Transition

Apple - Blah.

My Mac died. Big time. Took a hit from a power spike at the end of Hurricne Florence. I didn't get flooded out, but my life got zapped and destroyed - does that count?

I was not able to get another Mac because my available credit would only cover a Windows 10 laptop. Which is not how I roll.

But, it is getting a working system or not having a working system.

It has been a rough transition. First I have to adjust 35+ years of Mac OS skills to Windows styles, and with problems of eyes and neuropathy, it is difficult.

First the transition from control/command key positions. I'm used to it on the immediate left of the space-bar, but Windows is to the far left of the keyboard, putting it under the pinkie of my left hand, which is mostly dead. I do not feel the finger so I do not know when it hits or where it hits. This means the letter a is sometimes caps, Caps Lock, z, s, or q, and I don't know until after it is typed. I try to catch them all but do not always succeed. Correcting means a complete stop, use different fingers to hit the correct combination, the use of the command/control key requires a complete stop to get the thumb over to the left-control key. I can't use the ring finger because it is dying, like the pinkie, and is an-almost-always fail.

So, there's that.

Second, something happened in the new laptops hardware that re-mapped the keyboard I was using in a very bizarre way. "Y" and "Z" became reversed and I did not notice immediately. It coupled with problem Three, but resulted in a series of refusals of gMail to accept changes of passwords to access all of my email accounts (I have about twenty) and Facebook. Time after time I had to re-key passwords from a schema I had grown comfortable with, and what I was typing was not what had been pasted from the results of my schema. (For some reason I am allowed to paste a password into the change-password field, but was required to retype for when I entered what I thought was the same password the first time I went to use the password to log on and read mail.)

After several hours of getting 'incorrect' responses to entering new passwords, setting up another password and getting incorrect for that, I had a total of two passwords accepted, for some reason. Screamed and decided to go to bed.

Third, my eyes. I have had great progress with my macular edema - a swelling under the macula of my left eye, which prevents a readable image. To accommodate that reality I blow up my email (and blog entry) to "Huge" for typing, so I can see them, then shrink them back down to "Normal" before sending/publishing. Hopefully. I've failed with that a few times, too. But there has been progress on shrinking the cyst under the macula with shots in the vitreous humor (look it up) and I could get a prescription to wear for about six months. But that takes eye exam money and glasses money.

Hope nobody slaps me, 'causr
I'm all out of cheeks.

But that is how I roll with advanced neuropathy and macular edema, both the result of 28 years of Type II diabetes. (Did I mention diabetes, which sucks all by itself.)

One of the first bits of email I received during this whole mess was a subscriber to SSC who got lost and NONE of the issues he had ordered had been delivered. That goosed me to solve the return2jorune@gmail password problem, which I did and today, after a night's sleep, I was able to fulfill his order. AURGH. My credibility is shabby enough.

So I have about a dozen email accounts to bring back on line, then go through all the backlog created by this, and Facebook, which I was able to access with my phone as much as my eyes could stand reading the teeny little screen.

My documents from the old Mac system are still not completely available. I have backups but they are on Mac formatted USB3s, which I cannot get hooked into the new Windows machine. A USB2 disk is readable. So that's a whole other headache I will have to deal with before I can retrieve what I have written so far for SSC #12.

The alternative is to write everything from scratch, which I could do. I've had to do it with whole stage plays and whole books when original manuscripts were lost - before computers. It can be done, but I don't know what will be lost in the process. Which is depressing.

So, that I'm not jumping on Jorune fast enough, suck it up. I'm running as fast as I can to fall behind.