Category: Technology

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I’m in love with this new computer

Finally! I’ve got a machine that has some staying power.

The battery life on this thing is out of sight and thus far, I haven’t been able to push the system hard enough to have the fan come on. Something I could easily do with the intel based machine.

Plenty of memory space, plenty of storage space, fast, and useful. I like the keyboard much more that the old one (even when the old one worked properly,) There’s a nice feedback from the keys when you press them.

There are still some tweaks and settings changes from time to time but overall I’m pleased. At the price of this machine I damn well better be pleased!

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One of the things that annoys me about technology

Is the little widgets that developers think are a good idea, but that are super annoying. You’d think, “Okay” I can turn this off.

But you can only turn it off IF you know what the fuck it’s called.

I’m experiencing that right now. There’s a little strip floating dead center at the bottom of my iPad screen that is showing me word selections, a mic symbol, some formatting things and is somehow associated with the keyboard.

I’d ignore the damn thing, but it keeps getting in the way of controls and functions in applications so I’d like very much to turn it off.

But going to the keyboard settings presents me with a number of options, none of which make sense to select to turn this annoyance off.

I’ll figure it out, but it’s really annoying me. I also know that somehow I turned it on, but I don’t know how. That just adds to the annoyance.

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Okay, I had an Apple Orgy!

I know, I know… I shouldn’t have done it. I guess that I’d reached a breaking point with all my stuff aging and getting more and more unstable.

My iPad was and original iPad Pro. Like first generation! It served me well but as is the case with all electronics, eventually it gets tired. In this case the old machine wasn’t lasting as long as it should on battery, it was so slow that some things just wouldn’t work at all.

The keyboard folio that I purchased when I got that iPad had also died sometime in the last year.

All of this led to a level of frustration because with my old computer not working properly, and the iPad also not working properly, I felt like I was surrounded by failing machines.

I got my new MacBook on Monday, and at some point during the night I thought, “It’s time for a new iPad too.

Both have M2 processors and both run most all the software that I’d like to use.

In addition, my old iPad had cellular connectivity, I was paying for the service but the iPad couldn’t really use it to best advantage.

This new iPad is fast, efficient, and can use the new cellular bands.

I just realized that perhaps I should have picked up some kind of folio like case in addition to the nifty Magic Keyboard. But that’s going to be something I consider over time. After I get used to this machine.

I picked up a couple of inexpensive accessories to make use of the new Continuity feature in Ventura. This is a pretty darn cool deal where the computer will use the camera on the iPhone during a video call. It’s dang cool, but to use it you need some way to have the phone camera stable and looking at you. Belkin makes a slick MagSafe thing that allows you to hang the phone on the laptop screen or you could use its kickstand to set the phone on the desk.

I’m curious about the video conference ability on the new iPad too. I think I’ll be switching back and forth a few times before I settle on a video conferencing platform.

All of this has cost a lot of cash. I’m looking at it as cash that is well spent, as it makes my life easier, make me happier, and possibly will make my working remotely if I get lucky and find a remote job too.

It’s just nice to have working tech that isn’t crashing as the drop of a hat.

There’s a stack of Apple boxes on my dining room table. It looks a lot like the day after Christmas.

Now I just gotta figure out how to pay for it all.

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After almost a year I finally broke down and bought a new computer.

Truth be told, I bought a new machine last year.  It was defective out of hte box. Long story short, I ended up paying for that machine even after it was stolen from the carrier when I shipped it back to the manufacturer.

This meant putting up with a machine that was failing in a number of ways, not the least of which was the keyboard. There were other things too. strange and unaccountable crashes and behaviors that I’d see but the computer would claim didn’t happen. Uh Huh… tell me that AI hasn’t already invaded our computers…

After a year of my older system degrading. I finally bit the bullet and ordered what I wanted. I got the new machine yesterday, It’s up & running and we’re in the “Settiling” portion of our lives. I rebuilt the system from the ground up, not using any backups. So I relaoded everything and then moved the data from the server to the new system. 

My reasoning for this was that I wanted to leave behind anything that might have been lurking in system files from the old machine(s) and get a fresh start. So here we are…

Hopefully this will make filling out forms and job applications a bit easier, and less error prone.

What I’m saying here is any errors in text, punctuation, or what have you, are now soley the problem of the human running the machine not the machine.

Maybe I’ll even be writing more since it won’t be quite so frustrating an experience.

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Questions that I probably shouldn’t ask…

In addition to dealing with my other half’s affairs. I’ve also been reviewing joint accounts and subscriptions that we both were using and that now, only I will be using.

One of those subscriptions is for Microsoft Office 365. We had a family membership that covered all of our respective devices and computers. That cost us $99 bucks a year. I’ve not been using Microsoft products as much as I used to. Apple’s Pages works just fine, allows export to Word format, and is faster than Word.

On a Mac you don’t have as much available with your office subscription and honestly the applications are bloated beyond belief. 2 Gigabytes for Word??? Really? That’s a lot of disk space, I’ve used full on desktop publishing software that occupied less space!

I don’t use any Microsoft applications except Excel and Word. I’ve been using those less and less because Apple Pages and Numbers do a fine job for my needs.

I don’t care for Outlook, and generally have no use for PowerPoint, or OneNote, Skype, or much of the remainder of the MS Office Suite.

I maintained the Office subscription for the other half. He needed to have more of the suite and hated having to remember to save documents in MS formats so that he could share them with colleagues. Now that he’s gone, I found myself reevaluating my relationship with Microsoft.

This reevaluation was spurred by my receipt of a Word Document. When I opened the document, Word started. This was typical and expected. Then Word demanded that I be connected to the internet so that it could validate my access to the program. I wasn’t connected to the internet at the time, (I’d gotten the document prior to leaving the house but hadn’t had time to open it.) I had no intention of signing onto the “Free” WiFi at the Starbucks for only one document. So I could open the document in view mode with Word, OR open it in Pages, do what I needed to do, and not be annoyed any further.

I chose Pages and did what I needed to do.

But this got me thinking…

When I got home, I opened Word. After a minute of validation and whatever else Word thought it needed to do, I was treated with a template screen. Oh for the days when Word just opened to a blank page without my having to choose a template. I seem to recall being able to choose a template after the fact. I could be wrong.

I opened the Microsoft web site so that I could look at my plan and when it was going to renew, The renewal is in July… I’d have changed it from the family plan to an individual plan right then except that Microsoft would have made the changes instantly and any other stuff that I needed to access via the family plan would have been lost instantly too.

Stuff like any documents in my other half’s one drive folder.

Oh No Microsoft… I paid you for a year and by golly you’re going to provide a full year of services!

I made a note in my calendar to make the changes to the account in July.

I went back to the blank document now displayed in Word. Hmm, autosave is off, that’s odd. When I try to turn it on, I’m directed to save the document to my OneDrive storage thereby uploading the document.

Why? Why does Microsoft insist that AutoSave be sent to online resources when I have a perfectly good hard drive in my local computer?

Pages doesn’t care. I can save stuff to my local drive or to iCloud.

Could it be that Microsoft is scanning all documents uploaded to their OneDrive resources for specific information?

Is it possible that Microsoft is colluding with various government(s) to locate and keep a watchful eye on people who may be writing things that government(s) might not like?

I know it sounds like conspiracy theory but if you think about it it’s a super simple way to monitor anyone that’s using Office 365. Lots of folks would say that having AutoSave and being able to access their documents from anywhere is worth it and they’d start pumping their stuff into OneDrive without thinking too much about the ramifications.

I was thinking about the recent TikTok hearings and wondered if our wonderful Congressional folks would even stop to consider that between OneDrive, Google Drive, Drop Box, iCloud, and any of the rest of “Cloud” storage facilities tons of Americans information is at risk. For that matter the EU should probably have a go at investigating just how secure all that cloud data really is.

Should any of us really trust these services to stay out of our data? And how do we know? All we have is these corporations promises.

I logged into OneDrive and deleted everything. Yes I know that MicroSoft has copies, and that all my stuff has been scanned and shared with China or the US government if indeed that is happening. But I don’t have to make it easy for them.

AutoSave will remain off in my version of Word and Excel. Come July, I’ll make a decision about continuing with Office 365 too. If I bail on Office 365 then my Outlook email address will be gone. I’m wondering if that would be such a bad thing, or would I find that I’m dealing with less SPAM on a daily basis.

Think about it folks, what information do you have in some cloud account and is that information sensitive? It may be that all this cloud storage stuff is worse than TicToc because it’s slid in quietly under our noses.

They say if you don’t think you’re going to like an answer, then you shouldn’t ask the question.

Inadvertently, I asked a couple of questions that I kinda wish I’d just ignored.

I will have to get a new computer in the near future, you can bet I’ll be thinking about security as I’m setting it up.

I wonder if there’s a way to just never connect the new machine to the internet…