creative.mother.thinking

But things are looking up. There was a minute there, yesterday, where I even thought of something else than computers.

The new computer is mostly functional, and I managed to move my whole music library over, And my email. And I got the nice people at Scrivener to send me my serial number again. Turns out they still had my old email address, the one that doesn’t exist anymore, so I never received the receipt. Duh.

I didn’t write yesterday and went to bed around nine. I’m still pretty exhausted and tired. I tried to write but only managed eighty words, not good.

Today will be super-busy Friday, I want to clean all.the.things, and make pizza from scratch, and teach all.the.students, and maybe squeeze in some piano playing and such, and strength training.

Tonight we might even watch a movie all three of us together which never happens. (My mother-in-law has guests for dinner which means my husband won’t be allowed to play drums and guitar tonight.)

I guess that will be it, the day is full enough as is.

I’m still hoping I will manage to write about 1,500 words. Ahem.

But first it’s time to get up and have breakfast.

Phew.

And the best thing is that I actually have two working laptops right now.

There was a moment yesterday when I felt really guilty about spending the money on a new one but I think I’m over that now. It is pretty. And shiny. And doesn’t have the things on it that I really need, of course.

So I started yesterday by restoring the older laptop from an older backup. I was hoping that that would eliminate the bug. Losing four weeks of data would be an acceptable price for having a working computer. Especially since all the really important things like the novels and the budget were in the cloud. (Hurray for multiple backups!) It was interesting to note how much I don’t care about photos, by the way. Also a lot of the family photos are still on paper, and my husband has some on his computer as well.

Then I decided to go and buy a USB-C to USB-A cable and a new USB drive. (I have a 32 GB one that the boy lost somewhere, argh.) I rode my bike for ten minutes through the freezing streets. Good thing they were clear.

Then I came back and tried to use the new laptop in target mode with my husband’s computer, but no luck. Then I made a bootable USB drive with Sierra on it – no luck again (someone on the internet said that that had worked for his computer but I guess his came with the Sierra OS in the first place), and then I made a bottle USB drive with High Sierra, and – 

I managed to start the new computer from that drive, and to format the hard disk, and then it was perfectly usable.

Cue snoopy dance, and pompom shaking and overwhelming relief.

I have decided for the first time in decades to not migrate all my data from the old computer to the new one on auto-pilot but this time I will just hand-transfer what I need.

It is interesting to see what is important to me in my digital life. The first app that I installed was Firefox, even though there was a perfectly serviceable browser on there. Next was Thunderbird but then I shied away from configuring all my email accounts by hand. I will try to transfer the preferences file from the old computer later. Then I installed Scrivener (the program I use for writing) and then I spent about half an hour trying to find my activation key with no luck. I found the one for Scrivener 2 which I bought in 2015 but not the one for the current version. Will have to do more digging.

I installed GarageBand and realized that all my podcast files are still on the old computer (but that one is working, so phew), I installed my budget software right away (which was completely painless), and dropbox, and all kinds of things.

I’m waffling about installing Office. We’ll see.

Then I went to bed rather early, and slept like a log for eight hours.

Today the boy is going to the orthodontist to get his braces out. Yeah! I decided not to go with him because I don’t think he really needs his hand held through this, and riding on a bus for 45 minutes, and then sitting in the orthodontist’s office for an hour is a little pointless.

So today I will run (brr, cold), and then take a hot shower, and help making lunch, and I will only teach two students, and in between I will probably transfer all the files from one laptop to the other.

When I told my husband that both computers were working again, and that I was feeling bad about spending all that money he said not to worry. Then he said, „Well, since the old on is working again you can sell it, then.“ Which I really don’t want.

For one I’m somewhat attached to that machine which has been working for me for more than seven years already, and also I think it’s a good idea to have a spare computer in the house. My husband is using one for recording that’s even older than that, and I don’t know how long that one will be working. Also there is 750 gigabytes of data on that computer that I don’t want to lose. Of course I could pull the hard drive out and out the old one back in again that came with the computer when I bought it.

Nah.

Oh, and I have a new student as well. She starts next week, yeah!

I think I’ll go and sleep for a week now. And then I’ll think about how not to get all emotional and tense every time something like this happens.

I did meditate yesterday and read my daily stoic essay, so that’s something.

Seems that I managed to transfer whatever ails my old laptop to my new one too.

Spent all day trying to fix it.

Am a little stressed.

I basically did nothing but work on the computer issue all day. In between teaching students. No writing, no music, no exercise, no nothing.

I wish that these things wouldn't make me panic like that but I can't just put them aside and do something else.

I haven't yet run out of things to try, so there is still hope. Hardware seems to be okay, so I should be able to somehow fix this.

Wish me luck.

So most of yesterday was dedicated to trying to get the laptop running again. And failing. I think I might be able to get it in good working order again but then I decided that the thing is just too old. It's like having an old car. You get more and more repairs and then you're afraid to use it on long trips, and the impending doom of being without one suddenly keeps hanging over your head.

Oh, and I didn't go running yesterday. And didn't make music or write. Funny that.

Some time in the afternoon I decided to get a new laptop. And to use the emergency fund for it (not all of it, just a quarter or so). I tried buying one online that I could pick up at the Apple store with no luck. (That was a fun experience, the website kept crashing on my iPad, and I had to do the whole thing on my phone, and then it told me I could pick it up in two weeks. Um, no.)

So I tried buying one at the gravis store (that used to be the only store selling Apple products in Munich in the olden days), and their website had a glitch that didn't let me. But they had the one I wanted in stock. Not in the color I would have liked but when I have to decide between having my computer now and it being a gray I don't really like and having it in two weeks – that decision was easy. (If it had been pink I might have waited.)

My last student canceled which meant I could leave the house (without dinner and already quite hungry) with loads of time to spare before the shop closed.

Or so I thought.

Now it is rather icy here in Munich at the moment, and yesterday there was some kind of train chaos in the city. I knew about it but thought that by then it would only mean slightly delayed trains.

The train I took to Munich was delayed five minutes – not a big deal. Then we were told that this one wouldn't stop between the Western and Eastern edges of the city. Since I wanted to go right to the middle I left the train at the Western edge and waited for the next one. For twenty minutes. With hundreds of others. While freezing.

The next train again didn't stop at all stops but I decided to just take it anyway and wind my way back from the East train station by subway or something. So I took that train (and yes, the one I had arrived in would have been a better choice but I didn't know), and then the subway, and then a tram, and arrived at the store about 45 minutes later than expected. It was still open, though.

It took me a few minutes to attract a sales guy. I think I got the youngest and most inexperienced one in the bunch. I looked at him and said, “I want a Macbook pro with an i5 processor, 8 gigabytes of RAM, and a 512 gigabyte hard disk, please,” which seemed to surprise him.

“You're certainly well-informed,” he said, “with touch bar or without?” I keep forgetting that these guys in computer stores don't expect middle-ages women with handknit (and handspun, of course) mittens and hats to know anything about computers. Silly.

“Without.” Of course. The touch bar is nonsense, and makes the computer quite a bit more expensive plus impossible to take apart for repairs.

He actually asked me about color after he had already fetched the computer, getting my hopes up for the same model in silver. They didn't have it, of course. I had seen that on their website already.

Then I let him talk me into buying longer warranty. I saw through his, “I'll make you a deal you won't be able to refuse”-spiel but paid for it anyway. I hope I won't need it. And then I said that while I didn't expect this computer to last me more than seven years like the old one I certainly hoped it would last me three. And then he started telling me that with the amount of data we are processing these days one can't expect a computer to last that long. Huh? You mean because I buy a new computer the amount of data it needs to process suddenly changes from last week to next week? I mean my old computer wasn't just sitting in a closet. I'm using this thing, heavily, all the time.

I told him the difference is that with my old machine I could open it and swap out parts if they didn't work anymore. The new one is all glued together, and the RAM is soldered to the motherboard and they're impossible to repair on you own. Which does make me somewhat cranky.

Then I bought an adapter so I can connect regular USB cables to the computer.

I did not buy anything else even though I have an extensive list but I'll research the connector hub, external hard drive, cables and ton of adapters for all kinds of things plus a case for the laptop in peace later.

The way home took about as long as the one there. I went the roundabout way again which was a mistake but I didn't know that.

I had dinner at half past nine. Good thing I bought some chocolate before venturing into the city. And my husband thoughtfully put a beer in the fridge for me. Which I drank in bed huddled under three blankets.

I feel like I'm still not quite thawed out, and had a big bout of sneezing just a minute ago.

But. Shiny new computer! Which is exciting!

I feel a little bad for spending so much money, and did toy with the idea of doing a hackintosh (which means installing the Apple OS on a computer that's not by Apple) but one big reason why I've been using Macs for the past, um, 38 years is that most of the time they just work. Setting the new computer up will take some time, especially since I only have half the disk space that I have on the old one but I will be able to just connect the new computer to the backup disk, type in a few informations, and then it will do its thing for the next few hours.

Yes, I know I will have to re-install all.the.software. And one thing I really dislike about the new machine already is that it only has two USB ports, nothing else, and one of those is needed to charge the computer. And it isn't even USB proper, it is “thunderbolt” or USB-C which means nothing else connects. (I told the boy that I need FireWire, Ethernet and HDMI as well, and he was all “FireWire? What's that?” Kids these days.)

So I guess there won't be any writing today as well. There will be grocery shopping, though, and quite a bit of teaching, and strength training (the soreness from Sunday's training is just coming through full strength but today will be arms again), and a lot of computer stuff, I guess.

I still haven't unpacked it but will right after posting this.

Yesterday didn't really go all that well, I spent most of my day sitting around reading a book about depression and anxiety, and how much that is a problem of how our society is working. Which made me a little depressed.

I did do strength training which makes me happy (and my leg muscles a little sore, as it should). The boy and I watched some Star Trek and such in the evening which was nice, and for once I managed to not open a second beer after that. Very good.

The boy had turned the computer off after we had used it as a DVD player, and when I turned it on again to have another look at the novel-in-progress it wouldn't boot up properly. It boots, the status bar goes to 100% and then it gets stuck. Fun!

So I went to bed too late because I wanted to try a few things, and then I woke up at 4.30 thinking that the decision I had made on Saturday was completely wrong (lucky for me it wasn't final yet and is easily reversible), and by 5.30 I couldn't sleep anymore because of the computer issue.

I am very, very happy to have an ipad with a keyboard so I can type this. I am also happy to have a backup of my computer, and especially happy that I have backups of my novels in several places including my tablet and phone.

After a bit of googling I think there might be a solution for my computer problem. The error was “Too many corpses being created” by the way. I can start it in recovery mode and the hard disk checks out fine so it should be something software-related.

I am also extemely happy that if I needed a new computer I could dip into the emergency fund and get one.

I am not happy that I will have to spend many hours on a malfunctioning piece of equipment. I haven't really changed anything, it just spontaneously decided to not work anymore.

Oh, and the boy overslept this morning. But I woke him up and he still left for school in time. Lesson of the day: if you use your ipad as an alarm, make sure it is charged.

I really hope that I will manage to go for a run today, and write lots of words in addition to the many hours of re-starting the computer yet again, this time with a different key pressed down. The internet tells me that I either need to delete all users, or re-install the OS, or wipe the hard drive and re-install everything. Yeah, this will be fun, for sure.

I guess there won't be a lot of music today. There will definitely be quite a few students. I hope to be able to teach them without using the computer. That shouldn't be a problem for most of them but when I give singing lessons we usually sing along to something playing on the computer. But I can make do with plugging the tablet or phone into my stereo, no problem.

Yeah, great start into the week.

Though I have to say that things like these make me oddly calm inside. It makes me realize what is really important, and I feel competent dealing with crap like this.

Yesterday was mostly a day off. I spent a lot of time thinking (and crocheting) and reading „Lost Connections. Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions“ (amazon-affiliate link).

I only ran five kilometers, and helped making lasagna and salad, and the boy and I watched an episode of „Star Trek – the next generation“ and two episodes of „How I Met You Mother“. I even wrote 500 words for the first time in days.

This morning I woke up early after turning the lights out way too late, then I wrote about a hundred words, and started researching the backup and syncing problem I’ve been having with Scrivener, the program I’m using for writing.

An hour later I seem to have solved the issue. Then I realized that I had forgotten to take my thyroid medication which means I will have to wait another thirty minutes before having breakfast.

Today I want to record the podcast, write some more, make music, and go to bed early. Also read.

I guess that’s doable.

Have a relaxing Sunday!