Though I can use PCs, I really prefer Apples. And I’ve almost always been happy inhabiting the alternate universe.
Not today. Not right now. There is trouble in paradise, and it all began a couple of days ago when I upgraded to the new OS, Mavericks– free for the first time ever.
Yesterday my iMac (circa 2006) started acting a bit strange– I had been working and took a break. When I came back, expecting to immediately awaken the computer from sleep mode and begin again, I heard the sound that you hear when a keyboard key is being held while some other action is going on — a kind of bop bop bop sound. I thought that was strange, and couldn’t get it to stop. I simply restarted the computer, or at least tried to. The screen flashed a couple of times. Then I turned the power off, let it sit for a couple of minutes, and restarted. It did. But after a while, something else started acting up (I no longer remember what), so I simply turned it off.
Tonight when I tried to restart it, I heard the start-up sound but only got a blue-gray screen. Several attempts later, and no luck, I turned to my laptop and went to the Apple page. That I was able to find something immediately upon typing “gray screen at booting up after upgrading to Mavericks” told me I clearly wasn’t the first to have this problem.
I tried a safe startup — turning it off, then on, and immediately upon hearing the “restarting” sound, I held down the shift key. Nothing.
So I then tried to start using an install CD. No luck. Only now the CD won’t eject. Common sense stopped me from following through with my first instinct — to hit the computer with a heavy object like a baseball bat. I resisted, fortunately.
Wanting to blog (there’s a 30-day blog-every-day-challenge, sort of like the write-every-day-on-your-novel challenge), I turned to my laptop. Thinking to check my email, I discovered that today I cannot get my email on the laptop. It can’t connect with iCloud. This is a new problem. Yes, you guessed it — it started after I upgraded to Mavericks, the new OS.
Rather than go into my usual mode at such problems — becoming obsessed with the problem and working at it until either a) I solve the problem or b) am exhausted after hours of no luck — I logged on to WordPress to blog. Of course, that I had forgotten my password and needed to change it was the reason I’d tried to check my email for the link to reset the password. Since I couldn’t do that with the laptop, I used my iPhone, got the mail, followed the link, and changed the password. Once that was done, I could log on and begin.
Whatever topic I’d originally thought about writing on tonight about travel (my usual Friday focus) had flown out of my head in the meantime.
Thus this rant for Day One of the blogging challenge.
Now that I think about it, though, this rant is about another kind of travel — into cyberspace and back, through a path of frustration.
Luckily, I have the desktop backed up — if that worked correctly.
I’ve been in my office chair attempting to work for an hour now.
And just now there’s a message on my screen in the right-hand corner: ” What’s New in OS X Mavericks. Take a tour now, or view it later from the Finder Help menu.”
Somehow this wasn’t the kind of tour or travel I had in mind when I sat down an hour ago.
cwareintheworld 