Sat, 23 Feb 2019 22:56:44 GMT

I am writing and posting this entry on my laptop!

This is remarkable because my laptop has been on the verge of death for several weeks now. It's a 2012 Macbook Pro, so it's already had a pretty good life, by laptop standards. Last year, it had a problem starting up (it wouldn't), so I took it in to the local Mac repair place (not an Apple Store, but an "Apple certified" repair shop), and they did some kind of repair magic and got it to work again. One thing they suggested was replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive in the future, so I kept that in mind.

Unfortunately it's been super slooooooooooooooooow ever since, and it crashes when I have more than one program open, and sometimes it crashes so hard that all I can do is shut it off and walk away. So that's been frustrating. About two months ago, the trackpad started to die, and then the crashes got even worse, so off I went to the Mac repair shop again. They had me leave the laptop and said they'd order a trackpad and quote me on replacing the HD with an SSD.

So replacing the trackpad was a reasonable cost, but they didn't recommend replacing the HD because the laptop is so old that Apple considers it a "legacy" product, and they wouldn't be able to warranty the work because of the age, blah blah I didn't understand anything but "too old." Still, they gave me the quote, and with parts and labor, it was going to be around $600 to swap out the drive.

I said "no thank you" and I went online and found a couple of guides on how to replace the HD in an old Macbook Pro with an SSD, and said to myself, "Oh, I think I can do this." When I picked up the laptop from the Mac repair shop, the customer service person was like, "I have a 2009 Macbook Pro and I swapped the drives and it's still working great!" So like, hint taken, my friend.

I bought an SSD and the tools I needed from Amazon. Everything arrived yesterday, so last night I cloned the old drive to the new, and then this morning I opened up the computer and swapped the drives and AMAZINGLY I didn't screw it up, and now everything is working great. It's all speedy and I can open multiple programs at once, and iTunes doesn't take 20 minutes to open, and I can actually use Photoshop Elements again!

So now I feel extremely techie! And I've very pleased with my accomplishment, and I had to share it with you all.

Oh, and the trackpad works great again!

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In other news, I watched The Umbrella Academy and I loved it. I went in with no expectations and I was delighted by the messed up family of would-be superheroes. Anyone else watching?

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Wed, 26 Jun 2013 04:00:04 GMT

Guys, guys, I got my new laptop! My old one died two weeks ago, which I didn't tell you because... my old laptop died.

I had my EVEN OLDER desktop for use in emergencies, which was basically getting the NFE matching done and prompts sent out and that took forever because, yeah, that's an old iMac.

Anyway, this is a brand new MacBook Pro and it's all shiny and has lots of RAM and a huge hard drive, and I am glad I got it custom built, even though it took me longer to get it. And I was able to recover all my files from the old laptop! \o/ Thank god for Time Machine, this is not the first time it's saved my ass, I'll tell you what.

Anyway anyway, hi! I missed you all, did you notice I was gone? :D bedlamsbard I can finally get that beta done!

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Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:07:14 GMT

Because I am a completist, I am following up on the desktop meme, with the wallpaper on my computer at work:

Done and done! :D

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