Category: Technology

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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.