that I kept at least one who has every emailed me.  Those are stored on the Mac.  I can look those up anytime and just retype them into the PC mail as needed.  I might just try to print them out, probably only 12 pages and stick them in a binder.

One lesson I've learned from all this is to just never call tech support during non-working hours.  I'm not saying anything bad about the overseas tech support folks.  They do their best.  But they don't have full access to the US corporate information about my accounts or  ability to change things as freely.

As an example, I spend 4 hours one night with an overseas call center about email passwords and they could not solve the problem.  A US AOL tech the next morning did it in 15 minutes and it worked. 

So at night, I'm going to just gradually transfer files from the Mac to the PC 8Gb at a time with the flashdrive, and leave the tech questions to daytime hours. 

So I think I will end this post and just go install the Corel Paintshop photo processing program and see how that works... I sure want to post cat blog pictures again!

7AM update:  It was a struggle to load the Corel Paintshop CD.  I kept asking me about Drive E and I couldn't find a Drive E.  The solution was disgustingly simple.  My Mac CD loader is centered and you can't drop a CD without it falling into place properly.  The PC CD loader is off centered slightly and you have to push it down onto the holder. 

A new user of computers would have done that. I fussed around for 2 hours before I caught on to the difference.  I think I will wait til tomorrow to try and load any pictures.

My new driver updater tells me I need to upload new ones every few minutes.  It's hard to say "no" but I stopped that when I noticed a small box that said 0 new drivers required.  So many new things to learn. 

My learned Mac movements are all wrong on the PC, but it is hard to unlearn them.  I am.  I've noticed a few correct movements to different corners of the screen are becoming familiar.  And in fact, when I turned to the Mac to get some files, I went to the wrong spots already.  I had to stop and think.  I don't know how anyone uses both.  I guess that is why tech support folks hate Mac users.  They have to stop and recall all the different moves.

So I've successfully transferred some .doc files to the PC.  In small doses.  It took some time to do the first few, but more get easier.  I could probably get all of my documents transferred tomorrow, but I need to plant some seeds inside, so I may just take a break from the computer.  But I'm obsessive and may not.  Once I get a process working, it is hard to stop.

I really want to get the cat blog up and working again!

New Computer 2

MIDNIGHT:  Well, the new PC arrived last night, but I can't do anything with it yet.  What always happens with a new computer?  The existing monitor  plug is wrong...    There WAS just time to rush out to a local store to buy a new one, but I was up all night struggling with Verizon and AOL about the email on the old Mac and wanted a clear head about the new monitor, so I'm waiting til morning to go shopping for one.

I'll keep updating here as things progress.  Meanwhile, I can respond to any comments here, but my email seems shot.  Verizon points to AOL, AOL points to Verizon, and both say I need to talk to Apple about my email.

So I'm catching up on sleep tonight.

11:15 Wed:  I slept for 14 hours.  I needed it.  But that got me up late so I got a late start getting the new PC set up.  I had to go out to buy a cable adaptor.  My 2 existing monitors are VGA and I needed an adaptor from VGA to HDMI.  $30!  Ouch.

And when I got home, I was so hungry not eating much yesterday and sleeping 14 hours, I ate for 3 hours.  I minced roast beef, bell peppers, onion, and mushrooms, simmered it all in canned tomatoes and served it over noodles.  Then I ate an apple, several stalks of celery, saltines, ritz crackers with cheese, and sat down to watch the news on MSNBC.

Then I disassembled the old Mac and set up the new PC.  I'll set the Mac up on a card table temporarily, as I'll need it working to copy files to the PC using a flash drive.  I read through "getting started" on the PC.  No big surprises there, but the display and icons have all changed and that takes some getting used to.

The PC REALLY wants me to use the Cloud, but I'm not ready for that.  I did get The new MS browser  (Edge) opened, so the first thing I did was open my blogger account.  Hence this update...

I'm annoyed about apps.  I thought there was Office included with Windows 10 Home version, but apparently not.  I can open Word, but it says it is a trial version only good for 5 days. I'm searched around the File Manager and it really does seem true that there are no bundled apps for Word or Excel.  Or pretty much everything else.  

There IS a mail program, but since my mail wasn't working on the Mac, I doubt I have the settings and passwords to make it work on the PC  (other than receiving emails at cavebear2118@verizon.net).  I'll worry about that tomorrow. 

So I think I will go shopping for PC software at Amazon.  I could download it from the Windows store online, but I want CDs to start with.  I expect to have some problems and it is a LOT easier to reload software from a CD than from a download file.

Tomorrow morning, I'll set up the old Mac on the card table and I THINK it has a wireless feature that won't require me to keep moving the router cable back and forth.  If it doesn't, my Mac laptop DOES and I can connect my external backup drive to that and access most of the files I want to transfer. 

So, a-shopping I will go...

1 AM Thurs:  Well, it seems I can't get Windows software on CD any more.  It is all download.  And I need a working email, which is not set up on the PC yet.  That's a real Catch 22.  I cant get the AOL email working fully on The old Mac, so I can't set it up on the PC yet and that means I can't download software for the other things I want to do. 

7 AM Thurs:    Got the Windows Office software to work with the help of an Amazon tech rep at about 4 AM.  Word and Excel are now working.  Went researching photo management software next.  That was confusing.  I wanted Picasa, but that seems to have died.  Google software seems to want to use only the Cloud, and I don't like that.  I finally went for Corel Paintshop Pro x9.  The difference between the Home version and pro was only $10, so whay not?  The surprise, after all the software that only sends downloads, is that Corel actually sends I CD.  I will receive it Saturday. 

So that leaves the email as the last major thing to get working.  And my recent experience suggests I want to talk to REAL AOL techs not foreign call centers. 

And I might decide to just stay with AOL for a while.  Poor as it is, it DOES work for my cavebear2119@verizon.net address and I am thinking I might not want to risk messing THAT one up.  I got into the habit of saving all my emails for a decade because it was so easy on my Mac email.  But I deleted 95% of them, preparing to migrate them and I'm not sure I needed most of those.  I saved the emails from several people I actually email back and forth, and I have them on my Mac computer which is up and running again so far as reading old emails goes. Maybe I needed to delete all those forwarded comments anyway.  They ARE still on the blogs. 

But I DO need to get a better email than AOL.  It sucks.  I have 35 minutes before AOL techs are available, so I think I'll see what I can learn about the installed  Windows email until then...

9:15 AM - I THINK I got an AOL tech rep who solved the email problems.  It WAS confusing at first because what Verizon considered a primary account and 3 subaccount emails, AOL just considers 3 primary email accounts. We got through that eventually.  It seems to me right now that all my 3 email addresses are working.  Who knows what might happen tomorrow.  But for now, all seems good.  AOL wants $5 per month per email account for full tech support. 

I can afford it, but I also find it offensive since Verizon said the migration would be free and they weren't charging me for either tech support or the 3 email accounts.  I'm going to let that slide for now.  It's by the month, so I'm not locked in for a year, and  so a couple months of that won't kill me. 

So now, I have MS Office working, email working, and am waiting for 2 days for the Corel photo
manager software to arrive Saturday. 

Which means I am free to start arranging File Manager to migrate my documents to.  That should only take a few hours (he said while laughing confidently) , but I will hope for the best.

My next effort is setting up File Manager to accept specific folders of files from the Mac. 

I feel awake enough to transfer files.  The question is whether Windows File Manager will let me set uop subfolders in a way I like.  We'll soon finf out.

New Computer

First, let me describe the new PC.  It's a desktop Dell XPS8910 with an Intel Core i7, 16Gb RAM (expandable to 64Gb), 2Tb memory HDD, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750Ti graphics system.  It comes with the Windows 10 Home operating platform.  I can add a 2nd internal hard drive and probably will just for photos, and I'll get an external drive for automatic backup.

Windows 10 Home has the Windows Office Suite.  Mostly, I want that for Word and Excel.  I used Windows at work and at home for years and even when I switched to a Mac in 2008, I bought Office For Mac anyway.  Mac's Pages and Numbers frustrated me with the lack of features.  All the rest of the softawre will have to be purchased when I see what seems "missing.

I'm probably going to miss Mac's Finder and iPhoto software the most.  And I've been using old versions of Photoshop Elements and some other Mac software because I trialed the newer versions and just didn't like them much.   But since I'll be buying new Windows software and starting with the newest versions, I'll just have to learn those from scratch.

I've done the new software learning before.  I started with a Commodore 64 in 1990, learned completely proprietary systems at work twice and then Windows after that.  I was usually the quickest to figure out new office software .  And as I said, a lot of Windows software is already familiar to me.  I even still have my pre-2008 PC set up and use it occasionally.

I'm going to be migrating many of my Mac files to the PC myself.  I suppose I could have most of that done by a local Windows shop, but those are the easy ones to transfer.  I have an external drive and a couple of flash drives to make that easiest.  Most of my word and spreadsheets are already in Windows format anyway.  I'll take screenshots of my mail settings, but since my mail is messed up right now anyway (because of the forced Verizon-to-AOL transfer) I'll probably have to call them for help.  My email receives, but won't send. 

One good thing about switching back to a PC is that call centers usually know more about PCs than Macs.  When I tell them I'm on a Mac, I can almost hear them cringe.  And sometimes they just have to have someone call back who is more Mac-oriented.  I won't miss that.

I'll be leaving the Mac set up on the internet, and setting up as much as I can on the PC offline.  I think I'll buy as much new PC software on discs.  One thing I learned is that having the initial discs is invaluable for re-installing apps when something goes wrong.

When I have my new file manager set up the way I like (I'm more detailed about that than most people - I have folders, subfolders, subsubfolders, LOL!) I'll copy the Mac files to it (Word, Excel, etc).  Photos may take longer, and I suspect I'll have to buy a photo program first anyway.

So I actually may be remaining on Mac for a good week or so.  And maybe I'll give Verizon another shot at fixing my Mac email.

Most of what I do these days are the 2 blogs and internet searches and those are working just fine.  So you probably won't see any difference unless you sent an email and I can't reply to it.  And maybe Verizon will fix that today... 

UPDATE:  Verizon says I have migrated my email from them and they can't help me any more.  So I called AOL where the email was transferred to.  They managed to ruin what the Verizon techs had set uptwhat DID work.  And AOL basically said that unless I paid them (for the Verizon email that was formerly free) they didn't much want to talk to me. Never mind that Verizon said the transitioned email would be "free".  

None of my 3 Mac mail accounts can receive OR can send.   3 days ago, I could receive to all three and send from 1.  That's not an improvement.  AOL made it so I can receive to one account and they say that is all I should expect, being a free customer.  

Are some companies just "evil" or what?

They blame my Mac email, which was working perfectly fine until the migration to AOL.  

The tech support people really do try to help.  I don't doubt their desire to fix my problems in the least.  But I think things have become complex beyond their ability to solve some problems.  

In my case, it would take someone knowledgeable in Verizon, AOL, AND Mac to solve it.  And there isn't such a person I can find.

I think my 3 Verizon accounts are doomed.  I have cavebear2118@verizon.net for personal emails, marksmews2118@verizon.net for the cat blog, and yardenman2118@verizon.net for gardening.  

I think I'll have to go to a paid email system to have several accounts, and it SURE won't be AOL.  I'll have to see how the email works on the new PC..

Seriously annoyed right now..  I EXCPECT to solve most problems myself.  Given some technical details like the name of an outgoing server, I usually can.  But this 10 days of email problems is driving me mad.  Which only makes me want to solve it more!

Part of my personality is persistence, learning, and determination.  When that fails, I feel that *I* fail.  I must not be understanding something.  And that drives me nuts!
 

Decision Point

Well, I've gone and done it now.  I ordered a PC computer to replace my Mac Mini.  And I mean not only the one I was having trouble with recently, but also the one I bought as backup when I started having problems 6 months ago and couldn't get that one to work either (rip-off used computer, bad power cord, no operating system installed, who knows?

But I am leaving the Mac universe.  There are parts of it I will miss.  "Finder" is great, iPhoto is great.  I became accustomed to some of the Mac features.  But Apple has just become too darn restrictive.  I can't get one repaired without an hour drive each way twice.  There and back to deliver it; there and back to pick it up days later. 

There are 3 PC repair shops in town here.  You walk in, they are happy to see you, and they sometimes fix the problem on the spot!  That matters too.

And quite frankly, every thing I read says they are about the same these days. Well, that's how technology works.  Everyone figures out what the good ideas are and uses them.    I was just reading an old article in Scientific American mentioning how automobile manufactureres had focussed in on all the best ideas and the cars were becoming pretty much all the same (from the 50s).

So the new PC will arrive from Amazon Tuesday.  Not TOP of the line, but what I judge to be best for me a touch below.  Slightly slower gaming speed than the best at that, but more storage for photos and such, which matters more to me. 

But I may be offline for some days next week getting it set up, arranging email, copying sites and passwords, copying bookmarks and the like.

If I'm lucky, it might take only a day (yeah right, LOL) or it might take 3 (hoping not that long).  You never know. 

I'll keep the old Mac Mini plugged in but not on internet until it is done.  Email will be the first thing I set up.  Blogs 2nd.  If you don't see us after Tuesday or a while, don't worry.  We aren't gone or ignoring our friends.  We are just busy arranging for a GREAT return!

On More Normal News

Apparently, my Saucer Mangolias never stood a chance of blooming this year.  The flowers come out before the leaves, and every year is a gamble.  Their evolutionary strategy seems to be to bloom before all other trees.  I have no good idea why.

The hail that knocked off 20% of the buds was bad enough.  The freezes that followed for 2 nights killed the rest.  But if that had not happened, it wouldn't have matterred.

The next 6 nights are forecast to hit lows of 22F, 22, 23, 32, 28, and 19!  This is horrible March weather for this area.

The earliest daffodil stems fell over, so I don't know WHAT this freezing streak will do the the emerging hyacinths and tulips.  For the tulips, I may just have to wait til next year, but I am most worried about the hyacinths.

I planted the hyacinths late in 2015 and they did not emerge at all in Spring 2016.  But I gave them another year (hope springs eternal) and they are coming up this year.  If this freeze kills them, I will be very sad.  I've covered them with old blankets, but low 20s is very cold.

I know "global warming" means global and a warmer climate is actually less predictable and varied.  The warmer the climate gets, the more the weather patterns can move around and shift during transition seasons like now.

Nothing a gardener hates more than uncertain weather!

It Just Gets Worse

The computer situation is getting worse.  It all started when Verizon announced it was stopping its email service.  You could switch to their new partner AOL (and keep the Verizon email addresses) or go get your own (and start with new email addresses).  I started the procedure to switch to AOL; I can always get a new email service later, and the only assistance Verizon was providing was the transfer to AOL

It has all gone horribly wrong.  I mentioned the hours online with Verizon's overseas call center techs, but it is worse.  Well, yes, I can receive email addressed to cavebear2118@verizon.net on AOL's simple and unhelpful system.

But I have been using 3 sub-accounts on my Mac email where previous emails were sent to Verizon and forwarded to my Mac email.  Except 2 of them seem incapacitated now.  I may have caused that myself, but I'm not sure how.  Just know that the passwords in my "keychain" don't seem to work anymore.  And Verizon says they can't help me with anything on my Mac email.

So, I decided the only thing to do was restore my hard drive completely from my backup system (called Time Machine on Mac).  I've used it before for specific files and folders, even recovered my Word and Excel for Mac, and once to completely copy back the entire drive.  It takes time but it works.  

Time Machine backs up new files hourly, saves weekly, saves monthly.  Older backups are deleted when the external drive it saves to is filled.  There are dozens.

Except yesterday when I tried to restore the entire drive, there WEREN'T.  All gone except the most recent 2, which were from AFTER I switched my email from Verizon to AOL.

It may have been a new security program I purchased (and highly recommended at several sites).  It made some small annoying changes (like setting my security to demand a password everytime I opened the computer even after it merely went into sleep mode after 10 minutes.  But the first time it ran, I had it do a complete scan and cleaning of duplicate files.  If that allowed it into my backup drive, it might be why all the old ones disappeared. 

I don't know the cause for sure, but it doesn't seem to be reversible.  All my backups are lost, just when I needed them most.

My Mac email is perfectly willing to let me into to my subaccounts (cavebear2118, marksmews2118, and yardenman2118 - those are my personal email, my cat email, and my gardening email respectively).  IF I can type in the passwords.  Which I haven't had to do for years to access them, so something ELSE has changed.

I found a file called Keychain that stores passwords for every website I visit, my email accounts, and some various other kinds of sites.  Entering my Admin password allows me to display the specific passwords one at a time. 

There were upwards of a dozen email accounts with different passwords on various dates and I do recall having struggled with email accounts before.

None of them worked, or they did and I didn't know the right place to go after that.

The strange thing is that marksmews2118@verizon.net seems to work for receiving emails, but I can't send from any account or receive from the other 2.  I can receive emails at my new AOL page, at least from some sites.  But I can't send any to myself.

My Mac emails are still stored in my accounts, so I haven't exactly lost them.  I just can't seem to send anything.

I'll fight with this for a few more days before doing anything drastic.

BLAH!

Who ever said things can't get worse had a happy life.  Trying to adjust to AOL email, I managed to completely screw up the emails I did have!  My Mac Mini finally died, and replacement I had stashed away had no power cord.

Well, of COURSE it was different.  Apple changes everything as fast as they can.  If they could make household current suddenly change from 120 volts to 150 volts, they would.

So I went of to buy a new power cord.  About 5 years too late, it seems.  Apple went back to the cord for the Mac Mini I have that barely runs a few years ago.

My old Mac Mini is still running after cooling down for an hour., but it took another hour  to get the restore feature working.  It has worked easily before, but apparently, it get relly confused trying to over-write the new email system.

I've lost 1/3 of all my old emails.  Verizon said they were sorry (I was talking to them will I typed this.  I'll be trying to recover them.

But I may be absent for a few days.  I have only so much time I can spend on the computer and I've spent over 24 hours at it today.

The cats need attention, I need to eat, and I need to sleep.  Hopefully things will be better in a few days but I wouldn't bet any money on it.  I'm  p***sed.  And tired...

And I just got several legit emails warning of increasing Mac viruses. 

And I just learned the power cord costs $100.  That's it, I'm going back to a PC.  

My ISP Is Cheating!

I just received notice that my ISP - Verizon - is no longer going to be providing email service!  This seems bizarre.  It is one of the basic things they do.  Its a bundle - TV, Computer, Telephone, Email...  Pretty basic stuff.

I guess they ARE merging (or acquiring) AOL because I can keep my verizon email address is I switch to AOL.  I haven't looked into the details yet, but AOL has never been any favorite of mine.

It is possible that all it means is getting an AOL account.  I hope.  But I'll bet there are some problems that come along with doing that.

I have had my Verizon email forwarded to my mac email for 8 years.  The user name and password are long lost.  I spent 2 hours on the phone with them and they couldn't provide it.  Not "wouldn't", couldn't.  They sure tried.

   ********************

It took 4 hours on the phone with Verizon techs to get my email switched to AOL.  3 hours overseas to no result. An hour with local  Verizon folks and they had to kick it upline twice.  The conversion was managed.

And now on AOL, my only goal is to  get OFF it ASAP.  It is a piece of crap, drowning in ads, and not permitting me (so far) to maintain separate accounts for personal, cat, and gardening purposes.  And that's saying it nicely!

All email now comes into one account, the sender names are abbreviated,  and they all look the same.  Our email may be really screwed up until I figure out the changes.  I don't know when I will figure it out.  I'm not as good at understanding this stuff as I used to be.

I used to read all the blog comments by email.  I'm not sure how to do that right now.  I'll figure it out eventually, but I might not be online until I do.

I am researchibg alternate email systems today.

Forgive me if I get obsessed for a few days.  We all have our ways of dealing with changes and mine is to just research the HELL out of them until I find a solution I like.

See you then...

Late Hard Freeze

This mild winter helped the Saucer Magnolias to build huge buds, full of promise.  The hailstorm last week knocked off a lot of buds, but most were left and it promised to be a spectacular flowering this year in spite of that.  Possibly the best ever.  The forecast was for no freezing remperatures for 2 weeks.

But surprises happen.  A twist of weather brought 2 nights of temperatures down to 20F.  They were all killed!

Absolute mush!

Not a single one will open.

Last year they bloomed nicely, but 2 weeks later.

 Here is the backyard tree over the fence gate...

And the early daffodils were good.

But they are all knocked down.  The flowers can stand the cold, but not the stems.

So sad...

Some Road Construction Is Not Good

I live in a neighborhood with one road out.  20 years ago, the County considered bypasses around my town.  Option A ran through my front lawn.  Option B was a parkway (meaning no traffic light) at the front of my neighborhood that meant none of us could ever get out due to traffic unless we made a right turn and travelled for a mile before doubling back to local stores.  Option C was a bypass on the other side of town, which they built.

Today, I saw signs of road construction suggesting they are also doing Option B.  OK, that's better than having the bypass go through my front yard but it means the neighborhood will be just that much worse for driving.  It already takes 15 minutes to get 3 miles!

ARGGGHHHH!

If they make the neighborhood completely impossible to live in after all the yardwork I've done the past 3 years, I will positively SCREAM.