Reading is FUNdamental

I hate computer updates, I really do.  Sure, if not for them, I would be back in 2000.  But they become so constant and every change makes some favorite app not work right.   Every Firefox or Safari update (about once a week each) means I have to create a new password or lengthen the existing one for my AOL email accounts.

And dammit, even with my accounts printed out on legal size paper and double-spaced, I run out of room and I have silly arrows pointing all over the place to wherever there is room!  Don't worry about my security though.  I have a stand-alone computer for a couple obsolete computer games and I keep my password spreadsheet on that.  Unhackable.

But what got my knickers in a knot today was Mac Photos.  The newest upgrade from Sequoia 15.1 to 15.2  "upgrade" (you will only understand that if you have a Mac) completely changed my camera-to-computer upload procedure.  I went nuts trying to get pictures off my camera yesterday for hours.  

I thought the problem was Photos.  Nothing I tried fixed that.  So I thought it was Sequoia 15.2 which had just been upgraded.  Looking for a new Photos version that worked with it got me nowhere.  The instructions for ways to revert to Sequoia 15.1 were beyond my ability.

And I will add that restarting the computer, shutting it on and off, and looking for "patches" got me nowhere.  So I shut the computer off and went shopping (eyeglass repair, DIY store) just to clear my mind.

When I returned (fed The Mews, cleaned the litterboxes) I went at it again.  And trust me, when cleaning the litterboxes is better than struggling with the computer, you know you have a problem.  

But then the great Spirit of Christmas descended upon me!  I saw a single line in a 4 page help article that referred to "device in the sidebar".  Curious, I went back to Photos and searched around.  And I found the word "device" in a drop-down menu.  Clicking on it, I found "camera".

The good part is that everything worked again.  The mean part is that Mac/Google were trying SO hard to get me on ICloud in a Google-controlled account instead of just letting me manage my little photo world myself.  Sometimes, I feel like a small mouse with a tiny mace fighting a Bobcat!

But I beat them again!

  --------

Allow me an admission.  My favorite baseball player of all time is Pete Rose.  Yeah he bet on games.  But as a player, he was everything I ever tried to be.  His nickname was "Charlie Hustle".   He did his best on every at-bat or fielding effort.  Mickey Mantle once related a story about the first time he saw Pete Rose in the outfield.  Mantle said something like "I hit a homer that was 50' over the wall.  And this new kid climbed the wall trying to catch it.  We called him 'Charlie Hustle' after that".  He always ran hard in a sure out, launched himself at every fly ball he could not possibly reach, and played every day as if it was his last.  I think he once said that he would pay to play baseball.

I understand him everytime I play a game or tackle a computer problem.  Sometimes it isn't skill, but determination.  Perseverance counts too.  Sorry, I didn't mean to talk about myself, it just went from the brain to the keyboard...

  ----------

There were only 5 pics on the camera, but 3 were so weird...  I woke up yesterday and thought my neighbors had put a row of fake owls on their roof-ridge to scare away pest birds. But then one of them moved!  And I realized it was a whole row of vultures!

I love taking pictures of The Mews of course, but THIS is really why I have a camera...  For the things that you can never even imagine could happen...