Author: Mark Alexander

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Robopsychosis

If you’re tired of hearing me bitch about Apple and technology, you might want to just skip past this one because it’s gonna be a long one.

“It Just Works!”

Except when it doesn’t.

As I wrote a few days ago, I’d decided to bite the bullet and take my six-month-old MacBook Pro into the Apple store so that the wonky keyboard could be replaced. I knew it was going to have to be sent out because the entire top case would have to be replaced. I went ahead and made the appointment.

I’d upgraded Ben’s old MacBook with a 512GB hard drive and bumped the RAM to 8 GB—the same configuration I had on my new machine which would allow me to effortlessly move all my data onto the old machine while the new one was getting fixed and not have to pick and choose like I did the last time I had to use the trusty old warhorse.

I’d initially wanted to get my data transferred before I took the machine in for service in case I ran into any glitches, so as I’d done dozens of times before when restoring my entire profile onto a different machine, Friday night I installed a fresh copy of the OS on the old machine, logged in with a Temp Admin account, and then ran Migration Assistant. It kept crapping out. Even though everything was properly checked off, the first attempt transferred everything except the Applications. What the hell? I attempted to go back and just select “Applications” at that point, and after churning away for another hour or so it informed me it was finished. I logged in and nothing had been transferred.

At this point I wiped and reinstalled again. This time I selected only Applications. Success! But when I went back and attempted to restore everything else, it crapped out each time it got around to discovering “Other Files and Folders.” After banging my head against the wall for the better part of the evening, I decided to attempt a peer-to-peer restore from my new machine to the old one. Once again I wiped and reinstalled the OS. Set up the peer-to-peer option for restore and waited. And waited. Because it was going over our wireless network, it was going to take hours, but it seemed to be working. That was fine. I was ready for bed anyway.

Saturday morning I woke to find it hung at “51 minutes remaining” on restoring just my profile (it hadn’t even gotten around to the Applications or “Other Files and Folders.” No problem; my appointment wasn’t until 11:45. It was only 7 am. I had plenty of time.

Except it never changed. Finally at 10:45, I pulled the plug and wiped and reinstalled the OS on the new machine before taking it in. Call me paranoid, but I don’t trust Apple that much with all my data. I figured I could sort out the Time Machine issue one way or another when I got back. Little did I realize it would literally take all day yesterday get up and running again. Flashback to 2009 and Windows HELL.

Upon arrival at Apple Biltmore, the concierge  gave me more than a little attitude when I approached her. I don’t know what the problem was, but she was anything other than smiles and welcoming vibes. In fact, the whole energy level of the place was vile. I remember when I used to enjoy going there, whether it was to buy something or get something fixed. Now I dread it.

I explained my problem to the “Genius” and he whisked the laptop to the back for several minutes, finally returning to say that yes, he was able to verify my issues. He said it would be 3-5 days for the repair

Upon returning home, no matter what I did to restore the data, it wasn’t working. I wasn’t too worried; I knew all my data was safe, and most importantly I had multiple manual backups of my photos and music in case something was really seriously out of whack. Everything could be restored. Finally, somewhere around 9 pm I did a deep dive on Google and the overwhelming recommendation was to run a repair on the Time Machine. I started that as I went to bed.

Yesterday morning, finished, it reported multiple errors, none of which could be repaired.

FUCK.

“The data is safe. The data is safe. Your important stuff is backed up multiple places.” Nonetheless, my anxiety level was rising.

So once again I wiped and reinstalled the OS. At this point I knew i was going to have to reinstall all my apps either by moving them manually from the Time Machine or worse—from scratch—and then manually pull the rest of my data from the Time Machine. While I didn’t look forward to it, it was probably well past time for such an endeavor. Multiple installs and uninstalls of apps and multiple OS upgrades over the years since I last did a clean install probably guaranteed there was a lot of sludge on the drive that needed to go away. It would also afford me a new, good backup to use with Migration Assitant when I got my machine back from repair. And if nothing else, philosophically it was a good way to start the new year. My two main concerns however were restoring my mail folders (I store pretty much everything locally, and based on past experience, moving Apple Mail from one machine to another is a pain in the ass, unlike Windows and Outlook where it’s generally just a matter of copying a .pst file.) and my Chrome Bookmarks. I hadn’t bothered to export them before all this started, foolishly thinking everything was safe and sound.

By late morning I’d located the mailboxes. Each one had to be individually imported back into the new instance of Mail I’d set up, but everything was there. I know it’s a silly, first-world problem, but I like to keep that stuff. My anxiety level dropped a bit.

When I fired up Chrome, I logged in and—braise the baby cheebus—all my bookmarks were there. The same went for my RSS Reader. Since I switched to Feedly some months ago it was simple to reattach it to the Reader. Anxiety level continued to drop.

The rest of the day was still spent in robopsychosis, but at least my anxiety had bottomed out; I copied all my apps over from the Time Machine backup, knowing full well that more than just a couple of them wouldn’t work properly at first. That proved to be the case, and a simple uninstall and reinstall from the Mac App store solved 95% of the problems. The remainder were licensing issues, solved by contacting the developers who—amazingly—were actually working yesterday and able to help me get everything sorted out.

Ben and I headed out yesterday afternoon to do our usual Sunday grocery run and prior to leaving I started manually copying the +150GB worth of music files back from the Time Machine. When we got home, everything was transferred, and firing up iTunes verified that everything was present and accounted for.

As if I hadn’t experienced enough Tech Hell this past weekend, Ben and I decided to switch cell providers. We’d been with Verizon for years and were very happy with the coverage and service, but in the interest of saving money, a few months ago we switched to T-Mobile. BIG mistake. The old adage of “you get what you pay for” could never be more true. Coverage was spotty (Ben had no service at his school), customer service was a joke, and while we still owed $1000 on the two new phones, we knew we had to get out of the contract.

So back to Verizon we went. Unfortunately, we had to buy two new phones because T-Mobile phones are locked to the carrier. Supposedly our numbers were ported over (we got these at Target), but as of this morning, all the phones are still active with duplicate phone numbers, and it’s causing nothing but grief for sending/receiving calls and SMS messages. We’ll get it sorted today, but damn…really?!?

Anyhow, before we went on our Verizon run, I set to copying the ±150GB worth of personal photos and um…”other” pictures from the Time Machine. It was still running by the time we got back, but eventually everything came through.

By the time 2018 arrived last night, the Mac was back in order except for the issues caused by two different phones with the same number trying to link to the Messages application.

Lesson learned? I really do have a lot of stuff on my laptop that I can’t afford to lose. Multiple Time Machine disks are necessary and I need to run disk repair on a regular basis on each of them to prevent this from ever happening again—because having to go through all this is exactly the kind of shit that sent me fleeing Microsoft, and as much as I bitch about Apple, I could never go back.

 

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Dogs Versus Cats

The Things We Do In The Name Of Family

I was never around cats as a kid. Dad was terribly allergic which severely limited the selection of animals we were able to open our home to. I grew up with dogs.

But through an unfortunate series of events, my first pet as an adult living on my own was a cat. She came to me by way of a tweeked-out ex who was flying home for Christmas and couldn’t be bothered to bring her indoors while he was gone. That’s how Sasha came into my home.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until about three months later—well past the point where I’d ever give her up—that I developed a horrible cat allergy and ended up spending the next two years living on antihistamines and rescue inhalers until I moved to a no-pet apartment building and she went to live out her days with Mom.

The cat allergy has never really gone away. I can spend very brief periods around them without medication, and even being doped up on Benadryl I can last about an hour or so before my eyes turn red and I start sneezing.

All these years I’ve fancied myself a cat person, in spite of the allergy, but after having dogs for the past three years, that’s not so true any more.

This past week I’ve been tending to my sister’s cat herd (she has seven of the beasts) while she and her husband are out of town. I wasn’t going to turn down $200 if it meant taking a few Benadryl now and then—and because she was loading them up with self-watering/feeding bowls I could get away with looking in on them only every other day.

The first day (the day after they left) wasn’t bad. The seven litter boxes (yes, seven) were mostly empty and I was able to scoop out everything and put it in a single grocery bag to be deposited in the trash. I’d pre-medicated and didn’t seem to suffer much.

Last night, however, was an entirely different story. Every litter box was full, and I ended up using four grocery bags to haul the mess out to the trash. One bowl (the recirculating water bowl) had gone empty and one feeder was also bare. I figured since I was in and out so quickly the last time with no lasting repercussions, I could afford to stay a little longer last night and really make sure everything was done completely.

One of her cats (the newest member of the family) is very affectionate. And very talkative. Another one, an older white female who lives in the sink in the guest bath makes it quite clear she doesn’t want to be touched in any way. The remainder are friendly but aloof, with one only being found deep under a bed and who has steadfastly refused to come out when I’m around.

After being at her place about 45 minutes last night (despite pre-medicating again) I went on a sneezing fit that seemed to last forever. I’m not surprised. My sister’s house is clutter central; she has knick-knacks and doo-dads everywhere (it makes me want to come home and start tossing stuff out) and from the looks of it the majority of them haven’t been dusted in ages. Add to the usual stuff are holiday decorations of every size and shape. In other words, it’s a dander-trap. By the time I left fifteen minutes later the areas where Simba (their newest) brushed against me had broken out in hives and my eyes were red and watering. As I locked up after finishing with the task at hand I was ready to tell my sister, “Please don’t ever ask me to do this again.”

I came home, ripped my contact lenses out and doused my eyes with anti-allergy drops. I took a couple puffs from my rescue inhaler and after about 30 minutes I felt more or less back to normal.

This morning, however, I have a scratchy throat and my eyes are itching again.

Thankfully my sister is back home midday Saturday so I won’t have to go over there again before they get back…

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The Last Workday of 2017

And I’m here by myself, with both coworkers again being “on leave” at the last minute.

I knew from looking at my supervisor’s calendar earlier this week that they’d be gone yesterday, but there was nothing about either of them being gone today as well. I guess that’s one of the perks of being a beloved FTE who has worked ONE PLACE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE; you get to magically extend your paid leave with little or no notice.

I can just imagine what would happen if I tried that. Nevermind that as a contractor I have no paid or holiday leave (and I only have a meager amount of sick time because of a new Arizona law that went into effect last July). “Uh Mark, there have been some staffing changes, and we’ve notified your agency that your services will no longer be required.” Yeah, we’ve seen that script played out many times over the nearly two years I’ve worked here.

Oh well. There was literally nothing going on yesterday, and based on how empty the parking lot was when I rolled up I doubt much will be happening today either. Heck, all the lights were off in my section of the building when I arrived…

 

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The Ongoing Keyboard Saga

I know y’all are probably as tired of hearing me bitch about the keyboard issues on my six-month-old MacBook Pro as Ben is, but this is my blog and I’ll bitch if I want to.

This week I finally reached the end of my rope with this fucking keyboard. I got a little cash for tending my sister’s cats over the holidays, so I bit the bullet and ordered a larger hard drive and more memory for Ben’s old MacBook so I can transfer all my data and then take mine in for service and comfortably be without it for however long it takes Apple to replace the entire top case—because just the keyboard can’t be replaced. No, the entire top case and battery (because it’s  glued in place) has to be swapped out as well . The hardware I ordered is due to arrive from Amazon today and tomorrow, and I have an appointment at the Apple Store on Saturday.

It’s as if the machine knows what’s going to happen. Now all of a sudden I have not one wonky key, but five that either won’t type without pounding on them or type double characters. I’ve followed Apple’s ridiculous keyboard “maintenance” instructions and now in addition to the aforementioned keys still not working, two of them are brighter than the others. (Obviously the compressed air loosened and blew away something under the keycaps that controlled the brightness.)

I swear this is the worst MacBook I’ve ever bought from Apple. Every day I regret not purchasing last year’s model when I had the opportunity. I pray to the gods that the keyboard is fixed/reverted/redesigned on the next iteration of these machines because at that time this one is getting replaced as soon as possible thereafter.

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Call Me By Your Name

One of the films I most wanted to see this year (besides a couple of little sci-fi romps) was the independent film Call Me By Your Name. That was based solely on the orgasmic reviews of a certain blogger who had screened it multiple times when it first appeared on the festival circuit (and the fact that Armie Hammer—for whom I have very impure thoughts—was starring). Being in such limited distribution however, I really had very little hope that it would ever make it to the cinematic backwoods of Phoenix.

Well, it did arrive. Not in the first wave of releases or even the second, but nonetheless it did, and we got a chance to see it yesterday.

I liked it. Not on the same level that said blogger did, but enough that I might want to see it again on the big screen and definitely add it to my collection when it comes out on disc. I thought the first half of the film was plodding, and agreed with Ben that they seemed to go into way too much character development that did nothing to move the story forward. But the second half definitely took off and engaged me. Armie’s character comes off as more than a bit of an asshole—but it came from a place of uncertainty. Both Oliver (Hammer) and Elio (Timothée Chalamet) are unsure of the intents and affection of the other, so they do a push me-pull you love-hate dance for the vast majority of the film until they finally realize the feelings each of them have for the other are mutual. It’s a situation we’ve all been in at one point or another, but it seemed to me the film spent way too much time building up that tension.

There has been some blowback regarding the relative ages of the two main characters. Elio is 17; Oliver is 26. It should be noted that the age of consent in Italy is 14. So calm down folks. Even though it may not sit with Puritanical America’s ideals (except of course, if it was a girl), Elio’s more than legal at 17 and Oliver is not a kiddie diddler.

Ironically that age difference is mirrored in the actors’ real lives. Chalamet is 23 and Hammer is 32.





Some random thoughts:

  • I know exactly what it feels like to have a love like that.
  • The stillness of the film was refreshing from the usual blow-everything-up fare  at full volume of other modern cinema.
  • I love how they alternated between English, Italian, and French.
  • The wardrobe brought back many warm memories of the era. Especially the short shorts.
  • Setting the story in the early 1980s was genius. They didn’t have to worry about AIDS or social media or posting selfies to Instagram and then feeling bad because everyone else’s life was better than theirs.
  • The languid pace of life expressed in the film and the sense of isolation from the rest of the world was wonderful, although it took some time to get back into that mindset and away from our current frenetic “always on” culture.
  • Their goodbye at the train station and the subsequent followup six months later was heartbreaking, although the discussion Elio’s father had with his son after Oliver’s departure is one that I wish every father could have with their gay sons or daughters.


There is already talk of a sequel.

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Shower Thoughts

Naughty kids can easily take revenge on Santa by burning the coal and contributing to the destruction of his habitat via the greenhouse effect.

Merry Christmas!

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Shower Thoughts

Staying off Twitter is like quitting smoking. After only a couple weeks away from it you see how disgusting it really is.

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Call Me Crazy

…but this non-Apple mockup of a future MacBook Pro certainly seems to be the direction Cupertino is heading. I’m not sure how I feel about a touchscreen keyboard since I hated the one on my old iPad, but as was pointed out by JP earlier today in a conversation we were having, if Apple provides some sort of haptic feedback to simulate actual key presses, it might not be such a bad way to go

And getting rid of mechanical keys would certainly do away with their current crop of keyboard problems that stem from Jony Ive’s fanatical drive to make the thinnest device possible. I mean, you can’t get much thinner than a touch screen, can you? It would also alleviate my own personal bugaboo about keyboards in general, the way the most used physical keys get worn down and shiny from constant use.

What do you think?




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Sadly, No Alien Overlords

What was that in the western sky on Friday night that stopped traffic and sparked both alarm and curiosity?

As I suspected—since it came from the direction of Vandenburg AFB in southern California—it was just a rocket, unfortunately.

Sadly, no arrival of our more-than-welcome alien overlords.

Damn.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:27 p.m., was carrying 10 satellites to low-Earth orbit. The satellites will be part of a constellation operated by Iridium Communications. All 10 satellites successfully deployed.

Here’s a short video of the launch shot in Los Angeles. Pretty impressive:

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Building the Death Star

(Maximize in a dark room for full effect.)

Ben and I saw the new film last weekend. I really enjoyed it, although I didn’t get the usual adrenaline rush when the first notes of the theme rang out and the screen crawl started. By the time the end credits rolled, I wanted to see it all again. Ben was not impressed.

As has been written elsewhere, Episode VIII is definitely not your father’s Star Wars. Sacred cows are slaughtered. And as the movie itself drives home, it’s time to let go of the past and move on. I approve of this.

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How…

…as a horny gay geeky teenager in the 1970s, did astronaut and Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt manage to fly under my radar? (He was 37 when these pictures were taken.)