The main Mac Mini dessktop HD is erased. I confirmed that. It does keep the operating system (High Sierra, not Catalina). That is a relief. Apple will probably look back on Catalina some day the way Coca Cola looks back on "New Coke" and Microsoft looks back on the Paperclip function.
Or maybe not. Apple might be dedicated to forcing it's users into iCloud and new annual subscription apps forever. Already, I can see that I am being forced to choose the subscription MS Word and Excek (which I love vs the Apple Pags and Numbers (which have few features).
Fortunately, I have fewer word and spreadsheet demands than I used to, so I might die before they make it a "pay for every use" world.
But that's neither here nor there right now. Right now, I finally have my OLD Mac Mini (the one BEFORE the one I spilled the wine on - call it the grandparent of the new one and the parent is dead) being backed up on a 4TB My Passport external HD (51 minutes and counting down). That isn't over-writing my older backups, just saving what is on my OLD Mac. The pre-Catalina backups are still there. 4 TB is a lot of storage.
My idea is to save what is on the OLD Mac, (just in case) and restoring the Oct 2019 backup Mac-to-Mac directly. Since I can't seem to choose the backup to migrate from Time Machine, but CAN if it is the only version on the OLD actual Mac (there being no other choices), I am expecting Migration Assistant will work this time.
Backup 34 minutes and counting...
BTW, my previous migration created 69,000 photo files. I confirmed that this OLD Mac only says 17,000. I take that as a sign that there will not be duplicates. Time and a few more steps over a couple days will tell. If photos duplicate along the way, maybe this time I will see where it happens.
Backup 10 minutes to go (an hour later, LOL) but it is getting close to finished. The computer makes a guess on time, and it changes by what files it finds. It is like a marathon runner not knowing what hills of downslopes it will find.
I didn't waste the time just sitting here. I cubed 5 pounds of pork shoulder I smoked a couple days ago. And packed the cubes 4 oz each into ziplock bags and got them in the freezer. I'm set for any pork meal for months. Very versatile stuff, pork!
The usual is adding 1 potato, 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk, 1 small onion, a couple cloves garlic, and oregano, thickened with flour. But smothered in bell peppers or carmelized onion is good. Mixed with stir fried veggies and served over spaghetti with soy sauce is good.
Well, the backup is going slowly. For every GB it backs up, the computer offers more GB, so I guess it is going to take hours. It is up to 90GB and the total on the HD is 340, so I might as well let it run overnight and see what I get this afternoon...
IF it backs the whole current drive up on the OLD Mac, then I Restore the OLD computer with the OCT 2019 backup and THEN Migrate that to the new computer (because thenit will be the only version Migration Assistant can find). Abd THEN if that works, I might actually be back at Oct 2019. and possibly be able to copy the photos since the without duplicates AND have my email settings back.
Aren't computers fun? And then Thursday morning, I get to (try and) capture Marley to stuff him into the PTU and bring him to the vet for HIS teeth cleaning adventure. Oh the thrill of the chase...!
Showing posts with label Computer Problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computer Problems. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Comments About That Unusually Helpful AOL Tech Person
Comments came up about how unusually helpful the AOL tech was and that she didn't want company recognition...
I had dealt with at least 6 AOL techs over the last couple months. I'm not saying they weren't helpful to the degree required for their jobs. But if there was something I couldn't do or understand, they lost patience quickly. So they didn't go out of their way to help. They were following AOL rules. One is paying $5 per month per email account that they could verify. Another was that I had to know the previous passwords which were on the dead Mac Mini. They pretty much just tried to get me off the phone to get to the next customer.
I should mention that the previous ones might have had trouble because I didn't have a 2nd phone for sending a code to, or call waiting set up. I did contact my service provider (Verizon) to set that up. It just took a button click on My Account and then discovering there was a button on my phone labeled "call waiting'! Well, you don't see what you aren't looking for...
When I talked to this latest one, it was obvious she was not so concerned with AOL rules. She didn't ask if I had an paid account for each email address. She asked if I had passwords, but when I said I didn't (and explained why) she said "then we will set of new ones". She was patient after asking questions that I didn't fully understand. She answered some questions she didn't have to bother answering.
An example was "what is the difference between POP and IMAP accounts"? She explained that POP was easier for AOL but did not allow recovery of email files while IMAP took a little more work, but allowed recoveries. When I mentioned that my working email account was POP, she said "well let's fix that first". And she did.
She was on "remote control" over my computer by then. She explained what she was doing at each step. After changing my primary email account from POP to IMAP we went to the marksmews email. She didn't ask if I had a monthly payment account, she just went about setting it up as IMAP. To do so, she generated a master password on her end and told me to enter a password of my own afterwards to change it. And she specifically said at all such times that she had turned off her vieing so that she couldn't see my new password.
OK, that might have been untrue, but I was trusting her. I think she was being honest. Besides, I'm sure anyone at AOL could see my passwords if they wanted to.
So she had my cavebear email changed to the safer IMAP format and the marksmews email set up the same way. She asked if I needed further assistance. I mentioned a 3rd email accounnt. When she asked why have 3 accounts, I explained it was one general email and one each for 2 blogs (cats and gardening) just to keep them separate.
She laughed and said she admired organized computer files. I didn't mention that I keep so many folders of various kinds that I used to drive the computer guys nuts at work when they had to solve a problem. They make sense to me and that is all that matters.
So she went about setting up my yardenman email (gardening) as Imap and went through the process of creating a temporary new master password at her end *sending a temporay code to my call-waiting) and then going off-viewing while I created a new one for myself.
All in all, it was a wonderful experience. I have never in my life had a better experience with a computer company tech. So why did she decline to let me thank AOL on her behalf?
Well, during our hour-long chat, I mentioned that she was unusually helpful and did she really enjoy doing this? OK, I would expect any company agent to express a positive attitude whether they actually enjoyed their job or not.
She seemed actually happy to help people get problems fixed and to be the one to fix them. So parts of being happy at what you do are hard to disguise. She seemed to REALLY enjoy what she was doing.
I get that. When I visit my favorite gardening forum, the first thread I go to is the "Questions" thread. Some guys love cars, some like sports, I was gardening as a preteen. So it has been 60 years... I love to answer gardening questions! I get positive pleasure from helping other people garden well.
So, apparently, the AOL tech rep I spoke to feels the same way about computers. I think that she knows that she is breaking AOL rules by helping people without asking for payment programs or pushing add-on "pay-for" services. It just gives her pleasure to help others with her expertise.
An aside... The internet has been the greatest opportunity for people to share their individual knowledge since the invention of the mass-printed book. Before the printing press (invented in symbol-driven China, but much more applicable to European letter systems), scholars had to write individual letters to the few others they knew about things they had discovered (expensive, slow, and uncertain of delivery). After the printing press, scholars could write whole books available to all who could buy one (it still wasn't cheap). But 1,000 books reached more people than a dozen short letters.
With the internet, we can reach a Billion people if they are interested and nearly for free. So sending answers to questions (whether computer, gardening, cooking, etc) into the internet is basically "books cubed".
The AOL tech woman is one of those.
I had dealt with at least 6 AOL techs over the last couple months. I'm not saying they weren't helpful to the degree required for their jobs. But if there was something I couldn't do or understand, they lost patience quickly. So they didn't go out of their way to help. They were following AOL rules. One is paying $5 per month per email account that they could verify. Another was that I had to know the previous passwords which were on the dead Mac Mini. They pretty much just tried to get me off the phone to get to the next customer.
I should mention that the previous ones might have had trouble because I didn't have a 2nd phone for sending a code to, or call waiting set up. I did contact my service provider (Verizon) to set that up. It just took a button click on My Account and then discovering there was a button on my phone labeled "call waiting'! Well, you don't see what you aren't looking for...
When I talked to this latest one, it was obvious she was not so concerned with AOL rules. She didn't ask if I had an paid account for each email address. She asked if I had passwords, but when I said I didn't (and explained why) she said "then we will set of new ones". She was patient after asking questions that I didn't fully understand. She answered some questions she didn't have to bother answering.
An example was "what is the difference between POP and IMAP accounts"? She explained that POP was easier for AOL but did not allow recovery of email files while IMAP took a little more work, but allowed recoveries. When I mentioned that my working email account was POP, she said "well let's fix that first". And she did.
She was on "remote control" over my computer by then. She explained what she was doing at each step. After changing my primary email account from POP to IMAP we went to the marksmews email. She didn't ask if I had a monthly payment account, she just went about setting it up as IMAP. To do so, she generated a master password on her end and told me to enter a password of my own afterwards to change it. And she specifically said at all such times that she had turned off her vieing so that she couldn't see my new password.
OK, that might have been untrue, but I was trusting her. I think she was being honest. Besides, I'm sure anyone at AOL could see my passwords if they wanted to.
So she had my cavebear email changed to the safer IMAP format and the marksmews email set up the same way. She asked if I needed further assistance. I mentioned a 3rd email accounnt. When she asked why have 3 accounts, I explained it was one general email and one each for 2 blogs (cats and gardening) just to keep them separate.
She laughed and said she admired organized computer files. I didn't mention that I keep so many folders of various kinds that I used to drive the computer guys nuts at work when they had to solve a problem. They make sense to me and that is all that matters.
So she went about setting up my yardenman email (gardening) as Imap and went through the process of creating a temporary new master password at her end *sending a temporay code to my call-waiting) and then going off-viewing while I created a new one for myself.
All in all, it was a wonderful experience. I have never in my life had a better experience with a computer company tech. So why did she decline to let me thank AOL on her behalf?
Well, during our hour-long chat, I mentioned that she was unusually helpful and did she really enjoy doing this? OK, I would expect any company agent to express a positive attitude whether they actually enjoyed their job or not.
She seemed actually happy to help people get problems fixed and to be the one to fix them. So parts of being happy at what you do are hard to disguise. She seemed to REALLY enjoy what she was doing.
I get that. When I visit my favorite gardening forum, the first thread I go to is the "Questions" thread. Some guys love cars, some like sports, I was gardening as a preteen. So it has been 60 years... I love to answer gardening questions! I get positive pleasure from helping other people garden well.
So, apparently, the AOL tech rep I spoke to feels the same way about computers. I think that she knows that she is breaking AOL rules by helping people without asking for payment programs or pushing add-on "pay-for" services. It just gives her pleasure to help others with her expertise.
An aside... The internet has been the greatest opportunity for people to share their individual knowledge since the invention of the mass-printed book. Before the printing press (invented in symbol-driven China, but much more applicable to European letter systems), scholars had to write individual letters to the few others they knew about things they had discovered (expensive, slow, and uncertain of delivery). After the printing press, scholars could write whole books available to all who could buy one (it still wasn't cheap). But 1,000 books reached more people than a dozen short letters.
With the internet, we can reach a Billion people if they are interested and nearly for free. So sending answers to questions (whether computer, gardening, cooking, etc) into the internet is basically "books cubed".
The AOL tech woman is one of those.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
I Won
I beat the computer! I won. I got around all the problems. I have all the original-size photos (though many duplicates I will have to manually delete)). I have all my documents. I have all my apps (I think). I can read everything I can think to search for. I can see the smaller pictures I use in the blogs (The Mews AND Cavebear's Lair). I can't find anything (other than some Firefox bookmarks) missinbg on the NEW computer that were on the OLD. I restarted the new computer to make sure they reappearred after a shutdown.
I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT!
OK, that's enough...
The built-in Migration Assistant didn't work. The special USB cable with the installed transfer chip didn't work. The Mac Help Forums didn't work. Drill Doctor app didn't work.
But *I* did. I found all the parts of my Mac that held any files or apps and JUST PLAIN COPIED them one by one to an external drive and then to the new Mac one by one. I relentlessly, ruthlessly (I wonder where Ruth went?), doggedly (woof, woof) replaced everything with the old stuff.
So now I have everything moved from a Mac OS "Catalina-infested" 340GB 4 RAM Intel 5 processor to older Mac OS "High Sierra" but 1TB 8 RAM Intel 7 processor. And I am going to back up the whole HD and plant my butt on the current computer until Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) comes with an army of nerds and beats the computer to death with iCloud crowbars!
I'm going to carefully pack up the OLD Mac Mini (it still has everything on it). Then I am going to shut down the NEW Mac Mini so I can undo the spread of electrical connections and tangled cables of both Macs.
Then, and ONLY then, I will start up the new Mac Mini and see how fast it works. I even have a brand new (no faded letter keys) keyboard waiting for this day.
(Gahan Wilson - February 18, 1930 – November 21, 2019)
Yeah, its working...
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Computer Problems 3
I'm not winning... I got the NEW computer to load my Photo Library from the OLD one and thought my problems with photos was solved. Well, sort of. I loaded the files, but most were duplicated 2-6 times. So I found free program that was described as safe and effective on several Mac sites. One thing ot does is remove duplicate files and you can specify which folders to search.
So I did that. You click on "scan". After it scans all the files in the folder, it compares them all to find the duplicates. Then you click "remove" and hope...
It found about the right size of files (90GB). It set about comparing the files. After several hours, it offerred "remove". I clicked. After another several hours, It removed about 25% of them. Argh!
I'm trying it again, because I still had the New one connected to the OLD one with a usb cable, and maybe that messed it up.
This is almost becoming a game. Sort of like Tron or one of those old "quest" games where you form a team of characters and search a castle solving problems to get at the treasure at the end. Well, better to view it that way than go running down the street screaming in frustration. Though I have often screamed "WHAT NOW?" after some failures, I maintain a determined (and rather surprisingly) good outlook.
My entire Govt career was FIGURING OUT THINGS and SOLVING PROBLEMS, and to be honest, I kind of miss that. So the game now is "Cavebear vs The Evil Computer".
The NEW computer doesn't have much on it yet (and the OLD one is actually working), so if it chugs away day and night I'm not really losing any functionality.
---------------------
But there is more to life than computers (no REALLY, it's true). So in that spirit, here is my real life To Do list for the next few days:
1. Feed the emerging spring bulbs with slow-release fertilizer to improve flower growth next month and bulb regrowth afterwards.
2. Lay down that packing paper shippers use as cushioning between the garden beds. I save it. I must have 100s of yards of it neatly smoothed and folded. Then I'll cover it with large wood chip mulch. That should kill the weeds.
3. Three years ago, we had heavy snow. There were enough fallen leaves on the top of my chicken wire garden enclosure for the snow to accumulate. The weight bent the PVC-covered steel pipes I used.
It took a week to pull each one out of the sockets, straighten then, and replace them. So I bought more steel poles to support all the centers of the existing pipes. I need to set them up.
4. I planted a lot of pansies last Fall, but I had some left over and put them in planter pots. Ivident;y that doesn't protect them from the freezing weather enough (they and small and withery). So I might as well bury the pots in the garden soil for insulation.
5. I have briars growing in the front yard landscape bed. Bad look. So I better dig them out before they spread . It rained a lot a few days ago, so the soil is workable.
Cheers...
So I did that. You click on "scan". After it scans all the files in the folder, it compares them all to find the duplicates. Then you click "remove" and hope...
It found about the right size of files (90GB). It set about comparing the files. After several hours, it offerred "remove". I clicked. After another several hours, It removed about 25% of them. Argh!
I'm trying it again, because I still had the New one connected to the OLD one with a usb cable, and maybe that messed it up.
This is almost becoming a game. Sort of like Tron or one of those old "quest" games where you form a team of characters and search a castle solving problems to get at the treasure at the end. Well, better to view it that way than go running down the street screaming in frustration. Though I have often screamed "WHAT NOW?" after some failures, I maintain a determined (and rather surprisingly) good outlook.
My entire Govt career was FIGURING OUT THINGS and SOLVING PROBLEMS, and to be honest, I kind of miss that. So the game now is "Cavebear vs The Evil Computer".
The NEW computer doesn't have much on it yet (and the OLD one is actually working), so if it chugs away day and night I'm not really losing any functionality.
---------------------
But there is more to life than computers (no REALLY, it's true). So in that spirit, here is my real life To Do list for the next few days:
1. Feed the emerging spring bulbs with slow-release fertilizer to improve flower growth next month and bulb regrowth afterwards.
2. Lay down that packing paper shippers use as cushioning between the garden beds. I save it. I must have 100s of yards of it neatly smoothed and folded. Then I'll cover it with large wood chip mulch. That should kill the weeds.
3. Three years ago, we had heavy snow. There were enough fallen leaves on the top of my chicken wire garden enclosure for the snow to accumulate. The weight bent the PVC-covered steel pipes I used.
It took a week to pull each one out of the sockets, straighten then, and replace them. So I bought more steel poles to support all the centers of the existing pipes. I need to set them up.
4. I planted a lot of pansies last Fall, but I had some left over and put them in planter pots. Ivident;y that doesn't protect them from the freezing weather enough (they and small and withery). So I might as well bury the pots in the garden soil for insulation.
5. I have briars growing in the front yard landscape bed. Bad look. So I better dig them out before they spread . It rained a lot a few days ago, so the soil is workable.
Cheers...
Monday, February 10, 2020
Computer Problems 2
I think I actually solved the photos import! After trying to import photos from the OLD mac to the NEW one and letting it process for 3 days (!), I gave up and clicked on "stop importing". It obviously wasn't working.
So I shut down both computers and looked at the possible cable connections. HDMI cables give the faster connections, but each has only one and the new monitor I bought only uses HDMI. So I couldn't connect the 2 macs that way.
And trying to import the OLD photo folder to the 4TBMy Passport external drive wasn't working.
So I had the thought of just COPYING the OLD iPhoto folder to it. Took 10 minutes! Then I ejected and unplugged the My Passport external drive and plugged it into the NEW mac. And restarted the NEW mac. (Always a good idea to restart after attached a new device)
Then I went to iPhotos and tried to import from the My Passport. Nothing... Gloom... The iPhoto Library folder stayed "greyed out" (not recognized) on My Passport. But I went back to Finder, and opened the file there. It opened there just fine!
So leaving it open, I went back to the NEW mac and opened iPhoto, chose "import", and moved my mouse to My Passport. The iPhoto folder was BLACK (recognized. I clicked OK (import)
AND IT STARTED IMMEDIATELY COPYING THE PHOTOS!
I can see the photos flashing by on the screen. Apparently there are 65,000 files. After an hour, there are 30,000 remaining, but IT IS WORKING! As the Scarecrow said in 'The Wizard Of Oz' "Oh Joy! Rapture!
So I shut down both computers and looked at the possible cable connections. HDMI cables give the faster connections, but each has only one and the new monitor I bought only uses HDMI. So I couldn't connect the 2 macs that way.
And trying to import the OLD photo folder to the 4TBMy Passport external drive wasn't working.
So I had the thought of just COPYING the OLD iPhoto folder to it. Took 10 minutes! Then I ejected and unplugged the My Passport external drive and plugged it into the NEW mac. And restarted the NEW mac. (Always a good idea to restart after attached a new device)
Then I went to iPhotos and tried to import from the My Passport. Nothing... Gloom... The iPhoto Library folder stayed "greyed out" (not recognized) on My Passport. But I went back to Finder, and opened the file there. It opened there just fine!
So leaving it open, I went back to the NEW mac and opened iPhoto, chose "import", and moved my mouse to My Passport. The iPhoto folder was BLACK (recognized. I clicked OK (import)
AND IT STARTED IMMEDIATELY COPYING THE PHOTOS!
I can see the photos flashing by on the screen. Apparently there are 65,000 files. After an hour, there are 30,000 remaining, but IT IS WORKING! As the Scarecrow said in 'The Wizard Of Oz' "Oh Joy! Rapture!
Friday, February 7, 2020
Computer Problems 1
I'm going to just list the Title by numbers until this misery is over. And not try to list too much at once. This is all getting too bizarre.
The Mac Migration Assistant app says it will migrate all the OLD files, apps, photos, mail and user settings to the NEW computer. It didn't. I tried that twice. It did make me create several new user accounts. So I did some net searching and found a forum thread that said you have make sure to have only one admin account. OK, I checked and I had 3 on the NEWEST. I learned how to delete 2.
So Migration Assistant should have worked then. No. Just the Mac OS and the apps (I think). It's hard to tell; the NEWEST has apps.
So I decided to try to manually transfer my photos. Those are the most important files. I found they were actually in 3 places. On an old windows computer, on an "unnamed album", and in the primary iPhotos library. I imported the files from the old windows computer using a flash drive. So I started importing the "unnamed album" to the primary iPhoto library on the OLD Mac mini.
So far, it has been "preparing to import" for 12 hours. I know it is doing SOMETHING because my Activity Monitor app says it has read 215GB and written 190GB so far. So I dare not stop it. It MIGHT just be a horribly slow process. I mean, I have about 7,000+ photos in the "unnamed album" original size (1-5MB each).
It may just fail entirely. I'm going to bed soon, so I'll let it run overnight and see what happens.
Meanwhile, I'm getting quite an education about how Macs operate. In fact, while searching for answers on a Mac Help Forum, I was actually able to answer someone else's question about where the iPhoto files are stored!
Oddly, the NEWEST Mac is functional. It just has no OLD files on it, working as a brand new computer. So I can use Firefox to open my blog accounts and dashboard and any site I can find or recall the URL of.
*SIGH*
The Mac Migration Assistant app says it will migrate all the OLD files, apps, photos, mail and user settings to the NEW computer. It didn't. I tried that twice. It did make me create several new user accounts. So I did some net searching and found a forum thread that said you have make sure to have only one admin account. OK, I checked and I had 3 on the NEWEST. I learned how to delete 2.
So Migration Assistant should have worked then. No. Just the Mac OS and the apps (I think). It's hard to tell; the NEWEST has apps.
So I decided to try to manually transfer my photos. Those are the most important files. I found they were actually in 3 places. On an old windows computer, on an "unnamed album", and in the primary iPhotos library. I imported the files from the old windows computer using a flash drive. So I started importing the "unnamed album" to the primary iPhoto library on the OLD Mac mini.
So far, it has been "preparing to import" for 12 hours. I know it is doing SOMETHING because my Activity Monitor app says it has read 215GB and written 190GB so far. So I dare not stop it. It MIGHT just be a horribly slow process. I mean, I have about 7,000+ photos in the "unnamed album" original size (1-5MB each).
It may just fail entirely. I'm going to bed soon, so I'll let it run overnight and see what happens.
Meanwhile, I'm getting quite an education about how Macs operate. In fact, while searching for answers on a Mac Help Forum, I was actually able to answer someone else's question about where the iPhoto files are stored!
Oddly, the NEWEST Mac is functional. It just has no OLD files on it, working as a brand new computer. So I can use Firefox to open my blog accounts and dashboard and any site I can find or recall the URL of.
*SIGH*
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Losing my mind
You know how you think you have a problem solved and it isn't? Yah. Me too and really lately.
I spent most of Thursday night trying to migrate the old Mac Mini to the new one. I can follow instructions, but it wouldn't work because I didn't have enough of the right cables. No matter what I tried, I needed a USB to USB cable. It was a surprise that I didn't have one.
Rule 1. No matter how many cables of various combinations of connections you save in a box, the one you need won't be in there.
Rule 2. Walmart won't have them.
Rule 3. "Best Buy" will have them at 2x the price.
I bought a Best Buy cable.
And it was weird. The cable itself has software. For file transfers between Macs, it has a program that opens "GoBetween" and "Easy Site" It wanted internet acceptance. I refused. I couldn't figure out what they wanted annyway.
But I figured out how I could migrate a different way. I have an external drive that has 4 TB. So using Migration Manager on Mac I copied the old Mac Mini to the external drive and then "restored" the external driver to the new Mac Mini (and it promised that it would save all files and even individual program settings),
It didn't.
I can copy files from the old Mac Mini to the new one, but I have to keep both on separate active Mac Minis and monitors to do that. And guess what? I'm lacking a cable.
That's why I'm losing my mind!
I spent most of Thursday night trying to migrate the old Mac Mini to the new one. I can follow instructions, but it wouldn't work because I didn't have enough of the right cables. No matter what I tried, I needed a USB to USB cable. It was a surprise that I didn't have one.
Rule 1. No matter how many cables of various combinations of connections you save in a box, the one you need won't be in there.
Rule 2. Walmart won't have them.
Rule 3. "Best Buy" will have them at 2x the price.
I bought a Best Buy cable.
And it was weird. The cable itself has software. For file transfers between Macs, it has a program that opens "GoBetween" and "Easy Site" It wanted internet acceptance. I refused. I couldn't figure out what they wanted annyway.
But I figured out how I could migrate a different way. I have an external drive that has 4 TB. So using Migration Manager on Mac I copied the old Mac Mini to the external drive and then "restored" the external driver to the new Mac Mini (and it promised that it would save all files and even individual program settings),
It didn't.
I can copy files from the old Mac Mini to the new one, but I have to keep both on separate active Mac Minis and monitors to do that. And guess what? I'm lacking a cable.
That's why I'm losing my mind!
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Fixed Computer Problem
Well, I HOPE I have solved my computer problems (both Mac and Windows actually).
1. I brought the Mac Mini that won't start to a local computer store today. They are really a Windows shop, but they will do simple repairs on Macs. After a half hour, they determined that the CURRENT Mac Mini was not repairable by them. Some of the spilled wine got inside and shorted out some circuits. Too complicated and time-consuming to clean and no guarantee that would solve the problem... They did say they could pop the drive out and migrate it to an external storage device if I provided the device.
And they didn't even charge me for the diagnosis work!
They also advised me not to bother shipping it to an Apple repair store; saying that Apple doesn't actually repair hardware anymore, they just migrate the drive to a new unit and charge you for it.
The OLD Mac Mini I'm limping along with right now is making fan noises (which assures that it will fail soon). And it is SLOW (well it IS a 2010 model).
So I went to Amazon and looked at new ones. They are all designed for Cloud use, meaning they have less storage on the hard drives. I'm not ready for the Cloud yet. So I did a google search for Mac Minis and found there were more powerful standard Mac Minis. One site lead me back to Amazon, where they also offer 3rd party "diagnosed, cleaned, renewed" Mac Minis guaranteed by them, 90 day warranty and 3 year repair guarantees (for under $60).
I ordered and renewed Mac Mini with a faster Intell chip, 1 TB storage, and 2x the Ram of my current one. That should last a while, and it will arrive in 3 days. Plus I get 5% back using my Amazon Cedit Card!
AND, I got no flak this time requesting to return the underpowered128 GB Mac Mini I bought last month. They even sent me a free shipping label.
So I am returning a useless new 128 GB Mac Mini at $720 for a fully renewed faster 1 TB one at $560 that will probably serve me well for many years. I will migrate the OLD Mac Mini I'm using right now to the new one. And I will have the local computer place copy my drive on CURRENT one that wont start to a 512 GB external drive I saw at Walmart for $50.
That way, I will have all my OLD files saved onto the new one and can pick and choose which newer files to save to it from the CURRENT one. That's not as complicated as it seems. I migrated the backup of the CURRENT Mac Mini to the OLD one (which is sort of why it works at all).
So, cheers and drinks all around!
1. I brought the Mac Mini that won't start to a local computer store today. They are really a Windows shop, but they will do simple repairs on Macs. After a half hour, they determined that the CURRENT Mac Mini was not repairable by them. Some of the spilled wine got inside and shorted out some circuits. Too complicated and time-consuming to clean and no guarantee that would solve the problem... They did say they could pop the drive out and migrate it to an external storage device if I provided the device.
And they didn't even charge me for the diagnosis work!
They also advised me not to bother shipping it to an Apple repair store; saying that Apple doesn't actually repair hardware anymore, they just migrate the drive to a new unit and charge you for it.
The OLD Mac Mini I'm limping along with right now is making fan noises (which assures that it will fail soon). And it is SLOW (well it IS a 2010 model).
So I went to Amazon and looked at new ones. They are all designed for Cloud use, meaning they have less storage on the hard drives. I'm not ready for the Cloud yet. So I did a google search for Mac Minis and found there were more powerful standard Mac Minis. One site lead me back to Amazon, where they also offer 3rd party "diagnosed, cleaned, renewed" Mac Minis guaranteed by them, 90 day warranty and 3 year repair guarantees (for under $60).
I ordered and renewed Mac Mini with a faster Intell chip, 1 TB storage, and 2x the Ram of my current one. That should last a while, and it will arrive in 3 days. Plus I get 5% back using my Amazon Cedit Card!
AND, I got no flak this time requesting to return the underpowered128 GB Mac Mini I bought last month. They even sent me a free shipping label.
So I am returning a useless new 128 GB Mac Mini at $720 for a fully renewed faster 1 TB one at $560 that will probably serve me well for many years. I will migrate the OLD Mac Mini I'm using right now to the new one. And I will have the local computer place copy my drive on CURRENT one that wont start to a 512 GB external drive I saw at Walmart for $50.
That way, I will have all my OLD files saved onto the new one and can pick and choose which newer files to save to it from the CURRENT one. That's not as complicated as it seems. I migrated the backup of the CURRENT Mac Mini to the OLD one (which is sort of why it works at all).
So, cheers and drinks all around!
Monday, January 13, 2020
I Surrender, Almost
Mac and Windows have finally won. They've beaten me. They have sent my computer life out of my control. I don't say that lightly.
A month ago, I confidently downloaded the lastest version of the Mac O/S. Catalina. But it prevented me from using my Mac version of MS Office Word and Excel. Huh! Well, OK, I'll revert to the previous Mac O/S. I can't. It doesn't want me to. There are suggestions on how to do that on some sites, but I can't make them work. Catalina really wants to stay active.
I've spent hours on and off for the past week trying to get rid of it. No luck. So last night I sat down determined to restore the entire computer to a November version.
Macs have that capability through something called "Time Machine". I've done it before. You go to a timeline of external drive backups, choose the one you want, hit the "restore" button, and you have the old version from that day.
Guess what won't work anymore? Time Machine. I spent several hours trying to do the "restore". On the few occasions I even got the restore button to be active (most times it was greyed out), my password wouldn't work. Catalina is actively thwarting my attempts...
Mac has moved from 32 bit to 64 bit and it wants you to stay there! THEY KNOW BEST, after all... They are creating a consistent world of users that suits their conception of the future.
So, while persistence in the past has usually worked, there is evidently a wall I can't get around now. I've tried everything I can (with an exception I will get to later).
So, I suppose I have with Mac O/S Catalina. And if you haven't, don't. Unless you love buying new apps.
One of the things I lose on Catalina is my old MS For Mac Office. MS Word and Excel are much better than Mac's iWorks Page and Numbers apps. I do a lot in both Word and Excel that Page and Numbers won't.
So, I said I surrendered. That means upgrading to MS For Mac 365. And that means a yearly subscription fee of $70 rather than just buying the program. I hate that. The previous version was Office 2008 for a reason. Lasted 11 years, no problems, cost about $40. Until I find something really better, I'm perfectly happy with basic programs tat do the simle things I want them to do.
So, I went to the Mac App store to but MS For Mac 365. It sends me to Microsoft. Microsoft wanted me to set up an account. OK. I was kind of pissed off, so my password wasn't really "friendly". Nothing "nasty" but It violated some rule.
So the site said I had to send them my phone number so they could text me a temp password so I could get into my new account and change it. Guess who doesn't have a smart phone? And guess who didn't offer me any options to contact them?
THEY (MS) WON'T EVEN LET ME BUY THEIR DAMN SOFTWARE!
And apparently, even if I can figure out how to buy MS Office For Mac 365, it is in "the cloud".
Mac and MS are doing their uttermost to take the least bit of control I had away.
Now, given ALL THAT, I may have an "out". I have a new mac mini I bought last year because I misunderstood how much RAM I had left on the current one. And I have the previous one too. The newer one might not have Catalina. And I know the older one does NOT!
I'm going to set both up offline tomorrow. See what O/S the new one is on first. If it is Catalina, I will set it aside (it may have MS For Mac Office 365 on it and some other good programs). And if so, I will check the older Mac Mini and hook up the Time Machine external drive to see if it will do the "restore" function.
If it does, maybe I can migrate the old computer to the current one (not the new one) and keep going from there as I've been doing.
I'm not a computer geek. For me, many changes are like beating away a crocodile with a baseball bat. I don't even understand why some changes are made. Mac Photos is probably an improvement over Mac iPhotos for some people, but I was perfectly happy with iPhotos.
Photos just keeps saying it is rearranging things (anticipating my desires, I suppose) but I don't WANT it to do that. If I want rearrangements, give me the option to tell it to do that. Don't force it on me. Ah but Mac knows best... And so does Windows.
When I was younger, I used to read a lot of science fiction. Some of the stories "predicted" dystopias where Government or Business would force people to do things a certain way or act a certain way, or people would just learn to all act the same. in the "future".
The "future" is now.
I bet I can get around Mac and MS for a few more years. But there will come a time when I just plain CAN'T.
DAMN!
A month ago, I confidently downloaded the lastest version of the Mac O/S. Catalina. But it prevented me from using my Mac version of MS Office Word and Excel. Huh! Well, OK, I'll revert to the previous Mac O/S. I can't. It doesn't want me to. There are suggestions on how to do that on some sites, but I can't make them work. Catalina really wants to stay active.
I've spent hours on and off for the past week trying to get rid of it. No luck. So last night I sat down determined to restore the entire computer to a November version.
Macs have that capability through something called "Time Machine". I've done it before. You go to a timeline of external drive backups, choose the one you want, hit the "restore" button, and you have the old version from that day.
Guess what won't work anymore? Time Machine. I spent several hours trying to do the "restore". On the few occasions I even got the restore button to be active (most times it was greyed out), my password wouldn't work. Catalina is actively thwarting my attempts...
Mac has moved from 32 bit to 64 bit and it wants you to stay there! THEY KNOW BEST, after all... They are creating a consistent world of users that suits their conception of the future.
So, while persistence in the past has usually worked, there is evidently a wall I can't get around now. I've tried everything I can (with an exception I will get to later).
So, I suppose I have with Mac O/S Catalina. And if you haven't, don't. Unless you love buying new apps.
One of the things I lose on Catalina is my old MS For Mac Office. MS Word and Excel are much better than Mac's iWorks Page and Numbers apps. I do a lot in both Word and Excel that Page and Numbers won't.
So, I said I surrendered. That means upgrading to MS For Mac 365. And that means a yearly subscription fee of $70 rather than just buying the program. I hate that. The previous version was Office 2008 for a reason. Lasted 11 years, no problems, cost about $40. Until I find something really better, I'm perfectly happy with basic programs tat do the simle things I want them to do.
So, I went to the Mac App store to but MS For Mac 365. It sends me to Microsoft. Microsoft wanted me to set up an account. OK. I was kind of pissed off, so my password wasn't really "friendly". Nothing "nasty" but It violated some rule.
So the site said I had to send them my phone number so they could text me a temp password so I could get into my new account and change it. Guess who doesn't have a smart phone? And guess who didn't offer me any options to contact them?
THEY (MS) WON'T EVEN LET ME BUY THEIR DAMN SOFTWARE!
And apparently, even if I can figure out how to buy MS Office For Mac 365, it is in "the cloud".
Mac and MS are doing their uttermost to take the least bit of control I had away.
Now, given ALL THAT, I may have an "out". I have a new mac mini I bought last year because I misunderstood how much RAM I had left on the current one. And I have the previous one too. The newer one might not have Catalina. And I know the older one does NOT!
I'm going to set both up offline tomorrow. See what O/S the new one is on first. If it is Catalina, I will set it aside (it may have MS For Mac Office 365 on it and some other good programs). And if so, I will check the older Mac Mini and hook up the Time Machine external drive to see if it will do the "restore" function.
If it does, maybe I can migrate the old computer to the current one (not the new one) and keep going from there as I've been doing.
I'm not a computer geek. For me, many changes are like beating away a crocodile with a baseball bat. I don't even understand why some changes are made. Mac Photos is probably an improvement over Mac iPhotos for some people, but I was perfectly happy with iPhotos.
Photos just keeps saying it is rearranging things (anticipating my desires, I suppose) but I don't WANT it to do that. If I want rearrangements, give me the option to tell it to do that. Don't force it on me. Ah but Mac knows best... And so does Windows.
When I was younger, I used to read a lot of science fiction. Some of the stories "predicted" dystopias where Government or Business would force people to do things a certain way or act a certain way, or people would just learn to all act the same. in the "future".
The "future" is now.
I bet I can get around Mac and MS for a few more years. But there will come a time when I just plain CAN'T.
DAMN!
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Mac Mini Upgrade
AFTER I figured out just WHAT I was trying to upgrade, it took about 3 days and separately 13 hours. Well, I did have old programs... And I thought it was a good idea to allow everything the MacKeeper software suggested in the full scan.
Everything went bad for several days, but I think we are back in business. The last struggle was to get the Firefox bookmarks back. Bizarrely, Firefox-On-Mac now seems to "promise" that everytime you upgrade, they wipe your bookmarks. As if that is a good thing. I don't know how it works on Windows.
But I found guidance about restoring an "old profile" and that seems to be the key to keeping bookmarks.
The new "look" is white text on a black background. It was a real surprise, and it doesn't look all that bad, but I found a way on "display" to restore that! Jut getting things working again is good enough for now.
And, so far as I can tell, I got all my other programs updates to work with Mac OS Catalina 10.15.2, not that I see the benefits yet. I'll play around on the puter to see if everything works.
If anyone else is having similar problems, I may be able to help for a few days before the info fades away in memory.
BUT, I looked up the newer mac mini...
I went for a full new one.
So I just ordered the new mac mini. It seems impressive. The current one lasted 5 years. The new one will probably last longer (seems about 5x the memory) AND it is a lot faster (and the current one still has the "slows" after all my work).
Cheers!
Everything went bad for several days, but I think we are back in business. The last struggle was to get the Firefox bookmarks back. Bizarrely, Firefox-On-Mac now seems to "promise" that everytime you upgrade, they wipe your bookmarks. As if that is a good thing. I don't know how it works on Windows.
But I found guidance about restoring an "old profile" and that seems to be the key to keeping bookmarks.
The new "look" is white text on a black background. It was a real surprise, and it doesn't look all that bad, but I found a way on "display" to restore that! Jut getting things working again is good enough for now.
And, so far as I can tell, I got all my other programs updates to work with Mac OS Catalina 10.15.2, not that I see the benefits yet. I'll play around on the puter to see if everything works.
If anyone else is having similar problems, I may be able to help for a few days before the info fades away in memory.
BUT, I looked up the newer mac mini...
I went for a full new one.
So I just ordered the new mac mini. It seems impressive. The current one lasted 5 years. The new one will probably last longer (seems about 5x the memory) AND it is a lot faster (and the current one still has the "slows" after all my work).
Cheers!
Friday, September 27, 2019
Computer Fun
"Computer Fun" and I say that sarcastically. I just spent 4 hours restoring processed and organized pictures that suddenly vanished. Some background...
I use a Mac Mini. It is small, but sufficient. And I like the fact that it is solid state and doesn't need a fan. It could use a few more ports, but I I have just barely enough and haven't needed more yet.
I keep my files organized, especially the pictures. IPhotos holds all the full-sized pictures by date. When I crop, filter and resize them for blog use, they go into a new folder (like documents and applications do). I think most people keep their pictures by subject. I take too many to be able to find them that way.
So, in the Photos folder, I set up 6 subfolders" Cats, Family, House, Other, Videos, and Yard. Each of those folders gets a new subfolder each year (2018, for example). Each year folder gets monthly folders (January 2018 is 1801). Daily subfolders when I need one (January 20, 2018 would be 180120). That may or may not seem seriously complicated, but I can navigate to any subject and day in about 5 seconds.
I did spend my career organizing information after all... ;)
Now, also, Mac has an app called "Time Machine". Connected to an external hard drive, it keeps automatic backs of all changes in files and by some program I know NOTHING about, it connects to all past saves so that you can restore individual files, individual folders, individual programs or your entire computer.
And that has saved me more than once for individual files to the whole thing! I LOVE TIME MACHINE!
So I went to add a Flashback Friday post on Marks Mews. I choose them by scrolling through IPhotos It displays dates, and when I find one I want to use, I just go to that date in Photos (IPhotos is an app; Photos is a saved personal folder).
The original full-size picture was in IPhotos but the processed picture I wanted was not in my Photos subfolder. And I discovered that half the pictures in my subfolders from 2016 and earlier were gone! ARRRGGGHHHHH!
I should mention that while Mac computers have strong anti-hacking software built-in, I do use one called MacKeeper to look for adware, malware, useless files, etc. And I was using it frequently the past few days. I made the mistake of trying to download a TV show I wanted a quote from and ended up with a pop-up ads.
I didn't realize how aggressive MacKeeper could be defining "useless files". It allows you to look at the list of files to be deleted, but file names can be difficult to interpret. After reading a dozen and not seeing anything that worried me (most seemed to be if I needed to read something in a foreign language), I went ahead and clicked "OK". It deleted almost a 1,000 files and gave me back about a Gb memory, so I was rather pleased.
Until I discovered a lot of processed pictures missing... Now I'm not saying that MacKeeper did that, just that both things seemed to happen at the same time. Maybe I got hacked at the same time. But I am suspicious of coincidences!
So I went into Time Machine and tried restore individual folders from 2 days ago, iy didn't work. So I looked at the Time Machine backups from a week before and those were blank. I had to go back to August, and there they all were!
Not to get too technical (unless someone has a question), but I had to select specific folders for Cats, Family, House, Other, Video, and Yard one at a time and save one then then go back and do another. and double check because once it didn't restore (probably my fault, but that's why you check).
BUT! They are all back now... The Flashback Fridays post on Marks Mews is proof.
MacKeeper is a good app. It does find adware, some tracking malware, and actually non-essential files. But I will be a LOT more careful in the permissions I allow it in the future, LOL!
I use a Mac Mini. It is small, but sufficient. And I like the fact that it is solid state and doesn't need a fan. It could use a few more ports, but I I have just barely enough and haven't needed more yet.
I keep my files organized, especially the pictures. IPhotos holds all the full-sized pictures by date. When I crop, filter and resize them for blog use, they go into a new folder (like documents and applications do). I think most people keep their pictures by subject. I take too many to be able to find them that way.
So, in the Photos folder, I set up 6 subfolders" Cats, Family, House, Other, Videos, and Yard. Each of those folders gets a new subfolder each year (2018, for example). Each year folder gets monthly folders (January 2018 is 1801). Daily subfolders when I need one (January 20, 2018 would be 180120). That may or may not seem seriously complicated, but I can navigate to any subject and day in about 5 seconds.
I did spend my career organizing information after all... ;)
Now, also, Mac has an app called "Time Machine". Connected to an external hard drive, it keeps automatic backs of all changes in files and by some program I know NOTHING about, it connects to all past saves so that you can restore individual files, individual folders, individual programs or your entire computer.
And that has saved me more than once for individual files to the whole thing! I LOVE TIME MACHINE!
So I went to add a Flashback Friday post on Marks Mews. I choose them by scrolling through IPhotos It displays dates, and when I find one I want to use, I just go to that date in Photos (IPhotos is an app; Photos is a saved personal folder).
The original full-size picture was in IPhotos but the processed picture I wanted was not in my Photos subfolder. And I discovered that half the pictures in my subfolders from 2016 and earlier were gone! ARRRGGGHHHHH!
I should mention that while Mac computers have strong anti-hacking software built-in, I do use one called MacKeeper to look for adware, malware, useless files, etc. And I was using it frequently the past few days. I made the mistake of trying to download a TV show I wanted a quote from and ended up with a pop-up ads.
I didn't realize how aggressive MacKeeper could be defining "useless files". It allows you to look at the list of files to be deleted, but file names can be difficult to interpret. After reading a dozen and not seeing anything that worried me (most seemed to be if I needed to read something in a foreign language), I went ahead and clicked "OK". It deleted almost a 1,000 files and gave me back about a Gb memory, so I was rather pleased.
Until I discovered a lot of processed pictures missing... Now I'm not saying that MacKeeper did that, just that both things seemed to happen at the same time. Maybe I got hacked at the same time. But I am suspicious of coincidences!
So I went into Time Machine and tried restore individual folders from 2 days ago, iy didn't work. So I looked at the Time Machine backups from a week before and those were blank. I had to go back to August, and there they all were!
Not to get too technical (unless someone has a question), but I had to select specific folders for Cats, Family, House, Other, Video, and Yard one at a time and save one then then go back and do another. and double check because once it didn't restore (probably my fault, but that's why you check).
BUT! They are all back now... The Flashback Fridays post on Marks Mews is proof.
MacKeeper is a good app. It does find adware, some tracking malware, and actually non-essential files. But I will be a LOT more careful in the permissions I allow it in the future, LOL!
Saturday, April 13, 2019
Cat-Blog Comment Problems
I may have A solution for some of us who have been having problems leaving comments on blog sites!!!
As many of you who mostly visit my Mark's Mews cat blog know, I have had on-and-off problems leaving comments at blogs. It has driven me to distraction sometimes, but mostly, I worry that my blog friends will think I never visit them. It was so bad that I couldn't even get Preview of my comments to show up, never mind sent.
I kept trying. Sometimes I could comment for weeks and then suddenly I couldn't. I don't know about you, but I have Statcounter. Its a simple free program that shows you some very general data about visitors to your site. If you recognize a visitor, you can label them so you see a friend's name.
I'm not pushing it. It has some flaws. It doesn't recognize every visitor (mobile phones maybe). But it gives me a general idea of how many people visit the blog.
So, if some of my friends have that too, they see that I visit but never leave comments. When in fact, I am trying like crazy to do so, sometimes several times at a single site I visit.
I thought I fixed the problem once by switching my feedly.com reading list from Safari to Firefox, and indeed it worked for a while. But it would always stop in a few weeks.
Recently, I was looking around at some app settings after yet another frequent upgrade from Firefox, and I REALIZED SOMETHING (all caps to get your attention).
My Firefox was a Beta version. You can tell by clicking on "Firefox" in the upper left corner and then clicking "About Firefox". That tells you the version you have. A "b" means Beta.
I'm generally willing to go with a Beta version for the improvements, but I started to wonder about that. Betas are not final versions and have flaws. And also (and I think this is the most important part), other apps haven't adjusted their programming to the Beta version yet. Apparently, at some point in the past, I agreed to receive Beta versions of Firefox.
Think about that. My Firefox Beta app is ahead of the regular sites who sometimes have to make some adjustments! That takes them some time. And during that time, there may be programmibg conflicts.
And it seemed to me that the last time I updated the Firefox app was just when I stopped being able to comment on blog sites.
I had a hard time finding info on the Firefox Beta Program, but I eventually found a discussion of it by people like me who were trying to get off it. Firefox didn't make that easy. It seems they get a lot more information about your usage in the Beta Program than they can if you use the Regular versions. And they share it with other companies.
I finally figured out that the solution was actually simple. All you have to do is download their current regular version and move it to your apps folder. I don't know about Windows, but in Mac it asks you if you want to replace the previous version. Click YES. Your bookmarks will transfer and you will be off the Beta Program.
I did that a few hours ago and immediately tried commenting. I knew the instant I typed in a comment that it was different! My avatar showed up. Preview worked. Publish worked!
My comment went through to the site. And all I did was change from the Firefox Beta Program to the Regular Program...
I hope that works for anyone sufferring difficulties commenting...
A haiku of joy...
A problem of late
Became a problem no more.
I can comment now.
Hope this helps anyone else as it has helped me.
As many of you who mostly visit my Mark's Mews cat blog know, I have had on-and-off problems leaving comments at blogs. It has driven me to distraction sometimes, but mostly, I worry that my blog friends will think I never visit them. It was so bad that I couldn't even get Preview of my comments to show up, never mind sent.
I kept trying. Sometimes I could comment for weeks and then suddenly I couldn't. I don't know about you, but I have Statcounter. Its a simple free program that shows you some very general data about visitors to your site. If you recognize a visitor, you can label them so you see a friend's name.
I'm not pushing it. It has some flaws. It doesn't recognize every visitor (mobile phones maybe). But it gives me a general idea of how many people visit the blog.
So, if some of my friends have that too, they see that I visit but never leave comments. When in fact, I am trying like crazy to do so, sometimes several times at a single site I visit.
I thought I fixed the problem once by switching my feedly.com reading list from Safari to Firefox, and indeed it worked for a while. But it would always stop in a few weeks.
Recently, I was looking around at some app settings after yet another frequent upgrade from Firefox, and I REALIZED SOMETHING (all caps to get your attention).
My Firefox was a Beta version. You can tell by clicking on "Firefox" in the upper left corner and then clicking "About Firefox". That tells you the version you have. A "b" means Beta.
I'm generally willing to go with a Beta version for the improvements, but I started to wonder about that. Betas are not final versions and have flaws. And also (and I think this is the most important part), other apps haven't adjusted their programming to the Beta version yet. Apparently, at some point in the past, I agreed to receive Beta versions of Firefox.
Think about that. My Firefox Beta app is ahead of the regular sites who sometimes have to make some adjustments! That takes them some time. And during that time, there may be programmibg conflicts.
And it seemed to me that the last time I updated the Firefox app was just when I stopped being able to comment on blog sites.
I had a hard time finding info on the Firefox Beta Program, but I eventually found a discussion of it by people like me who were trying to get off it. Firefox didn't make that easy. It seems they get a lot more information about your usage in the Beta Program than they can if you use the Regular versions. And they share it with other companies.
I finally figured out that the solution was actually simple. All you have to do is download their current regular version and move it to your apps folder. I don't know about Windows, but in Mac it asks you if you want to replace the previous version. Click YES. Your bookmarks will transfer and you will be off the Beta Program.
I did that a few hours ago and immediately tried commenting. I knew the instant I typed in a comment that it was different! My avatar showed up. Preview worked. Publish worked!
My comment went through to the site. And all I did was change from the Firefox Beta Program to the Regular Program...
I hope that works for anyone sufferring difficulties commenting...
A haiku of joy...
A problem of late
Became a problem no more.
I can comment now.
Hope this helps anyone else as it has helped me.
Friday, March 1, 2019
A Good Day
Some days you spend all day doing routine work around the house. Some days you spend all day doing one major infrequent task. Some days you accomplish a lot of fairly unusual stuff.
Today was the last type...
1. My online Mac computer had looked stretched out for a couple of days. Symbols that were supposed to be circles were ovals, the text seemed oddly spaced, some sidebars weren't showing all the information they usually do, and people in pictures looked fat. I had tried a couple of times to correct that in my settings and window sizes, but nothing worked.
2. My offline Windows 95 computer (that I bought a month ago for playing some old favorite games suddenly stopped working). I had just bought cheap speakers for it and there both a typical small round plug and a USB connector on the same speaker wire. There were no actual instructions in the box, so I made a best guess and plugged in the round plug into each of the several small round port in the back. Nothing. So I unplugged that and tried the USB port. Nothing. Then I tried both. Nothing. So I unplugged the speakers entirely assuming they didn't work with such an old computer.
When I restarted the computer, instead of the usual Windows 95 demand to press f1 for setup or Esc to boot, I got a message saying to insert a bootable disk. Naturally, in my cleanup campaign last Fall, I had tossed old "useless" software like the original Win 95 and Win 98 disks... I figured I had shorted something, messed up the installed Win 95 software, or something and would have to haul the tower to the local PC repair shop.
3. I have never been a dedicated paper filer. Oh, I'm ORGANIZED. A file folder for everything. But I tend to just drop stuff on the top of the file cabinet to file "later". The stack was 6" high and I needed several things in it. But sorting the stack out meant I needed space, and my dining table was clutterred. Recipes, DIY articles, computer and security advice, gardening suggestions, medical articles, etc. Yeah, I'm a "clipper". So to de-clutter the table meant I had to file stuff. Catch-22!
----------------------
So, today I decided to tackle those annoying problems...
1. I tried another round of correcting the setting on the Mac, to no success. For those who don't have a Mac (and having used both Macs and Windows, I make no judgement). But I use a Mac online, so you can tell which I prefer. And to those of you who use a Mac and have experienced the Finder App, you understand why. The other joy is the way Macs can stay in sleep mode without problems.
But it occurred to me that some problems can be solved just by restarting a computer. So I actually went a step further and SHUT IT OFF! First time in months... After a few minutes, I started it back up. Problem solved! Everything looks normal again. I concluded it was one of those "cats on the keyboard" things. Macs have loads of keyboard shortcuts, and the cats frequently (randomly) activate some and I have to admit some of them take time to figure out how to undo.
One problem solved...
2. Encouraged by that, I sat down at the bewly-purchased old Windows computer. I tried restarting it. No luck. I tried shutting it down. No luck. I tried unplugging it from the surge protector for a few minutes. No luck. Same message demanding a bootable disk. Considering that a visit to the PC repair shop was sure to cost at $200, I was about to but Windows 95 from Amazon or eBay, but them I recalled the stacks of game disks on the bookshelf. I recalled that when I switched form Windows to Mac I had copied all my Windows folders to writable CDs. Mac apps can read most standard Windows formats like .doc, .xls, .jpegs, etc. And I had saved those (and in fact I think there are old pic and docs and even emails that I should retrieve, having deleted some trying to solve a storage proble. 8 years ago, but that is a future project).
What I recalled having ALSO done was copy the entire old Windows C drive the last time I bought a new one (on advice from a clipped article - that's why I clip stuff). And sorting through about 30 jewel case of disks, there it was! A CD labelled "Original From Store Basic Win 98 Configuration" dated 4/23/99...
I hoped the Bootable File would work. I slipped it into the CD drive, restarted the computer, and "Lo And Behold", up came the desired request to choose setup or boot. I chose setup, which means the computer wants you to establish the date and time, display resolution, etc, just like the first time I started it after purchase. It opened Win 95 again, and sure enough, the few files I had added since purchase where there.
When that was done, I took out the old CD copy of the Win 98 program, slipped in the game disk (Civilization II - Best non-real-time play-at-your-own-speed strategic fighting and city-building game of all time... And I could play it again!
Two problems solved...
3. The paperwork filing was in no way tricky, just unbelievably tedious. To make room om the dining table, I sorted out all the clipped articles and set them on the kitchen counters (at this point do I really need to tell you that I had to clean the kitchen first, LOL!)? So after that, I had an empty table to sort out the bills. It's amazing how many types of them there were. Some are monthly or quarterly, so I knew they needed their own spots. Some come in a bunch at once (like vet bills). Some are nearly one-offs (stuff that isn't regular). Those got their own stack. Some were tossable (like the 2017 recycling pickup schedule and my 2018 Health Care Insurance Plan summary).
Iza wanted to help, so that meant rearranging a few stacks. But I eventually got them all sorted out. Which them meant arranging each group by date. Finding the dates on some bills can be hard (companies that keep rearranging the layout on their bills should be penalized).
But I started with the smallest stacks and arranged them on the floor by date (Iza was happy to help again). I filed those. That finally left some space on the table and I got through all the stacks, filing as I went. What a relief. And I found a few of the documents I was looking for. I even had some letters and poems that had stayed on the bottom of the stack the previous time I had sorted and filed stuff.
I think I should end this post and discuss those next time...
But today had some good endings and that doesn't always happen. So I'm pretty pleased with the day's work. And of course that doesn't count the routine stuff. I'm celebrating getting the odd stuff done.
Today was the last type...
1. My online Mac computer had looked stretched out for a couple of days. Symbols that were supposed to be circles were ovals, the text seemed oddly spaced, some sidebars weren't showing all the information they usually do, and people in pictures looked fat. I had tried a couple of times to correct that in my settings and window sizes, but nothing worked.
2. My offline Windows 95 computer (that I bought a month ago for playing some old favorite games suddenly stopped working). I had just bought cheap speakers for it and there both a typical small round plug and a USB connector on the same speaker wire. There were no actual instructions in the box, so I made a best guess and plugged in the round plug into each of the several small round port in the back. Nothing. So I unplugged that and tried the USB port. Nothing. Then I tried both. Nothing. So I unplugged the speakers entirely assuming they didn't work with such an old computer.
When I restarted the computer, instead of the usual Windows 95 demand to press f1 for setup or Esc to boot, I got a message saying to insert a bootable disk. Naturally, in my cleanup campaign last Fall, I had tossed old "useless" software like the original Win 95 and Win 98 disks... I figured I had shorted something, messed up the installed Win 95 software, or something and would have to haul the tower to the local PC repair shop.
3. I have never been a dedicated paper filer. Oh, I'm ORGANIZED. A file folder for everything. But I tend to just drop stuff on the top of the file cabinet to file "later". The stack was 6" high and I needed several things in it. But sorting the stack out meant I needed space, and my dining table was clutterred. Recipes, DIY articles, computer and security advice, gardening suggestions, medical articles, etc. Yeah, I'm a "clipper". So to de-clutter the table meant I had to file stuff. Catch-22!
----------------------
So, today I decided to tackle those annoying problems...
1. I tried another round of correcting the setting on the Mac, to no success. For those who don't have a Mac (and having used both Macs and Windows, I make no judgement). But I use a Mac online, so you can tell which I prefer. And to those of you who use a Mac and have experienced the Finder App, you understand why. The other joy is the way Macs can stay in sleep mode without problems.
But it occurred to me that some problems can be solved just by restarting a computer. So I actually went a step further and SHUT IT OFF! First time in months... After a few minutes, I started it back up. Problem solved! Everything looks normal again. I concluded it was one of those "cats on the keyboard" things. Macs have loads of keyboard shortcuts, and the cats frequently (randomly) activate some and I have to admit some of them take time to figure out how to undo.
One problem solved...
2. Encouraged by that, I sat down at the bewly-purchased old Windows computer. I tried restarting it. No luck. I tried shutting it down. No luck. I tried unplugging it from the surge protector for a few minutes. No luck. Same message demanding a bootable disk. Considering that a visit to the PC repair shop was sure to cost at $200, I was about to but Windows 95 from Amazon or eBay, but them I recalled the stacks of game disks on the bookshelf. I recalled that when I switched form Windows to Mac I had copied all my Windows folders to writable CDs. Mac apps can read most standard Windows formats like .doc, .xls, .jpegs, etc. And I had saved those (and in fact I think there are old pic and docs and even emails that I should retrieve, having deleted some trying to solve a storage proble. 8 years ago, but that is a future project).
What I recalled having ALSO done was copy the entire old Windows C drive the last time I bought a new one (on advice from a clipped article - that's why I clip stuff). And sorting through about 30 jewel case of disks, there it was! A CD labelled "Original From Store Basic Win 98 Configuration" dated 4/23/99...
I hoped the Bootable File would work. I slipped it into the CD drive, restarted the computer, and "Lo And Behold", up came the desired request to choose setup or boot. I chose setup, which means the computer wants you to establish the date and time, display resolution, etc, just like the first time I started it after purchase. It opened Win 95 again, and sure enough, the few files I had added since purchase where there.
When that was done, I took out the old CD copy of the Win 98 program, slipped in the game disk (Civilization II - Best non-real-time play-at-your-own-speed strategic fighting and city-building game of all time... And I could play it again!
Two problems solved...
3. The paperwork filing was in no way tricky, just unbelievably tedious. To make room om the dining table, I sorted out all the clipped articles and set them on the kitchen counters (at this point do I really need to tell you that I had to clean the kitchen first, LOL!)? So after that, I had an empty table to sort out the bills. It's amazing how many types of them there were. Some are monthly or quarterly, so I knew they needed their own spots. Some come in a bunch at once (like vet bills). Some are nearly one-offs (stuff that isn't regular). Those got their own stack. Some were tossable (like the 2017 recycling pickup schedule and my 2018 Health Care Insurance Plan summary).
Iza wanted to help, so that meant rearranging a few stacks. But I eventually got them all sorted out. Which them meant arranging each group by date. Finding the dates on some bills can be hard (companies that keep rearranging the layout on their bills should be penalized).
But I started with the smallest stacks and arranged them on the floor by date (Iza was happy to help again). I filed those. That finally left some space on the table and I got through all the stacks, filing as I went. What a relief. And I found a few of the documents I was looking for. I even had some letters and poems that had stayed on the bottom of the stack the previous time I had sorted and filed stuff.
I think I should end this post and discuss those next time...
But today had some good endings and that doesn't always happen. So I'm pretty pleased with the day's work. And of course that doesn't count the routine stuff. I'm celebrating getting the odd stuff done.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Good Computer News
After speaking, yet again, with AOL, they actually got me connected to my Mac mail accounts. So, now instead of having to log in and out of my 3 email accounts every time I want to check my emails, I can just click on the Mac mail names and see them with no login-and-out nonsense.
And I was annoyed at being told I would be charged $5 per email account per month for the accounts and "free" help desk. But I couldn't recall giving them any billing information, so I called them and checked. My accounts are free just as they were on Verizon!
So it is all still free AND I can read my email accounts on mac mail just by clicking on an email name on Mail. I am almost back to normal, but with a computer many times faster and with 4 times the memory!
I don't like the iPhoto changes much. Do any of you who use Macs know how to get iPhoto to routinely show the file names on photos? Other than that, I am thrilled again and getting back on track!
I am keeping the camera in my pocket for pictures of all kinds again.
March was miserable on the computer and I spent on-phone and online about 40 hours, but it is all straightened out now.
I forced it. They didn't want to let me do things as I wanted, but they did finally. It took time, but now I have things set up like I want it. They weren't thrilled, but that is THEIR problem.
I'M HAPPY and I'm going to bed until tomorrow!
And I was annoyed at being told I would be charged $5 per email account per month for the accounts and "free" help desk. But I couldn't recall giving them any billing information, so I called them and checked. My accounts are free just as they were on Verizon!
So it is all still free AND I can read my email accounts on mac mail just by clicking on an email name on Mail. I am almost back to normal, but with a computer many times faster and with 4 times the memory!
I don't like the iPhoto changes much. Do any of you who use Macs know how to get iPhoto to routinely show the file names on photos? Other than that, I am thrilled again and getting back on track!
I am keeping the camera in my pocket for pictures of all kinds again.
March was miserable on the computer and I spent on-phone and online about 40 hours, but it is all straightened out now.
I forced it. They didn't want to let me do things as I wanted, but they did finally. It took time, but now I have things set up like I want it. They weren't thrilled, but that is THEIR problem.
I'M HAPPY and I'm going to bed until tomorrow!
Friday, March 24, 2017
New Mac Computer
Well, the new Mac Mini arrived Wensday, but I was tired. I had to do errands most on yesterday, but got at it in the late afternoon. Macs have something called Migration assistant that helps you transfer important files from a Mac to a PC, a PC to a Mac, or a Mac to Mac (from new to old or old to new).
That sounds really great, but unless you have about every cable and/or adaptor in existence, it can be an adventure. I don't, and it was!
The most direct way of migrating from one Mac to another is too simply have them both up and running with an HDMI cable between them. Which requires 2 sets of monitors/keyboards/mouses, all of which I actually have!
But Mac Minis have only one HDMI port. My monitors plug into HDMI ports. But so does the recommended Mac to Mac. No amount of searching through my box of odd cables and adaptors would make that work.
I could have gone to a local store and bought the one adaptor I needed, but NOOOOOO, I had to make it work with what I had. Well, sometimes half the fun in life is the challenge...
And one thing I had was a brand new Western Digital (WD) 4Tb backup drive (my old Seagate 500Gb drive just wasn't able to backup all my files anymore) that I ordered at the same time as the new Mac.
So, I didn't have the right cables to go direct Mac to Mac. But the Mac Migration Assistant said it was perfectly happy using a Time Machine backup. So I set up the old Mac to the new WD backup disk and set it to backup the old Mac. Took 3 hours! It was an initial backup (copying everything).
I was just finishing a late dinner when the backup completed. I moved the WD backup and all the other cables to the new Mac and opened Migration Assistant there. I had to register the new Mac slightly (language, location, User ID, Password, etc. The user name and password set me back for a while. In spite of it being a new computer, somewhere, the Mac Universe knows who I am and disagreed with my name. I finally discovered that my old password on Capital letters and some numbers NOW required a lower case letter also. Got THAT straightened out, and went through a bunch of stuff about using the Cloud. Sorry, not yet for that for me.
They were insistent, so I had to go through a bunch of "Are you SURE?" questions. But I finally got to the NEW Mac Migration Assistant, and it searched for an external drive. Found it and started downloading files.
I was really worried at first. The progress bar stayed at 1% for 30 minutes. But then it suddenly progressed faster and only took another hour.
I amused myself during the wait by changing the water for my 2 Siamese Fighting fish (separate containers of course), doing a load of laundry, tossing toys to the Mews, and listening to MSNBC commentary in the background.
But even massive file transfers through slow cables do come to an end and the new Mac reported it had completed the file download. A quick check suggests that all my files are saved, are saved in familiar folders, and my Firefox and Safari browsers have my bookmarks. I checked iPhoto next for all my photos.
Its not the same. Nothing I couldn't figure out, but more on THAT soon as there are changes I don't like and may ask questions about to fellow Mac users.
Everything ELSE seems to work pretty much the same, but I checked iPhotos first as it matters more to my blogs than word or spreadsheet programs do.
The important thing is that I am up and running on a Mac with more memory, processing speed and backup. I understand the programs (generally, given some changes)
It doesn't solve my unhappiness with the transfer of my Verizon email (which I was utterly happy with) to AOL (which seems restrictive, user-unfriendly, and overflowing with ads). THAT is a problem to solve in a few days. I can LIVE with AOL for right now, just won't STAY with them for long. They want to "nickle and dime" me to death for every service to avoid what I don't want them to provide in the first place. And I have 3 email addresses (for which they charge a monthly fee each). And I can't simply switch from one to another as I could on Verizon, I have to log out and then back in each time.
But the migration is complete, my new computer runs faster, and I'm back on line. For today, that's is enough.
That sounds really great, but unless you have about every cable and/or adaptor in existence, it can be an adventure. I don't, and it was!
The most direct way of migrating from one Mac to another is too simply have them both up and running with an HDMI cable between them. Which requires 2 sets of monitors/keyboards/mouses, all of which I actually have!
But Mac Minis have only one HDMI port. My monitors plug into HDMI ports. But so does the recommended Mac to Mac. No amount of searching through my box of odd cables and adaptors would make that work.
I could have gone to a local store and bought the one adaptor I needed, but NOOOOOO, I had to make it work with what I had. Well, sometimes half the fun in life is the challenge...
And one thing I had was a brand new Western Digital (WD) 4Tb backup drive (my old Seagate 500Gb drive just wasn't able to backup all my files anymore) that I ordered at the same time as the new Mac.
So, I didn't have the right cables to go direct Mac to Mac. But the Mac Migration Assistant said it was perfectly happy using a Time Machine backup. So I set up the old Mac to the new WD backup disk and set it to backup the old Mac. Took 3 hours! It was an initial backup (copying everything).
I was just finishing a late dinner when the backup completed. I moved the WD backup and all the other cables to the new Mac and opened Migration Assistant there. I had to register the new Mac slightly (language, location, User ID, Password, etc. The user name and password set me back for a while. In spite of it being a new computer, somewhere, the Mac Universe knows who I am and disagreed with my name. I finally discovered that my old password on Capital letters and some numbers NOW required a lower case letter also. Got THAT straightened out, and went through a bunch of stuff about using the Cloud. Sorry, not yet for that for me.
They were insistent, so I had to go through a bunch of "Are you SURE?" questions. But I finally got to the NEW Mac Migration Assistant, and it searched for an external drive. Found it and started downloading files.
I was really worried at first. The progress bar stayed at 1% for 30 minutes. But then it suddenly progressed faster and only took another hour.
I amused myself during the wait by changing the water for my 2 Siamese Fighting fish (separate containers of course), doing a load of laundry, tossing toys to the Mews, and listening to MSNBC commentary in the background.
But even massive file transfers through slow cables do come to an end and the new Mac reported it had completed the file download. A quick check suggests that all my files are saved, are saved in familiar folders, and my Firefox and Safari browsers have my bookmarks. I checked iPhoto next for all my photos.
Its not the same. Nothing I couldn't figure out, but more on THAT soon as there are changes I don't like and may ask questions about to fellow Mac users.
Everything ELSE seems to work pretty much the same, but I checked iPhotos first as it matters more to my blogs than word or spreadsheet programs do.
The important thing is that I am up and running on a Mac with more memory, processing speed and backup. I understand the programs (generally, given some changes)
It doesn't solve my unhappiness with the transfer of my Verizon email (which I was utterly happy with) to AOL (which seems restrictive, user-unfriendly, and overflowing with ads). THAT is a problem to solve in a few days. I can LIVE with AOL for right now, just won't STAY with them for long. They want to "nickle and dime" me to death for every service to avoid what I don't want them to provide in the first place. And I have 3 email addresses (for which they charge a monthly fee each). And I can't simply switch from one to another as I could on Verizon, I have to log out and then back in each time.
But the migration is complete, my new computer runs faster, and I'm back on line. For today, that's is enough.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
I Surrender
There are times when you make what seems to be a good decision and it just doesn't work.
I have struggled for almost 10 days now with the new Windows computer and I just can't make sense of it. And I was a Windows user for almost 20 years.
Nothing makes sense. Compared to my Mac, the Windows is very hard to organize, the file folders are hard to arrange, and I can't seem to control it much. Windows FIGHTS user control. I read that before I purchased it,and I hought I could force it to look the way I wanted, but my confidence was in error. I can't get used to the loss off control.
If you have Windows and are used to it, wonderful. I don't criticize in the least bit. Windows has one way of user management; Mac has another. I'm the Mac kind.
So, I'm selling the Windows computer I just bought.
Yes, it will cost me something. I paid $1,000 for it, I may be able to sell it for $600. It is not returnable. Sometimes you just make a mistake and have to bite the bullet.
I had several reasons to try a Windows again. Several computer sites said Windows was about as stable as Macs (and it has not crashed this week). Others said there were more apps. Others said more people used them. That seems to be correct.
I don't want to start a Windows vs Mac war here. I just know that Mac software is more intuitive to use and easier to manage and get around. I have more control over it.
I had 5 malware attacks in one day on Windows. I had 2 Mac attacks in 6 months. And my Mac software detected and deleted those. That may not last forever, but I appreciate it now.
So 'Im going to sell the new Windows computer for what I can get (and it has additional software I've downloaded). And buying a new Mac.
I hate to waste money. But I expect this Mac to last 6 years or more and who wants to fight with their computer. I'm going back to what I understand. Because I realized I am just not ON the computer (with Windows) much anymore.
I found a Mac Mini equal in Ram and memory etc to the Windows computer. It costs more, but I can accept that.
It will take 3 days to arrive, a couple days to migrate, and I should be up and working again then. The programs will be familiar, the files will stay, the photos will be accessible again, life will be normal.
I should have just done that to begin with. But like I said, sometimes you make mistakes and mistakes aren't free. I will be happier afterwards.
When you get down to it, that's what matters...
I have struggled for almost 10 days now with the new Windows computer and I just can't make sense of it. And I was a Windows user for almost 20 years.
Nothing makes sense. Compared to my Mac, the Windows is very hard to organize, the file folders are hard to arrange, and I can't seem to control it much. Windows FIGHTS user control. I read that before I purchased it,and I hought I could force it to look the way I wanted, but my confidence was in error. I can't get used to the loss off control.
If you have Windows and are used to it, wonderful. I don't criticize in the least bit. Windows has one way of user management; Mac has another. I'm the Mac kind.
So, I'm selling the Windows computer I just bought.
Yes, it will cost me something. I paid $1,000 for it, I may be able to sell it for $600. It is not returnable. Sometimes you just make a mistake and have to bite the bullet.
I had several reasons to try a Windows again. Several computer sites said Windows was about as stable as Macs (and it has not crashed this week). Others said there were more apps. Others said more people used them. That seems to be correct.
I don't want to start a Windows vs Mac war here. I just know that Mac software is more intuitive to use and easier to manage and get around. I have more control over it.
I had 5 malware attacks in one day on Windows. I had 2 Mac attacks in 6 months. And my Mac software detected and deleted those. That may not last forever, but I appreciate it now.
So 'Im going to sell the new Windows computer for what I can get (and it has additional software I've downloaded). And buying a new Mac.
I hate to waste money. But I expect this Mac to last 6 years or more and who wants to fight with their computer. I'm going back to what I understand. Because I realized I am just not ON the computer (with Windows) much anymore.
I found a Mac Mini equal in Ram and memory etc to the Windows computer. It costs more, but I can accept that.
It will take 3 days to arrive, a couple days to migrate, and I should be up and working again then. The programs will be familiar, the files will stay, the photos will be accessible again, life will be normal.
I should have just done that to begin with. But like I said, sometimes you make mistakes and mistakes aren't free. I will be happier afterwards.
When you get down to it, that's what matters...
Saturday, March 18, 2017
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!
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!
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
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.
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.
Monday, March 13, 2017
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!
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!
Friday, March 10, 2017
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.
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.
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