Friday, November 15, 2019

There are days I hate computers

Like the last several days. I've been working to try to clean up some of the issues that are taking over CPU and disk space, and preventing the computer from going to sleep. I'll be up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, and the computer display is showing the screen saver. I've found and fixed a bunch of them. Yay me.

But something got messed up today, and I'm not sure if I undid it properly. As I put photos on my blog, I tag them 'blog'. I have a folder that looks at the main folder of edited photos and shows me all the ones that have not been tagged with blog in the last several months. These are my normal fodder for looking for photos to put on the blog. I've got a similar one showing me all the photos not blogged in the last year.

Except that doesn't seem to be working. I think I did something to Spotlight, because I didn't think I used it, and those folders stopped working. So I put it back, and the folders didn't start working again. Except that as I watch one folder that keeps track of what I put onto Neil's workshop Facebook page, it's slowly increasing. It was at 15, and just turned to 16. Whoop-de-do. I've added many many dozens of photos to his page. There are thousands of blogged photos that are still cluttering up that search folder. Maybe it is working, there used to be 5202 photos in it, now there are 3347. There really should be a few hundred. Let's let it chug. Maybe it isn't working. Now that Neil folder says 0 items. Wouldn't it be smart enough to look at whatever files it had built, rather than rebuilding them? Sigh. I think it's ok, now that I'm finished writing and ready to press publish, the hard drive has gone to sleep and the folder numbers look about right.

The other day I moved a bunch of desktop items to the trash. Mainly screen shots. I was surprised at how big they were! So that left lots of holes in my arrangement, not that it was particularly neat to begin with. So I used a desktop cleanup tool. That was sort of ok, I figured I'd do some fine tuning. Except you can't. Once you tell it to organize things, it won't let you move them. It won't let you group a bunch together that you want organized, and do just those. That would be helpful. It's back to the mess with holes in it. At least I can find things again.

Now that I've started looking at stuff, I'm baffled by lots of it. I've no idea what or why Launchpad is. Mission control scares me if I or Curtis hit the keyboard commands. I don't know why you'd need either of these things. I'm frustrated by how the sorting works in the finder, or rather, doesn't work. How hard can it be to sort things by their names, or by created date? Whenever I try to do it by date it adds groupings like last week and a month ago and does those in reverse order. I don't want those!

It's a constant struggle to keep things from updating themselves, and I think it happens anyways. Yes, the developers say in soothing tones, let it do that and you'll always have the most up to date version. FUCK YOU! I cannot stand seeing the user interface change on me. It will always happen when I'm in a rush, or want to show someone something, and what I want isn't where it was. That's heads on a pike crime. If I control the update, I can have it happen when I want, and I can give myself the time to look around and figure out what's changed. Too often it's pointless crap, change for the sake of change. Just leave things alone.

I don't put a lot of videos up on Youtube, but got an email from them the other day. Perhaps you did as well. They demanded to know if I produced videos for children. Of course I do. My videos are probably not of interest to children, but nobody would object to their child watching. My videos are for anyone. What spooked me was the connotation that I might be producing adult videos. You know, 'ADULT' videos, complete with moans and panting.

I dread this phone dying. All the new iPhones are bloated monstrosities full of functionality I don't want, to say nothing of being obscenely expensive and hard on the fabric of your pockets. The new iPhone 11 looks to be about twice the size of my SE, and it's a thousand dollars. I'm pretty sure when it's time for a new phone, I'll be joining Linda in the Speak Out world. I'll get a cheap, small phone. All I need is some data for texting, some minutes for the occasional phone call, the parking app, and Repsol. It will do me good to do without social media on the phone. I can get email at home. I rarely use the iPhone camera. I guess I'll have to figure out calendar, try to figure out some way that both of us continue to see all the appointments. Oh, and some photography apps. I'll probably have to buy them again. Grrr.

Because of the photo and searching issues, you get just one image today. The ones from yesterday's walk in Fish Creek will be later. This is some interesting sunset clouds the other day.


Deadwood of the Day
Out of order, if you care, it was the first one I could find without using search tools. Fish Creek near bridge 2.

1 comment:

  1. My challenge is applications that want to help. Dear developer, stop trying to guess what you think will be helpful. I don't want a whirligig that spins because it's cool and adds no value. I would like my tools to just do what I tell them. Dear application marketing idiots stop ... just stop. Cheers, Sean
    PS That's a great set of clouds - nicely done!

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