Gerry shared his cold with me, so I have been home all week, mostly laying on the sofa coughing and whining. We are also suffering with tech hell this week. Gerry is one of the most capable people I know when it comes to computers, but we had a technical glitch this week. We use an old Mac here at the house for recording household finances, online banking, storing music and his personal stuff. I have a Mac for my stuff, Wes has one for school, Gerry has one for work, we have a couple of other Macs that are dead. We got a lot of apple computer stuff! What we don't do enough of is backing up those computers. Gerry has all his work computer stuff backed up, but we are slack on the others. That said, Wesley's hard drive filled up with school work last week, so she had to dump stuff on my external hard drive. Then Gerry's home Mac crashed, just plumb died. OMG! Do you know the havoc this has caused?!?!? He sucked it up and bought a new Macbook air, quite nice and he has spent this week getting his computer geek pal to rip out the hard drive on the old dead Mac and setting up a new computer. New software, new passwords, finding things, losing things, it has been a nightmare to watch from my comfy sofa spot.
After watching all this, I decided it might be a good idea to get all my files transferred over to my external hard drive. I have spent two days sorting through files and photos, I dumped over 10,000 images and put countless others into folders that now make sense. I found a bunch of photos of old work, like the one above, I made some pretty cool stuff a few years ago....
If you do not have a system for backing up your computer, ie; an external hard drive, I strongly suggest you run out right now and get one, they don't cost that much, and will save you much headache, trust me! Back that shit up!
In other tech hell, we dumped Time Warner Cable this week. I won't go into the many reasons, just try calling them on the phone sometime, and you will know plenty. The programming sucks, we hardly ever watch TV and so we gave it up. We bought an antenna so we can access Public TV and local channels for news and weather, when we can actually tolerate even watching that. I have found new things I love about Public TV though. Downton Abbey for one. I know, I'm late to the party, what a great show! Public TV is doing some really good programming and I have missed it because I have been scrolling through cable channels trying to sort through reality TV for something decent or just turning off the TV altogether. Since I have been wallowing on the sofa for a week, its been good to have our local UNC TV channel to watch. Go Public TV! We now use the Xbox or Wesley's Wii U for Netflix and Hulu movies and TV programs.
Another thing we dumped is our phone service. Gerry bought Magic Jack for our phone and it's the coolest thing. I can even program it to work through my ipad and I can now use my ipad as a phone for free. We will save so much money making these few changes, I don't know why we have been so late to the 21st century party. Inertia I suppose. A new paradigm for the Broomes :)
13 comments:
Wise words, back that shot, auto correct is not allowing the other word...,up! That is truth!
I need to look into that phone thing.
I move lots of files to a thumb drive, but really should get an external drive, thanks for the reminder!
I haven't had cable tv for years. We stream hulu and netflix with a roku. I got addicted to Downton Abbey last year. I streamed it through Hulu, then they lost the rights. I am behind a season.... BUT I just realized I can get the dvd's from Netflix. I am going to spend the next couple of weeks catching up. I was late to the game too.
I use a non-apple external hard drive and let Time Machine back everything up every day. I think it does it a few times a day. I don't know, it just works and if my hard drive ever crashes it will be the fix I need. Do it now. I am so sorry for Gerry's suffering.
Good for you ditching the cable. We've been without any TV for about 5 or 6 years. We get a red box movie once in a while or find something on Hulu (not always easy), read, talk to each other, visit with friends...you don't need the box.
Feel better! Life seems to drop a load of complications on us when we are least capable of dealing with it. I need to be on the top of my game to solve computer issues.
There are so many folks glorifying the word "busy" when what they are really doing is mindlessly watching crap on tv and surfing the web... again for junk.... I live and breathe public tv and KNPR.Now that you will catch up on Downton you must also catch up to Sherlock. I have been wondering about magic jack and with your thumbs up I will look into it. I refuse to give up home phone and only use my cell. I simply cannot carry my cell all over this house. I tried using only it for three days and I failed miserably. I am trying to back things up but am also having issues with external drive... lol
but oh I love my Mac <3
Get Netflix streaming for under $10 a month. You can buy a little receiver from Best Buy to attach to the tv set and run a lot of old movies, tv shows and great documentaries as well as a lot of older and new PBS series.
You have my sympathy on the computer woes.I've had those same problems for months and now the latest Norton download, for some reason won't back up anything on any of my computers, so I've just been just copying and pasting documents. For some reason it keep saying there isn't enough room; but of course there is. AARGH!
Guess I'll have to get the hard drive out of its box and start backing things up.
So sorry that you are suffering from the nasties. Cuddle up and stay warm.....and your are making some pretty cool stuff now, lady!
For those of you that have cable: Whenever I see a special deal for new subscribers I call them and ask why I can't have a good deal too. Usually they agree to some sort of deal. We haven't paid full price for HBO in ages.
I hope all the computer crap gets sorted successfully!
Meredith, yeah the magic jack is really cool, check it out
Michele, definitely have to go back to the beginning with Downton, I'm always way behind on shows, just never believe they are as good as everyone says!
Lori, we did Time Machine too, but it feels good to have everything on a hard drive and organized now!
I don't mind "the box" so much when there are some smart shows on, but man TV has dumbed down about as far as it can right now, ugh!
Dennis, thanks. It does seem like every time one of us is sick, something in the house gets sick too!
Suzan, I can't do the cell phone either, first of all on those long calls with Wes, I don't want that thing up next to my head that long, and we get really poor reception, so it's not that great for me.
I did watch a couple of Sherlock episodes, very good. I just refuse to support reality TV and awful sit coms, but with a daughter in film school, I can support well written interesting programming!
Definitely check out the magic jack, well worth it.
June, we get Netflix and Hulu through Xbox and Wii U and love it, so much better than cable. Before we had apple computers, we spent a lot of time angry with our technology. At least our apples are way more user friendly and cause less problems. This one that died had a previous owner and was very old. Ugh, computers!
Yeah, time warner wanted to give us all kinds of deals when we cancelled, we asked why weren't we offered those low prices in the first place!
Yep, the nasties, happens every January!
hey Tracey, catching up. Your qrt questioning is exactly the process we all go through to find ourselves. Some folks are never willing to listen to that inner voice and they just keep copying. I'm glad you're not satisfied with someone else's beauty and vision.
Hi Tracey..(just catching up)..hope you are feeling better by now. thanks for the reminder to do the 'back up' AND in your recent posts about branding/thinking etc.. thank you. I am trying to really think about what I want to do with my clay work -- what direction after all these years of really no specific style. ..need some good sit down, over coffee discussions.. is North Carolina really that far away?? haha..good afternoon to you. Cheers. T.
Hey Shannon, great to see you today! Yeah, me and that copying thing.... We have a history lol
Hi Trish, yep, it's pretty far, we all need a virtual coffee shop, don't we?! Hope you are staying warm.....
There are a lot of things that happened with you. To think that it’s only the first month of the year. But even if this gave you a headache, I’m still glad that it all ended well. The saying is right: for every loss, there’ll be a gain. Your iPad-slash-phone, for example, can really save you money in the long run. Also, backing up is a great advice. We really should learn and know the importance of backing up our files to avoid inconveniences. Thanks for sharing.
Ruby @ WilliamsDataManagement.com
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