Modem vs IOS

When I finally knuckled down and dedicated a couple of hours to the problem, I learnt that the trouble was the ever-renewing IOS, macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 in this case, that was refusing to shake hands with the now five year old modem. How is that good for the world to come, Apple.com? We need tech that is compatible to old as well as new.

Let me tell you this image is 20! years! old! I think I made it using one of the first versions of the ProCreate design program installed on an early iPad I had a taste-test of. It represents a techie, of course. How we imagined techies in those far gone days.

First the wait for contact on the help-line. Twenty minutes. Then the wait for my turn with a technician. 45 minutes. By about half an hour of waiting, I settled in, having already spent/used/wasted too much time to want to do it all again at a later date. Nothing has changed in 20 years in that respect.

I don’t know how many people have got an Archer VRI 1600, Version 2 modem but if it was a popular one, there’ll be a lot of people like me out there with modems stunned into silence, even hibernation, by new and brashy operating systems. Hence the long wait. Which is how I comforted myself.

I told the technician helping me reset the system, it is almost as if new operating systems are sweeping the old out to make room for the new.

Madam, she said, we don’t recommend our customers to just update their systems willy nilly.

I wanted to tell her I just do as I’m told, and my technical equipment the same. We upgrade to stay in the game. I don’t know what’s in an upgrade. Who out there is going to explain?

Yeah yeah. I could go to a forum and find out there. But tell me … do you do that?

But anyway the point is moot. Rion gave me a task that needed my attention. Find the xyz in System Settings and tell me what it says.

She is good, knows her stuff, and she’s patient. Took me through the process step by step. Even tested my mobile while we were at it. There, she said at the end, no new modem needed.

Her name is Rion and she works at the TPG call centre, if you need help retreading your modem.

Modem troubles

My modem is ‘on the blink’, which is a colloquial way of saying it has started to fail. Sometimes its little lights work well and my computer has an internet connection.

Sometimes they’re blinking and I know then there’s a gappy reception and goodbye to getting anything done online except by mobile. That means one-fingered typing for me.

I’m sitting on instalment 16 of Cat Tales, with no way that I have found of getting the photos from the computer onto my phone.

People will tell me the cloud and/or dropbox. Seems like neither of them like going in reverse. Mind you that could be a personal bugbear.

Anyway, there it is. Another hold-up.

Now to access the other photo …

Brick Stories continued …

A while ago, when I thought I had plenty of energy, I started a second blog to be dedicated to Lego. Then followed a couple of months that had to be dedicated to me keeping my health on the positive side of the baseline. Which were followed by another couple of months …ya dee ya dee … you’ve heard it all before.

The upshot is that I don’t have enough energy to maintain two blogs. This one is it.

So. Now. I’m transferring stuff.

The most economical way to post up the Brick Stories–in time and effort–is to turn them into PDFs, too. But they’ll be posted on their own page, “Brick Stories”, up there in the menu. Though I do plan to ‘signpost’ whenever I put up a new one on this page.

As here … click on the heading and you’ll get to it. OR go to the menu in the usual way.

2. It Looks Like Progress

Wendy, Boss and Drew at their second planning meeting.

“Add new post!”

Seriously? I’m completely boondoggled … is that even a word, I imagine you’re asking … I’ll need to check that myself. It’s been a while since I saw it written.

That suspicion was right. Not the right meaning. The Navy has my favorite explanation … a boondoggle is a fun, but unproductive meeting.

So. Try again. I’m completely at a loss … not as descriptive is it?

But me going to the thesaurus from here and then trying to get back with a good word under my arm… will take me another half hour.

I’m at a loss. My writing is on my laptop and the external hard drive. My research ditto. Everyplace where I might check somthing, also inaccessable.

It’s Friday, and here in Queensland, Monday is a public holiday. I won’t be able to take my ailing laptop to a repair place until Tuesday!

Couldn’t take it today, yesterday or day before due to too much other stuff those days. I have ME/CFS and am constrained by a frequent lack of energy.

I’ve been training myself to take 2200 steps per day. If I go over my daily limit, I’m setting myself up for a three day crash.

The computer repair place visit has to be done on the same day I need to go into that direction for another thing. Three blocks distance is all it is, and three blocks back. It’s all I’ll be able to that day.

Blogging

Blogging by mobile/cell phone is a new thing for me. Entering this one fingered …

My laptop is frozen and I need to find a repair place that I can easily get to.

In former times I used a business that sent technicians on house visits. The local one of that sort is silent at the end of the phone line. Not even a message service. Brrr brrrr. Brrr brrrr.

Just then tried to find the function with which to get an image … lol, went to Jetpack instead and had to sign up for that, to be able to get back to this.

So maybe not an image today!

Nope! Did get a pic! This fearless explorer motorbike riding mechanic suits my present state of mind.

Life: Over-extended!

‘Over-extended’ sums up my state of being pretty accurately when I realized I was hardly doing anything I really enjoyed, but started to feel harried! This time last week I had two blogs and a Substack to populate with interesting posts. I’d signed up to receive a dozen newsletters to read through the week. And that all is not counting my presence on FB.

And lol, I was expecting to be able to continue gardening, mending, painting, and Lego construction. And keep up with real-life socializing, medical appointments and dream journaling. I even thought I could write three long stories at the same time! Tch tch tch. Truly over-extended. But don’t worry, this blog is a stayer. Lodestar is a stayer. MELD, second part of the Monster-Moored series, is being prepped for a structural edit. Earth Fall, a prequel of the Monster-Moored series, that I started to serialize on Substack, is stalled.

Because I’ve been pruning. The Substack account? Is gone. Three quarters of the newsletters? Unsubscribed. Half a dozen FB groups? Unfollowed.

Last Sunday I decided to learn a new Lego technique at least every week. Not necessarily anything to do with Lego storying projects, which will continue once the stream of visitors I’ve been having dries up. Visitors mean that my Lego-ing table, aka the dining table, must be empty for dining on.

Some of my visitors were here a couple of weeks ago for the ‘Three Sisters’ weekend I hosted at my place when I had both my sisters to stay. We try to do this every year though we live all over the country.

Some of my visitors are here for the cataract operations I’m booked in for, when I need an in-house carer to stay for the night after the op. Two eyes equals two cataract operations needing two in-house carers a month apart, first one of my sisters, then my son. It’ll be a relief to get my eyes working together again. At the moment, I’m doing all my reading with the now-good eye and a magnifying glass as my old specs don’t work anymore.

The new Lego-technique in that small bunch of Lego flowers up above, concerns the stamens in the orange California poppy. Four tiny stamens, each made with two of the elements that I had no ideas on how to use. I have another dozen of these mysteries in my collection.

But going back to that feeling of being over-extended, and not being able to do anything well. Feeling harried by the amount of reading. Feeling my creativity nose-diving. I’ve hardly done any painting lately. An installment for Lodestar was taking months to write instead of a couple of weeks. I haven’t knitted at all this winter. And sitting down with a good novel ? Fell by the wayside.

So here’s to trimming, pruning, and cutting back! Organizing life to be able to live and enjoy it!

How and what have you trimmed recently? Apart from your finger and toenails. 🙂

About Blogging

This is where WordPress began!

The Blogging Software Dilemma

Just tripped over the above post while searching for a more wholesome, easier to use theme for Reet’s Brick Town. It blows me away the stuff still to be found, here and there, despite that so much is being fenced off behind paywalls and in personal domains.

I remember the beginning of the internet, when it was the wild west, when everything was free … a sort of common ground where anything could be borrowed, referenced and returned by dint of letting it go.