Annoying things that tire me out.

[Raylan]

Been an interesting week personally, nothing major which is a blessing and nothing as soul crushing as losing a loved one or even depressing as politics has been. Just annoying stuff that can be solved with the proper application of time and money, (which is not near as fun as the proper application of gunpowder and explosives). 

 

So this week had my laptop computer, which is important for my job and also my primary entertainment and tool to pay bills online, start to make grinding noises, not good. So I finally pulled the trigger and got a new laptop. A middle of the road gaming laptop that will hopefully work well for my non-gaming butt. But that entailed for me transferring and setting up the computer so it has all my saved passwords, pictures from a decade or more and etc.... Well it went pretty well actually and I got it done in a couple of days but it was still a pain.

 

But wait there's more, the day after getting the computer working and set up, my cell phone starts flaking out, dropping calls, taking forever to load apps or web pages. Well that's a much more serious issue for me as I work in suicide prevention and you really don't want a bunch of dropped calls or your phone freezing up when you need it.

 

I have a very particular set of needs/desires for a cell phone: (1. it needs a replaceable battery as sometimes I'm out 18 to 20 hours straight working and I don't have time to try to charge a battery and I'm also very hard on batteries as most normal phones I burn out a battery between work and home in less than 6 months; 2. I want an SD card so I can add extra memory for music as I do a lot of driving and for all those pictures one accumulates; and 3. since 75 percent of the time I am on call day and night and am wedded to the damn thing it has to be somewhat rugged or at least able to handle daily use and carrying). That is not an easy set of criteria to find in a new phone. But I found one - a samsung galaxy xcover pro - so I ordered an unlocked one off Amazon as my carrier doesn't really offer the phone. I went to set it up and oops the Sim card on my old phone is too big. So needing to get it done in the next two days, before I start work again, I drive to the 30 miles to the nearest and largest Verizon store - and oops they are out of small Sims as they just launched a new iphone and used them all setting up newly sold iphones. So off I drive to another store five miles on and yes they have the Sim card that I need. They set it up and start transferring the data and then let me go with my new phone as the data keeps transferring as it should take a half hour. Well the data transfer time kept going up and up and when I'd waited 2 hours and the time remaining now said 9 hours remaining I decided to return to the store and see if that could be remedied. So the store did the transfer in about 15 minutes, but while I was there anyway I asked if it was good to go now and if I could make and receive calls. They checked and nope, data text and such did fine but no phone calls. Well crap, longer story shorter, young geek employee grabs the phone and says no, it should work, takes it as a challenge and an hour later figures out what is wrong and finally I have my phone. (there was first a bad/new Sim card and then an HD digital phone permission on my carriers account set up that needed to be turned on). That took about 9 hours all told during which I wondered if I would have to return the phone and also the batteries I ordered from England as the phone is in Europe and India but not so much here. 

 

And now I am mentally exhausted from all the mental hula hoops of getting everything selected, purchased, set up, and configured. Seems like putting the kids toys together for Christmas was a piece of cake compared to this mind numbing minutia.  On the good side, I had the money to replace my laptop and phone, and I had a couple of days off to get it done. I was also very oddly fortunate to have discovered the phone calling issue before I left town and while the store was open and that they had the tech geek kid there who figured out the problem or as it was problems - because if I had tried to set the phone up at home via a mailed Sim card or just on my own via being handed one at the store, I would never have ever gotten the phone to work. 

 

And now back to the end of the world as we know it. TEOTWAWKI 

 

[Pat Riot]

Funny. My wife’s Android phone has been doing strange things. Not allowing calls. Not showing messages. Saying it’s uploading messages but never finishes. I wonder if there’s something weird going on?

 

Or she just needs a new phone...

[Okie Sawbones, SASS #77381]

I broke a fingernail...

[Michigan Slim]

When mine acts up it needs a restart 

[Caboose]

9 minutes ago, Michigan Slim said:

When mine acts up it needs a restart 

Yup, turn it off and then back on. Can work miracles.

[Whiskey Business]

1 hour ago, Okie Sawbones, SASS #77381 said:

I broke a fingernail...

 

Whose fingernail?

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

2 hours ago, Michigan Slim said:

When mine acts up it needs a restart 

Unplug for 30 seconds

[Badger Mountain Charlie SASS #43172]

I am having electronic problems also. My cell phone died, my printer won't work, my wi fi router went TU and had to get a new one. 

 

What house is Aquairis in now?

[Okie Sawbones, SASS #77381]

1 hour ago, Whiskey Business said:

 

Whose fingernail?

 

 

 

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

3 hours ago, Michigan Slim said:

When mine acts up it needs a restart 

So do I.

[Raylan]

Today was putting the final data transfers on the phone transferred rest of photos to a new 256 gig micro SD card, installing all the updates on my apps for this phone, downloading the Brave phone browser and DuckDuckGo to ditch Chrome and Google like I have on my laptop. Also dumped Facebook and signed up for Gab. Got my work email switched over to my phone too. Then the phone wouldn't sync with my car (need that to talk to suicidal people when I'm driving to go see a person in person at the hospital or jail). No manual for car so just started pushing buttons and got it to sometimes work, but which wasn't good enough so I kept pushing buttons til I did a master reset on the car somehow and then it all worked like it should. Luckily, I did not break a fingernail.

 

[bgavin]

Murphy's Law was written for computers.

If it Moves... it will Die.
If it Doesn't Move... it will still Die.

Get a USB external disk, 2TB is the sweet spot for inexpensive yet sufficient space.
Under Windows, use the backup applet in the Control Panel to make a System Image of the system.
Be SURE to create the recovery boot CD when it asks you to do so.

You WILL need these.  Eventually.

 

[Dantankerous]

Electronic devices, in many ways suck but they're intertwined with our lives now. Until the EMPs hit they are here to stay. 

 

 About 10 years ago one very cold and icy Winter just before Christmas the heater core on my Jeep Grand Cherokee gave out. I called everyone and as it turns out the cheapest place for the repair, go figure, was a jeep dealership. I had to have the heater core due to the nasty nature of that particular Winter so I spent my entire Christmas budget, 3 days before Christmas on repairing my vehicle. That was not fun.

[watab kid]

loved that read ...................

 

i had such a week - not to make lite of yours , i sympathize and agree on both the phone and computers - mine was a bit less tech oriented ,

 

if you have ever driven in a minnesota blizzard i think you might agree 30-40mph is good 60-70mph is not , but we do it , combine that and snow plows on a two lane thats down to one lane then have an issue with your vehicle  , 

 

a week ago i visited a friend for dinner , we try to do it every tuesday with another friend who was sick and stayed home , started out fine but while there we gat a blizzard , i was twenty miles from home , third of the way back i got a flat tire - no idea what went through the sidewall , had to drive a couple miles to safely get off far enough to allow the traffic to pass me , called the tow truck , hour and a half wait for the tow , new set of tires [saved the rim] and a bunch of cash later all back to normal ..............i thought , 

 

i woke up today going to work and another flat - same wheel , new tire - screwdriver through the new tire sidewall no fix , hope to have this back to normal again by end of day Wednesday , BUT , dont these dumb things happen in threes ? 

not to jinx myself or seem to be overly superstitious , just heard that and lived that too many times not to think it ...maybe this will be the first time in my life , 

 

poorer but still smiling , hope everyone has a great rest of there week , 

 

 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

Solved.  Needs a new hard drive.  Got one coming (and a man who can fix it) day after tomorrow.

[Perro Del Diablo]

I lost my glasses and couldn’t find them. 

 

 

 

 

 

Until I was told where they were. 

 

 

 

 

I was wearing them. 

[bgavin]

3 hours ago, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

Solved.  Needs a new hard drive.  Got one coming (and a man who can fix it) day after tomorrow.

Hopefully you are replacing the spinning drive with a solid state one.
You cannot go wrong with Samsung SSDs.

If your current drive is working enough where you can take a full Windows Image of the disk, you can use that image to restore to the new SSD, as long as the disk is the same size, or larger.

Most hacks (Best Buy, et al) will just wipe your disk, do a fresh installation and say "too bad" you don't have all your data files backed up.
Don't accept this.

You won't let a hack work on your guns... don't let a hack work on your computer.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

The guy doing the work used to work for Apple as a factory trained and certified tech.  He know his stuff and, even though he is a friend, I checked his boba fides.  

 

Thanks for the info.