5C's Que Pasa

Hard to believe that this is the last post for September.  I think the saying, that as we age, time moves faster, is very true.  The month has passed in a blur. Today was a day of errands.  First stop was to visit my favorite techs.  Can’t remember if I told you that I bought another printer last Tuesday, a wireless one.  I think our old printer which is perfect and does a great job is not compatible with my new computer.  I could not get it to work so I bought a new one.  I never had time when I got it home to open it until yesterday.  I should explain that I was shown how to set it up and took precise notes.  However the power cord was not in the box nor the connection cord from the printer to the computer.  I distinctly remember the fellow carefully winding them up.  I guess they somehow never made it into the box.  Colin found other cords today but I still was unable to get it to work on the wifi/wireless setting.

So off I went to visit my favorite techs. Why do people park like this?

I found the perfect parking spot 🙂 No one was going to bang my doors today.

Both of these photos were taken with my iPhone but it took me a very long while to get them transferred to my desktop.  Something wrong with an email setting which I will reset when I have an extra moment.  So I picked up the cords I needed and was told that my printer was now on sale and I was eligible for a $44.80 refund.  Done 😀  I also mentioned how much trouble I was having trying to set up the printer.  Mr Manager offered to have someone come out to my home at no charge next week to set it up.  My day was getting better 😎  Earlier today Colin called to have someone come out to do the set up @ $95.00, now cancelled.

After I quick stop to pick up some pesos that I had previously ordered, I stopped at Starbucks in the mall to pick up a decaf coffee on a free gift card.  The purpose of this photo is to show how small the quiche is compared to the size of a bagel and is selling for $6.25.  Who pays that kind of money for a few bites of quiche?

Yes I am aware that the photo is turned.  I redid it several times and it insists on staying turned.  I decided that if I wanted to complete this post tonight that I just have to move on.  This was also taken with my iPhone so I suspect this is the cause of the problem.  Next time I will bring my camera with me.  My brain can’t take too much more of this technical stuff 😯

Next stop was Michaels.  Colin and I are flying to Winnipeg the end of October to celebrate Mommio’s  103rd birthday.  I wanted to pick up a few things to brighten up her room.  You will have to wait and see what I got until I post about it.  Yes I do know that I still haven’t done the post of Colin’s recent visit and that will come very soon. I got some great deals there as a few things were on sale and I had picked up a 50% coupon off a flyer this morning.  Lucky find for me as that alone saved me $15.00 on one item.  More shopping at Walmart for things we will need in Mexico.  The last stop before I headed home was to pick up some batteries for my Fitbit Zip.  Sometimes a battery will last 3 months but the last one lasted just 3 weeks.  I asked about that and the guy at the battery store said that the problem was with my device.  I don’t think so.  Anyway he gave me $1.00 off each battery so that was another $8.00 saved.  In total I saved $94.60 today including the printer refund but not including the $95.00 we saved by not having a hired tech come to our home.  A good shopping day indeed.  Plus I got a coupon for 10% off my next order of printer ink as well as a 40% coupon off at Micheals.  I will be returning to buy something for Mommio.

Once I was safely unloaded the sky opened.  The rain was so strong that it was bouncing off the lake.

Thanks for all your comments about Colin’s photo in my last post.  He does this with every photo he takes.  It is 8:25PM as I type and he has been sitting at his computer since 6AM with only a break to grab a snack to eat at his desk.  I have mentioned that we are retiring next year but he will never truly retire.  As long as someone wants to hire him he will work.  However he will no longer take a job because we need to, rather he will chose jobs that inspire his creativity with the subject to be photographed.  There may also be a fee increase to make it worth our while 😉

The back of the same home.  Created by compiling 17 photos.  No one else that we are aware of uses this technique.  The pool is green as they have green underwater lights.

Time to go make us some dinner.  Thanks for stopping in and as always your comments are very appreciated.

I just realized that three different cameras were used in this post 😆

Colin is doing photography of this house for the builder.  As you can see it is a tall and huge home.  Last year we had already left for the Napa Valley and onward to Mexico. The builder really wanted photos of this house to enter it into a builders award competition.  It wasn’t quite ready before we left.  Because we were gone he hired someone else.  That person knew Colin’s work and told the builder that he could do the same type of photography.  When the builder saw those photos he did not  bother to enter the competition.  Yesterday Colin spent close to 15 hours at that home working non stop without a break.  That builder waited a year for Colin to be available to do the photography in perfect conditions.

He sent me and the builder this photo this afternoon with the following description.  Here is the 1st photo, made from raw shots taken. Camera 7 ft on high tripod. 15 vertical images taken and stitched. Windows added. Fireplace added.  Shot with controlled strobes. 

I forgot to ask him how long the set up took but I do know that it took him another two hours to put all the images together to create this photo.

And he is out there again today doing it with another home.  I know that this one will win some awards for certain.

Hope you enjoyed a glimpse into what we do.

I now have two working computers.  I picked up the iMac desktop late yesterday afternoon.

The first thing I did was pepper the techs with lots of questions as to why it happened, etc.  Also why was the laptop alright but not the desktop?  It turns out that it was not a failed hard drive on the iMac as they first thought.  That included the other three new computers that they tried and thought that the hard drives had also failed.  I believe I mentioned previously that the new iMacs now only work with the Sierra OS.  For some reason it was fine when I brought it home late last Thursday but when I went to open Open Office the program on Friday morning, it crashed.  Later in the day I took it in and it was the next morning ( last Saturday ) that the system failed as the tech was trying to restore the computer.  They don’t know for certain but it could have been a glitch between Sierra and Open Office.

This past Monday, just a few days ago Apple launched it’s next OS which is High Sierra.  Fortunately for me this level up allowed my computer to function.  My iMac and all future iMacs will only run on High Sierra.  Of course I asked about all the rest of the world who bought a new iMac in September.  Did they all crash?  Of course not.  They don’t know why what happened happened.  All we know is that it now works.  I have been using it all day and all is well.

As to why the laptop had no issue with Sierra, it was because it was an older computer (2015 ) that can operate on a lower OS .  I have decided not to upgrade the MacBook Air to High Sierra until I see how the iMac functions.  The High Sierra is an upgrade to the behind the scenes, the thinking part of the computer.  Nothing has changed visually.

All I can say is that I am lucky the update happened a few days ago or I would have been stuck with my old desktop that won’t operate iPhoto.  There is no room in the laptop for photos, I have 45,000 or so.  So I would have not have had any access to my current photos from the past few months.   Colin did do a download to an extra hard drive of all my photos last fall. They told me that I would have had to wait for the next batch of computers that only work with High Sierra 🙄

Now I have to figure out how to install the printer and I should be good to go.  I have spent the entire day trying to catch up.  It has been a perfect autumn day here with a blue sky and 75F/24C.  I was going to try and head out for a walk but got bogged down in catching up the business.  I am also doing a back up to the new time machine and that has been running for 8 hours and has another 5 hours to run.  At least it has finally started copying onto the hard drive.

I just gave myself a mini heart attack.  I was looking for a particular photo to add to the bottom of this post.  Somehow my iPhoto has no photos after Sept. 9th which is most unusual.  I just now found some on the laptop and a few still in my camera.  So I guess I am okay, nothing major appears to be missing.  Now I just have to figure this new iPhoto.  By the way this is not the current Apple iPhoto but the one previous to it which I had requested.  The program that was in my old desktop and the one I love and can use well won’t operate on either of my two computers.  So I now have another learning curve.  One day I will have to get back to learning my iPhone.

My gosh I don’t see how I am going to have time to start preparing for our trip to Mexico.  I am weeks behind and have a full slate ahead of me 😥

A somewhat fuzzy photo of a lovely heron just offshore. I took this from inside the house as I did not want to frighten it away.

The computer issues continue.  Sometimes life just doesn’t seem fair.  Of course all these computer complaints pale in comparison to what is happening in the world what with hurricanes, earthquakes and international issues.  Is this going to be our new normal?  I certainly hope not.  Meanwhile our hearts go out to all those affected in so many areas.  Their lives are forever changed.

This is what a $750.00 hard drive looks like for a 2015 MacBook Air.

In my last post, oh so very long ago, I mentioned how long it was taking to get the laptop back.  I had to bring in my desktop iMac for them to migrate the data from one computer to the other. I had no computer to work with.  Colin’s desktop has none of my passwords plus he uses Chrome while I use Firefox. He doesn’t use iPhoto which I do so it was not possible for me to post. I finally got both computers back on Saturday the 16th, a full five days later.  My joy lasted about 20 minutes.  We use both Gmail and Telus and the latter would not connect o the laptop.  So I called the computer store and they told me to call Telus.  Telus told me to contact the computer so store and that was just the beginning.

The first Telus agent I spoke with was in Guatemala, the second was in the Philippines, the third was in India.  Next I was insisting on speaking with a supervisor.  He refused to tell me where he was located other than overseas.  He was very rude and raised his voice to me.  It mattered not that we had been clients for over 30 years.  He did finally transfer me to some elite Telus Plus tech support and made it seem like he was doing me a favor.  I spoke with two different agents.  The last one told me he could not help me.  The supervisor promised to send me his email contact and to follow up with me the next day.  He did not.

At one point I was speaking to two people in different locations on different phones.  I was on the phone that night for five solid hours.  The issue was still not resolved.  I took the computer in on the following Monday and it was resolved.  I also had discovered that the data transfer had only transferred blank folders and none of my stored files 😥

Meanwhile late Sunday night/early Monday morning we had a neighbor / friend pass unexpectedly.  She did get into the ambulance but never made it to the hospital.  That is yet another issue that we are dealing with.  The family came over Monday afternoon to ask for photos as they had none.  That is when we discovered that my iMac desktop would not bring up iPhoto, it kept crashing.  Fortunately we were able to go back over the last five years through my blog ( great search feature ) and bring up about six photos.

So Tuesday morning we brought in the desktop to the same place that we had just got the laptop back from.  I was dealing with the manager and it went on and on and it was suggested that the hard drive was likely slowly failing  I had been planning to get a new desktop next spring and could not see us without a computer in Mexico in the event that it failed, so on the spur of the moment I purchased a new 21.5 inch, they no longer carry the 24 inch which I had been using.

Of course this meant that the data would have to be transferred from the original desktop.  I had been told on the phone that they needed the actual computer to do the migration.  I later found out that that was not true and they could have done it from my time machine which is my hard drive backup.  So once again I was without a computer.  Yes I had the laptop now but it did not have the master files I required to do my business work with.  Amazingly they managed the transfer in 48 hours and I got my new desktop back late on Thursday the 21st.  I wonder why it took 5 days to do the transfer to the laptop 🙄

The new one is much thinner and lighter.

It is also a tad shorter and a bit wider.

We also got a new time machine back up. It is much more compact then the old one.

I didn’t start using the new desktop until the next morning.  I played with it for a while trying to understand an entire new system.  I had been on OS X , 10.6.8 and now I was on macOS Sierra, 10.12.6.   A massive learning curve for me.  At least both the laptop and the desktop were running the same system.  So after a few hours I decided to start catching up on my invoicing and that is when I discovered that Open Office refused to work.  It only opened with Numbers or Pages.

So just this past Thursday, the 21st, I spent seven, yes seven, hours on the phone with the tech people and I was once again pushed to the upper echelon layer of support.

I had made a lovely Indian dinner for us and I was forced to eat it at my desk.  I went through four agents, one fellow was with me for four hours and then his shift ended and he passed me to someone else and when his shift ended he passed to someone else.  They all tried so many things including taking over both computers remotely.  Each time I was transferred I had to re explain the problem.  The last fellow I dealt with told me that he was on his own, has many waiting on the line and could not help me.  He did give me about 30 minutes of his time but in the end told me how could not help me.  So ended my 7 hours of non stop chatting.  I was beyond frustrated.  Over these past non stop days of computer issues Colin kept telling me how calm I was.  Of course I felt like murdering someone but it would not have solved my computer issues 😯

So we headed out bright and early this past Friday to be first in line when the store opened.  We had the laptop and both desktops and both time machines.  I forgot to mention that I had my third session on my veins just this past Wednesday.  I could not fit in three sessions before we left for Venice last June.

Amazingly Mr Geek the manager figured out within 15 minutes what the problem was.  He said that he needed the computer for a few hours to fix everything.  He wanted me to leave the laptop ( I was not going to be without a computer yet again and as it turns out it was a good decision ) and I said no and that I would bring it back later when I came to pick up the desktop.  The end of the day came and the computer was not ready.  I wasn’t surprised.  We made an appointment to pick it up Saturday morning.

The phone rang just as we were heading out yesterday morning to pick up my computer.  Mr Geek told me that the hard drive had failed overnight.  He needed to get a brand new computer and transfer the data yet again.  Heck my new computer was only 48 hours old and now was dead.  Of course he promised that I would have it by end of day yesterday.

Of course that did not happen. Not only that, they now wanted the time machine back that they had sent home with us Friday morning.  So Colin had to drive there and back just before 7PM Saturday  They promised they would call me today to come pick it up.  I figured that they were busy and so I headed out to the store about 5PM today just before closing.  They had not called me for a reason.  It turns out that they had gone through three brand new iMac desktops and none of them worked!

I am not a computer person and just barely get by.  I only want to know what I need to know and I am more than happy.  My world was falling apart and crashing on my shoulders.  It appears that the problem has something to do with the Sierra upgrade that was required. The data transferred but the update crashed the computer.  There were three Apple specialists involved today and no one knew what to do.  Meanwhile they have run out of computers and the next delivery isn’t until Tuesday.  Tomorrow there is supposed to be a Sierra update that may or may not help the situation.  I suggested just downgrading me a few systems.  Nope, not going to happen.  Last year Apple started building computers that only worked with the latest OS system Sierra so there was no way I could go backward.  I am stuck at the moment.  The plan is to call the Apple experts tomorrow, etc.  They are all confident that it will work out.  Me, not so much.  I mean who has to buy a new hard drive for a two year old laptop and then purchases a new desktop that keeps crashing and killing itself, four times, in less than two weeks.

It was a massive step to get an iPhone which I am still very much struggling with and then a new OS system in both computers.  My brain is pretty much fried.  So now you know why I have been so silent.  At least now I have a laptop to blog with.  It doesn’t work for my business needs but what else can I do.  My last thirteen days have been total chaos surrounding computers.  I am so very far behind in my business work.

Colin is doing the best he can.  Now that the smoke season is over we are back to the rain season with occasional cloudy days.  If our clients want their photography done they have to go with clouds in the sky.  We have decided to delay our departure to Mexico until November 6th.  Hopefully we will be able to complete most of the jobs by then.

I leave you with this, taken a few evenings ago.

My laptop came back with a new hard drive but they were unable to retrieve the data.  So just this last Tuesday I had to bring it in along with my desktop to the Geek Squad.  It is normally a $150.00 fee but they are doing it as part of my monthly membership at no charge.  I was told that it would take 24 – 48 hours at the most.  It is still not done and they could not give me a date when it would be ready to pickup.

I am using Colin’s computer for a few minutes to get this to you.  No photos as he doesn’t have iphoto.  His computer is really high up compared to mine and is extremely awkward to type on plus I have to tilt my neck up.  Not fun to use.  I am lucky to get an hour here and there to do a few things.  However all my passwords are in my computer as well as all my business info.  I can’t even do any invoicing nor pay monthly taxes.

Now you know why I have been silent.  Hopefully I will be back soon.

By the way Colin did get back from Winnipeg Monday evening and I will have stories and photos for you about how Mommio is managing once my desk is back to normal.  Meanwhile I am finding time to do all those involved jobs that don’t need a computer.  Try to imagine not having a computer for 3 -5 days.