Moth visits

Last Sunday, I came back from another trip to the Twin Cities. I visited both my late friend and my mentor at two different cemeteries while I was there. The former requires a day trip down to northern Iowa.

In Chinese culture, when you see a moth, it's a sign that someone who has passed on is visiting you. I saw a moth that hung out with me for quite some time. I'm not sure which friend it was. I will go with my mentor because he was the last person I visited.

I wouldn't say that I'm an overly superstitious person. However, when it comes to spirits from my past visiting me in the form of moths, I have a decent record. I'm glad that they do drop by. It's nice. 

My phone died

I was about to work out last night and my phone fell from a small table to a carpeted floor. It always has a screen protector and a case on.

My Google Pixel 4a 5G didn't make it. The screen kept on flickering and it went black.

I dealt with Google support twice. The first woman was great. The second one was a dud. My phone is less than a year old, so a replacement phone is coming my way.

The crazy thing is that I need to print labels to have my old phone shipped to Google. I no longer have access to anything at the office because we all have been locked out during the pandemic. I have sent my files to a local printing place. I feel that it would be cheaper to pay for these printouts than getting printer ink cartridges on a printer that I haven't used in years.

So much fun! Thank goodness for my trusty Google Pixel 2XL phone. I am thankful that it works.

Fabulous lunch, wine-tasting, and good deed

I had a fabulous lunch on Thursday. I went out with my department to a new restaurant and had a vegan pizza with lots of mushrooms. It was delicious!

Later on in the evening, I went to a wine-tasting event. I got to try three different white wines, followed by three different red wines. We also had food to nibble on. I loved it.

I said hi to a person at the event. We have crossed paths for a while. She rarely talks to folks. I decided to break the ice. It worked.

At the end of the event, she asked me if I could drive her to the closest intersection, so she could catch a bus. I said yes.

After talking to her in my car for a bit, I found out that she doesn't live too far from me. I offered to drive her home. She was so appreciative that she said that she'd buy me a coffee next time.

It pays to be nice and do something nice for someone, to make that person's day and yours.

Dead Mac mini... again!

My Mac mini is dead again. I will need to use my MacBook Air for blogging. Right now, I'm on my phone as I continue troubleshooting.

Oh, what fun! It's likely a sign that I need to replace my Mac mini.

Mac mini issues after a software upgrade - again!

My Mac mini is dead. Yep, again.

I have High Sierra as its operating system. There was an update. I gave it a shot. All I get after the installation and countless reboots is a white screen with the Apple logo, and a grey status bar that does not budge.

I spent last night troubleshooting online with two different support guys. They were great, but I got disconnected from the text chat session.

I will be giving it a try later on tonight. Here's hoping that the connection doesn't die again.

Issues with my Mac mini and file backups

I had a bit of a scare with my Mac mini a couple of days ago. It was one reason why I didn't post anything in my blog for a bit. Yesterday, my Mac mini was still out of commission. I used my laptop to make my update.

The last time I used my Mac mini was the night before I went on vacation. When I came back, I uploaded all my photos to my computer and then shut it down.

The next day, my Mac mini would not boot up. You typically get a white progress bar and then your screen to sign in. I ended up with a black screen with four options to restore my computer. It wasn't a good sign.

I rebooted it a few times. I got something different each time, including a circle with a slash across it. My Mac mini was also trying to detect the power button and my wireless mouse, but was unsuccessful.

I decided to unplug my computer's power cable from the wall outlet, wait for roughly five minutes, plug it back in, and start my computer up. Guess what? My computer came back to life. Yay!

I did some research online. This incident happens when an automatic software update starts, but doesn't install completely. It must have happened while I was uploading my photos, but I had no indication that an update had happened. Powering off my computer cleared this installation process up and allowed my computer to boot up properly.

The last time this computer died on me occurred when I was upgrading the operating system. I went to the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. For some reason, genius sounds sarcastic in my head. The solution was to reinstall the operating system, which meant that whatever files weren't backed up would be lost.

I was bright back then to have the majority of my important files, the bulk of which are my photos and music, on my external hard drive. Wiping my entire hard drive was fine. I restored them just fine.

However, after restoring my Mac mini, my music remained on my external hard drive, but my photos had to be on my computer's hard drive to sync properly with my iPhone.

This recent scare made me decide to do the following:

• Move my Photos library back to my external hard drive. I don't own an iPhone anymore, so I don't have the need to store this library on my hard drive.
• Back up my Mac mim's hard drive. 

The second point is significant. I don't know why I never got around to backing up my data. The photos that I take on my Google Pixel phone are automatically backed up to Google Photos, so I"m good there. My photos taken with my DSLR camera are not backed up. Should I lose them on my hard drive, I have nothing.

Right now, I am in the process of moving my photos from my hard drive to my external hard drive. I have 170 GB of photos. It will take a while!

I also have Time Machine set up to back up my files at long last. Better late than never, as the saying goes.

Farewell to the old laptop

Back in 2008, I was a graduate student and completed my degree through distance education. It was the first year in which our chats went from an instant-messaging, text-only discussion to an online video format. 

I had a Mac mini at the time that was one of the earlier models, which could not handle streaming video. So, I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have to turn on the video camera, but could simply participate through the voice chat.

Eventually, for one of my courses, I needed to run software that was Windows-specific. I couldn't run it on a virtual machine on my Mac mini. I caved and bought a laptop that was on sale at Staples.

Well, this laptop finally died on me last week. I ended up with a system error. I didn't even get a glorious blue screen of death. I just kept looking at my black screen of horror.

Okay, it wasn't really a horror. It was more like an inconvenience. I was at a crossroads. Should I attempt to salvage all data on my hard drive and throw out the laptop, or should I save it by getting a new hard drive and reinstalling Windows?

I opted with the former. These days, I can get a faster, more powerful laptop than spending hours trying to fix old technology.

I am not your average technical writing gal. My undergraduate degree was computer science, which was my major. I had friends during those days call me a techie because I fiddled with my computers over the years. I swapped out and upgraded hard disks. I changed sound cards and CD-ROM drives. I upgraded motherboards and added more RAM. 

To this day, I still like doing all these things, but I haven't needed to do it because I became a Mac user at home. I am lucky that I haven't had any issues with it. At work, I have a Windows-based laptop and don't have the luxury of tearing it apart, whether I want to out of frustration or not!

So, last Saturday, I went to my local computer store. I walked through the main doors and was immediately greeted by a helpful male staff member.

"Can I help find something for you?"
"Yes, I'm looking for a hard drive enclosure," I stated.
"This way," he replied, leading me over to the proper aisle. "Computer or laptop?"
"Laptop," I replied. "I need a 2.5" enclosure."

I go to this store because I am not treated like a woman who knows nothing about computers. I get that often. However, after talking to me for a bit, you can tell that I know a decent amount to get by.

He was helpful. I bought my new enclosure, went home, took my laptop apart, and seated my laptop hard drive into the enclosure. I now have a new external hard disk drive with a USB 3.0 connection. All my files are there.

So, my next debate is whether I truly need a replacement laptop. I could use my work laptop, but there is so much encryption on it that it's just sluggish to do fun stuff on it. Fortunately, I am not under any pressure.

After I was done with graduate school, I bought a new Mac mini. It is my main computer at home ever since. The majority of my blog post are written from it and I have yet to complain about its performance.

I will miss my old laptop. My guy and I have spent many fine times talking on Skype. Lately, we both noticed that when I was using Skype on this laptop now and again that the connection would drop because Skype would hang. I do have fond memories of my conversations with him using this laptop. I should stick to using Skype from my phone or my tablet.

Depression and a movie

It saddened me to hear about Robin Williams's passing. He was too young to take his own life. May he rest in peace.

Depression is an illness. My guy has been talking about his battle with depression often, which I welcome. It does worry me when he doesn't open up, because it is difficult to tell how he is feeling. However, we talk often and he knows that I am there for him whenever he needs a good listener.

What is my favourite Robin Williams movie? Well, there are so many to choose from. I must admit that I love Dead Poets Society.

I was in high school when this movie came out. My closest friends and I hit the movie theatre to watch it. We all loved it. It was inspiring, moving, tragic, funny, and more.

I actually have Robert Sean Leonard's autograph, who went on to star in House. I could identify with Ethan Hawke's character in the movie, for I was a fairly quiet person who didn't enjoy public speaking back then. These days, I can't shut up!

Of course, this movie has a paddling scene. I secretly wanted to be paddled. I never told anyone that I liked this scene. Now, you all do.

I own this movie on VHS. Yes, I even have a dual VHS player, thanks to living in the States and watching QVC. I don't even know if GoVideo is still kicking around, but my double-decker VHS system still works.

Unfortunately, I am not sure where I put this movie, but I need to dig it up. Otherwise, I will need to get with the times by either downloading it off iTunes or getting a DVD version.