Just Computers

NoCoPilot wrote:

I feel buttoned up tighter than a shark's anus.

I was still getting pop-ups, but ignoring them. Finally I got pissed and googled the problem.

As usual, there was an answer on the internet. Turns out Safari, that piece-of-shit Apple browser, could be hacked in the "notifications" section and that put meaningless (harmless) popups on your desktop.

Followed the instructions to turn off notifications and now finally the popups are gone.

But... I was still getting "drive almost full" errors.  This morning I was working with some really huge music files (1.6GB) and the computer froze up, refused to cut & paste.

After trying several other things, I ended up deleting a whole big bunch of really old files.

Unfortunately one of them was apparently something I shouldn't have deleted.  My computer froze up completely and wouldn't even reboot.

After a half hour on the phone with Apple, they confirmed that yup it's fucked.  They showed me the back door route to ERASE the fricking hard drive and reinstall the OS from the internet.  I had a backup from 7:15am this morning, so in theory at least I'll back on the road again shortly.

But... wow. Erase is a scary command.

Yay.  After 1 hour 55 minutes everything is successfully restored and I'm back in business.  I'm continually impressed with Apple's after-market support.  I spent about a half hour with a senior tech -- very senior, from the sounds of it, he knew several very advanced tricks* -- and it didn't cost me a dime.

And I have another 4TB drive being delivered Monday.



* - I mean, my mouse and keyboard are both Bluetooth, so they couldn't be used during the troubleshooting.

I have four external hard drives which are not hooked up, due to uncertainty of their reliability. If I hooked them all up, I would have the following storage:

• Main HD 500GB
  
• Backup HD 4TB
  
• Music HD 4TB
  
• New HD 4TB
  
• Removable HD #1 500GB
  
• unused Removable HD #2 500GB
  
• unused HD 3TB
  
• unused HD 1TB (I think)
  
• unused new removable HD 4TB (bought by mistake, didn't realize it was portable). I'll use it for something though
  

So, what's that total? 21-1/2 terabytes? Jesus christ.

New operating system upgrade (Ventura 13.6). New virus definitions downloaded and scanned.  Everything's optimized and running lightning fast.  Daddy is happy again.

New OS available this morning (Sonoma 14.0). We'll see what's new and how I like it.

First thing on the description said "new screensavers" so it should be fun even if it's not important.

After an hour (I wasn't paying attention) I noticed the computer was at a new signin screen, with a pretty photo of farmlands (in Sonoma presumably). I put in my password (required by my new security procedures) and the computer began "thinking" again. Eventually it went to a black screen with an Apple and said "ten minutes remaining." Wow. Updates never take this long. Must be a lot of new stuff in there.

Wow. After the Mac Studio update completed, the computer started a separate update for the display firmware.

Yeah, the DISPLAY.

Wow.  The new screensavers are slo-mo drone flyovers.  The Sonoma grapefields.  Ventura foothills.  Grand Canyon.  Patagonia glacier.  Los Angeles freeway.  A couple dozen more.  They are on loops of about 2 minutes, and in ultra high definition.

Also several shots from space (from the ISS?), about 5:15 loops orbiting the Earth from various starting points.

And underwater shots of schools of fish.  Seals playing.  A humpback whale.  Globs of jellyfish. Coral reefs.

Gorgeous.

Each of the screensavers can also serve as a wallpaper, and it appears you can stop them anywhere in the loop.

The flyover of Dubai at night is particularly gobsmacking.

I'm nice and locked down on my desktop computer, but doing any internet on my iPad has always been painful because pop-up ads obscure 4/5ths of the screen.  They slow everything down, and it's darn hard to dismiss all the ads without accidentally enabling one of them.

So I went looking to see if any of the ad-blockers for Firefox desktop work for the mobile iOS.  Surprised to find out there are none.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/firefox-focus-ad-blocking-in-ios-firefox/idi-p/6420/page/4#comments

Why the fuck.

During these dreary winter months Mrs NoCo likes to watch cheery TV like holiday baking championships, so I'm left either reading or watching cable on my iPad.  Having bought several movies on DVD lately, I've been feeling like I'd like to watch a movie, but can't get access to the main TV.

But wait.  I hav3 a couple of laptops. The Lenovo I bought for my stereo is the newer of the two (2012 I think?) but, alas, it doesn't have a CD drive.

I dug out my old 2006 white MacBook (dug out from the file cabinet where I had stuck it), and yay it has a DVD drive, and yay it works. I bought this unit after my first identical MacBook was stolen in the house burglary. Everything on it works except the battery no longer takes a charge. You have to run in plugged in.

Looked online and yay, battery was available for $26.  It just snaps in, no tools needed. It took a charge just fine, so yay now I have a perfectly serviceable movie player in my music room.

After a few months of paranoiac running full-computer virus scans every hour, and finding nothing, I decided to drop the frequency to daily, at 11:00pm.

Saves on wear & tear, and frankly the noise of the drive chugging away.

CoPilot is now just a keyclick away. Do I need to change my online handle?

One of the new screensavers is a pod of dolphins, filmed from an underwater camera on the bow of a boat. A pod of seven dolphins weave back and forth in front of the boat, as it cruises along, staying just far enough ahead of the boat to always be keeping an eye on it.

Along the way this pod encounters another pod of about seven individuals, than another pod, so for a while there are about 20 individuals in view. The water is crystal clear but in the open ocean, so there are no landmarks, just blue forever.

It's amazing watching 20 dolphins swim in a tight knot, weaving up and down and back and forth, coming within inches of each other in three dimensions, but never touching. Their sonar, their sense of what's around them, their unrehearsed coordination is amazing.

Yesterday afternoon I noticed that the time on my desktop computer was wrong. It was an hour ahead, 5pm instead of 4pm. It was right the day before, so I don't know why it would have changed. At a quick glance, I couldn't find how to fix it, but I didn't really care to spend time looking for the answer, so I just ignored it.

This morning the time is correct. I swear these computers have a mind of their own.