5C's Que Pasa

The computer incident was Monday. I spent a good deal of Tuesday working on my computer based on a fixit article sent by a caring blog reader.  It made sense and as I worked I took notes. Meanwhile I have realized that we have had several stressful incidents in the past few weeks. We found out early December that our financial advisor was retiring effective December 31st. On January 1st we received an email announcing that our accountant ( whom we have been with for over 34 years ) was retiring that day but would be around for the next year to help with the transition to the new company taken over by his employees. Major events that caused us anxiety. On January 6th we almost ran out of propane. We had to chase the truck down the street to come back and fill us. We have been with this company since 2003 when we moved here. This is our first winter here and they did not have us on the list for a two week fill but rather a three week fill. Unlike many here we use propane for our furnace, our hot water heater, our dryer, our stove top as well as our oven and of course our large fireplace. Next delivery should have been last Wednesday the 20th and they never came.  It took me being on the phone for several hours on Thursday to manage a delivery for this past Friday the 22nd. Both times we were very low and one night we had to shut off the propane use so that we had enough for the next morning. Can you imagine my surprise when a propane truck showed up yesterday, just five days after the last fill.  So I had a long conversation ( still in my nightie but wearing a jacket ) with the driver.  He gave me his personal cell number to call him if I needed propane. Since 2003 we have never ever had to worry about being filled as they checked and filled as needed at least every two weeks and more in the winter. As you see, we/I have had much stress over the past four weeks. The computer was the final straw.  I have moved on but gosh so much stress in a short period of time.

For the past three days while I have been busy dealing with all of the above Colin started to clean. Here he has taken all the glass and logs out of the fireplace. He cleaned everything and even vacuumed the burner areas.

It certainly sparkles now.

Another thing he began to do was to clean out certain cupboards including the one that we keep all of our photos albums in. We do keep actual photo memories as well as those in the computer. Needless to say he enjoyed looking at some of the albums. Our current RV before we had it repainted. This was Christmas 2001 in Pismo Beach. What caught our attention is the Christmas lights hanging from the awning. Those are the ones that we found under this house and used to put up on the fence this holiday season. No wonder we could not remember when we had used them before. Those lights are 19 years  old and now being used again. Amazing.

Another memory from 1998 when we enjoyed US Thanksgiving in NYC. New York has been a favourite of mine since 1973, I visited every year with a friend. This was the last time we visited the World Trade Centre rooftop before the tragedy struck. Of course we enjoyed an opera at the Metropolitan Opera house, one of my favourites, Carmen.

Three people far far out on the lake yesterday. They are the dark dot 1/3 from the right on the ice, just below the green.

Simply stupid. They walked from one side of the lake to the other.

Colin has been cleaning everything including dead bugs in lights.

He deep cleaned for two days. I think these are his working clothes ( now in the laundry ). Here he is vacuuming spider webs and dust off the cupboard tops.

All the time that he was cleaning I was working the phones re various  issues as mentioned above. Late yesterday afternoon I asked Colin to please call Simply Computing for me as I was short of time. A long time friend and blog reader had given me the name of her friend who was now the manager there and suggested I use her name to see if he could help me with my computer problems. Can you believe that just four days ago on January 24th someone had lit a fire in the alley next door and smoke filled the computer shop which is now temporarily closed. So Colin started checking various computer repair places and found one 😀  They have actually changed out an HHD for a solid state hard drive in iMacs before. Even better he has the right one in stock and the price is most reasonable, much cheaper than buying more RAM. My computer goes in on Thursday, a week today and if all goes well I will get it back just one day later. Bill the owner says that he is familiar with my problem and guarantees that the new SSD will take care of all the problems I am having 😛 I can only hope. He promises me that I can run my iPhotos and have lots of speed, etc.

It was a year yesterday that we had our first Covid case in Canada. Now we are dealing with two new variants.

It is up to each one of us to wear a mask, wash our hands often and social distance. Do we want to go through this for another year?

Update on my post yesterday.  I forgot to mention that tech guy #1 uses a 2015 computer exactly like mine while tech #3 is using a 2011 computer the same as mine. They are both running OS Mojave by choice as they think it is the best ever OS.  Yet they could not figure out my problem 😡  Tech #3 suggested I might be able to remove my HHD and put in a SSD but he wasn’t sure if it was possible and then someone would need the special tools to do it.  He thought that there was no way it could be done. It was almost as if he was hinting at something but was unable to tell me that it was possible according to Apple.  I have been researching all day and I think that it is doable but not easy.  However that is a post for down the road. Meanwhile many thanks to all who emailed with great suggestions and to those that commented with wonderful  ideas as well 😉

I hope to reply to your comments tonight but it is already 8PM and I need to write this post and then make dinner. So check back for my replies in a day.

Last Sunday and yesterday we enjoyed watching the snow fall and all that was related.

What a great view to wake up to on a Sunday (despite the refections in the window). Certainly different than Saturday’s sunny blue sky day.

Colin did his part in moving the snow around. Not too much fell but enough to shovel and to enjoy its beauty.

Sunday early afternoon I saw all these birds swarming just out my window, directly over the top of my computer.

They flew to the left and circled for a bit and then started to land in the trees to the right.

So many birds. This bunch travel in a flock and I have seen them over the past few weeks flying here and there. This is the first time I was able to get a photo. They are always on the move.

The snow fell most of the day and people seemed to congregate on the lake. This is our neighbour playing with her dogs.  First time they have been out on the ice.

Someone out to the right and quite far out had set up a tent for ice fishing.

Many out for walks.

Just behind the walkers in the above photo and to the left, another bunch of fishermen. They had chairs and as it got cooler they lit a fire. Seeing people out on the ice fishing was yet another first for us.

More snow was falling again on Monday morning.

The sun was coming out for just a few moments and I was trying to capture it when a plane flew past as it headed towards the airport.

I took very few photos yesterday as I was caught in the drama of my computer issue. It really did wear me out and I am still feeling the effects today. I actually have a sore neck and back today from the stress of being hunched over the computer so long and so intensely. I knew that I was still getting over the stress of it all when I went to pour a glass of wine at 5PM today and suddenly realized that I was filling a half full water glass 🙁 Thank goodness I only wasted an inch or so.

Thanks you all for being there for me.  I will get back to baked veggies and movies in a day or so.

I am actually quite upset.  This is not going to be the fluffy fun snow day post I had planned to write tonight.  I want to yell out loud and cry a lot.  Instead I sat down and finished the last few chapters of my book along with 1 + 1/2 glass of wine.  I believe that by expressing what transpired  that I might calm down.

I purchased a new iMac desktop computer in September of 2017.  My 2009 desktop had died. So I got the new one and the Geek Squad at Best Buy transferred the info from the dead computer to the new one.  No go.  They deemed the new one faulty and gave me yet another new computer. From day one I have had problems with that computer, mainly that it is very slow. I have been back and forth with Apple support over the years and usually it takes hours and hours to get through whatever the problem is.  It never has changed much.  In March/April of 2019 my computer guru came to see me on the Isla. She was able to work miracles which got me to this point.

In all honesty my big hang up is that I will not upgrade to an OS higher than Mojave. The only reason is that I work with iPhoto and have been doing so since I started this blog in 2010. It works perfectly for me and I totally understand the program. Supposedly in order to make my computer work better/faster I need to work with the new program called Photos. I do not like it at all and it takes forever to do anything with just the one photo that needs to be edited. That means, straightening a horizon, cropping something out, sharpening the image, etc. I takes me long enough to do my blog as it is,, never mind adding more time for photos.

My iMac is always slow and I have learned to work with it. However today it just wouldn’t work. It took 30 minutes to execute a command. So I did the usual reset, shut down, unplug and reset, no go!  Colin had been nagging me for at least 4 months to call Apple support. I had not choice but to do so today. I was on the phone with tech #1 for 2 hours and six minutes when the phone line died. He never called back. It was obvious that he really had no idea how to help me. The only thing I learned is I have lots of storage left but that about 420GBs was marked as other in storage and he thought that might be my problem. His next step was to erase my hard drive and start me up form fresh 😯 He of course had also suggested that I upgrade to a newer OS that should make my computer faster but of course I would lose iPhoto. His next suggestion was to upgrade my RAM which also should help. However he could not figure out if I could upgrade my RAM.  Meanwhile Colin and I had figured that out on our own.  It was about that time that our phone connection died.

I then re called Apple support and got a fellow in the Niagra Falls region of Canada ( the first guy was in Texas ). He wanted us to start with a ‘safe’ start before he would do anything. So we shut down, un plugged and then started up.  However at the count of three after pushing the start up button< I was to hold down the shift key until the start up page came up.  We waited for over 45 minutes holding that shift key, taking turns.  At this point I had been on the phone for three hours and needed to use the bathroom. We kept asking tech guy #2 if we were doing the right thing, he said to keep holding the shift key. Unlike #1 who kept talking to me, #2 was in the distance doing something else – likely personal and getting paid for it, while we held the shift key for an hour. Of course the phone went dead but this time he called back. At my third request as to the que pasa of it all, he put me on hold for a while.

Suddenly I am speaking to tech #3. I asked who he was and if the #2 was going on a break. He said that he was a senior and had been there for six years. At this point I had been on this call for 3.5 hours. No coffee, no breakfast, etc. #3 did a new restart, big sigh!!!!! Meanwhile we had snow falling yet I was not free to relax and enjoy it. Can you believe it, that we are the only one who never even got out to shovel today? Long story short, #3 spied something that he thought might be taking up my other in storage. We actually gained about 100GB but that never helped the computer work faster. The thing is I have lots of room in the storage area but this ‘now ‘350’ GBs of other seems to be affecting my speed.

This is how I sat for close to five hours today. I just clicked where they told me too. However I did take notes and I did ask questions.  #3 was the most knowledgeable but offered no hope.

Bottom line there was nothing he could do for me as my 2017 computer was old and worn out. He said that he would never let his wife deal with this problem and all the stress attached to it 🙁  So he proceeded to tell me that it was all because of my spinning hard disk.  Perhaps I could find someone capable of installing a solid state hard drive into my computer which would solve all of my problems as it was a good machine otherwise. Likely I would not find anyone capable to do so and instead recommended that I purchase a new iMac desktop for $1500.00 before taxes. Of course I would have to figure out how to do the transfer from the old to the new. He suggested that I wipe the new computer hard drive clean and then reinstall my existing computer information into the new computer via my backup Time Machine. Hopefully I would be able to reinstall OS Mojave with iPhoto. If not that I would have to possibly go up to latest OS and hope that things would transfer 😥

There were about 200 steps between all of those instructions. OMG 🙁  So after 4.5 hours my head was spinning , my back was sore and I was stressed out.

My computer is working, I just have to wait a few minutes each time I hit enter for something to happen. But it is much better than this morning, so that is some progress. I came away with that I need to purchase a new computer as this one will never do any better no matter what I do. I paid $1700.00 for this just 3.5 years ago. #3 insists that a new computer will work perfectly for about ten years.  However I will have to learn how to use Photos.

I promised my guru back in 2019 that I would try and learn Photos. Who has time for this stuff? So now we have Covid and more downtime.  As I said yesterday we don’t seem to have any extra time. Colin and I are currently working on a new project which is taking a good deal of our days since early January.  I hate to admit it but I am behind in our business to dos. Plus our year end is the end of February.

So tomorrow I will reach out to see if anyone here in Kelowna can find me a solid state hard drive.  If not I will carry on as I have been.

I hope that each one of you had a better day than I did.

Hoping to come back tomorrow with a normal post!  I even have the photo ready.

So many comments from the last post.  Any of you who have suggestions for how to prepare baked veggies please send them in. Also I have a reader who would like some suggestions as to what to watch, movies or series.  Actually we all would gain from a suggestion on what to watch. Please send in what you have enjoyed the past few months. Great idea Trish. Let’s help each other out.

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post.  I really did need to get this off my chest and out of my brain.  You are all great readers.

Some humour for tonight.

I do apologize for the length of the post. I had no idea, but I do feel better.

Its my blog so I choose to start with a sunset from the 22nd, two nights ago. We have been getting some colour here and there.

We continue to hunker down, going out every 7 – 10 days for a medical appointment ( chiropractor or medical massage ) followed by small errands ( drop off a dremel to have the battery rebuilt as well as a cordless stick vacuum ), quick stop at the health food store, stop at the post office and a grocery shop. It makes for a long day. Five hours away from home is four hours too many but some things need doing, especially picking up new library books. We then spend the rest of those 7 – 10 days walking here within our park, not driving anywhere. We certainly aren’t filling up the Jeep much. I think we are becoming hermits. Despite being home so much we never run out of things to do. We are content with computer time, reading, guitar, cooking and watching a movie every evening. If we ever get bored we can always play games or watch a second movie. I guess I should mention that we do spend a good deal of time looking outside, it is never boring.

Finally the birds are starting to eat the Mountain Ash berries. I guess that the berries need to have matured to a certain point before they indulge.

Taken yesterday morning on the Isla. Beautiful photo Sue. She gets to see this every morning and then walks the beach. Big sigh!

We kept hearing voices throughout the day yesterday. I kept popping up to see families out front – lakeside. I should have counted how many people were out walking, like this person. Parents and children were a first. Where did they come from?

I wonder if they parked along the highway and walked down to the lake. It was a perfect blue sky day with bright sunshine. If you layered up you were warm enough. We certainly enjoyed our walk.  Perhaps we might attempt the lake another time.  I need to get my walking sticks out. I can’t remember which tip to use on the ice?? It really was fun seeing people out enjoying the day. At one point we had stopped to chat with a neighbour a few streets over. She was outside with her dog, and as we chatted I kept hearing a whack. Someone was out on the lake hitting golf balls.  She said that they often did it. Well that explains where the coyotes and eagles have been getting their toys:)

We came home to find this couple standing next to our beach and checking out our home.  Easy to see inside with all the windows. We prefer to heat the house with solar so we always leave the blinds up. We are used to folks going past in their kayaks but not to standing on the ice looking in. It happened a few times, we just wave.

This pair were skating. She is somewhat shaky and each hung on to an end of the stick as they skated.  No idea where they disappeared to.

I was pretty certain that this was a mouse moving about the ice. Colin checked and checked. It was just a leaf moving in the gentle breeze.

We had a lovely happy hour yesterday face timing with friends. It was enjoyable and we really need to do so more often. One of the things we talked about was baking various veggies in different ways.

Baked veggies were on the menu for our dinner. There were beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, broccoli, more carrots and a good deal of cauliflower. Can you believe that we ate 3/4 of those veggies along with our “vegan turkey cutlets”. Great dinner.

The end of the day on the Isla yesterday. One day we will be back.