5C's Que Pasa

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.