So it was cold today. Like actually cold. Polar Vortex and all that jazz…
But, hey, I spotted Cadbury eggs in stores on January 3rd so Spring can’t be far away, right?
I’m in the middle of massive tech changes. Well, massive for me.
1) I upgraded my phone hardware and software last week.* The iPhone 5s is still unwieldy. iOS 7 changed lots of things, some for good and some for bad.
2) I upgraded to iOS 7 on my iPad too, because why not? Might as well be completely annoyed by changes all at once.**
3) I adopted, full-force, OtterBox cases.*** I have the Defender series for both the new phone and the iPad. They are heavy but solid cases. I love them. My gear has a shot at surviving the toddler now. And I’m learning how annoying it is to have dust on the inside of the case between the screen and the screen protector… there’s this one sprig of dust… upper right, about 3 inches from the side… grrrr! So far these cases are great! Except for the bit of dust.
4) I’m in the midst of upgrading my desktop to a CLEAN INSTALL of Mavericks.**** I’m putting it on an SSD so it should speed things up. Oh, my, it’s been a Very, Very, Very Long Time since I did a clean install on my desktop. 7 years or so? No help from the Migration Assistant at all. I lasted about 45 minutes before I rebooted back into 10.7.5. Since then I’ve been exporting copies of bookmarks and such so that I can find them easily next time I dive in, but… There’s also this “minor” issue of only having 15 gb free on the 10.7.5 system disk. Oops. Why, yes, that is where my photo library lives…***** It’s annoying but all this should make it so I get at least another year (possibly 2!) out of my Mac Pro. Sure, the new, tiny, sci-fi Mac Pro is amazing, but it’s the first generation of a redesign. I’d rather wait until the second generation. If I have time tomorrow, I’ll boot back into Mavericks for a bit and see what else needs to be done.
*I hate changing hardware almost as much as I hate changing software. Changing hardware is like changing cars. You have to move all your stuff, make sure it fits, and then say goodbye to an old, faithful friend who just happened to get a little old and behind the times.
**I hate changing software because, in general, I like things to work. I delay major upgrades as long as possible so that most of the bugs are worked out by the time I bother with them. However, this means that I’m always complaining about changes months after the rest of the planet.
***Why does this count as a change at all? Because I resisted OtterBox cases for years. I have no idea why, but I resisted. Now I have 2 which I bought within 2 days of each other.
****For those not in the know, a clean install is the equivalent of moving into a new house with none of your stuff because, ostensibly, you only want to move over the stuff you really want and need to the new house. This helps you purge all the crap you never use that just bogs down your life (or your CPU). In this case, I’ve built the new house, and even visited it, but I’m still living at the old house because moving is scary and hard work.
*****(This has to be the last footnote because my fingers are too cold to precisely type repeated asterisks.) This little space problem is also the reason I’m recycling a photo posted earlier in the month for this post rather than posting something new. Space on this drive is too tight. I’m also compulsively backing everything up to 2 different locations. A backed up drive is far less likely to fail, right?