Archive | March, 2020

Friday the 13th

9 Mar

A day before the ominous Friday the 13th in December last year, my MacBook Air crashed and died. I never saw it coming although there were tell tale signs of instability after installing MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 a few weeks earlier. I caved in and updated because of iTunes and my iPhone XR. To cut a long story short, I had to update the OS in order to have the latest version of iTunes that could sync with the iPhone XR. Otherwise, I could not back up my phone, something that I don’t do that often.

So all was fine and dandy except a few small matters like several of the softwares. The Adobe and Microsoft softwares that I have—essential but not critical—could no longer be used because the versions I have were not supported with the 10.15.1 OS. But since I hardly use those softwares these days and I could back up my iPhone XR, this was all that mattered I rationalized.

On that faithful eve of the ominous day, I had my Skype launched and ready to have the weekly session with M1. Suddenly, the app was acting up and I had to restart the laptop. Several times in fact. A prompt came up and caught my eye – the OS needed to be updated with Catalina 10.15.2.

Reflecting back the several instances of instability and the recent wonky behavior of Skype, I thought perhaps it was best to update the OS. Bad idea, really bad, bad idea.

The laptop could not install the OS and hung several times. A black screen kept appearing with each restart. Uh oh. Even with Global Network Recovery and all the steps I could find online could not save my MacBook! Oh no….

The next day, Friday the 13th I went to Machines, a local authorized Apple reseller to see what could be done. To my dismay, Machines no longer provided support for older devices. Oh no! The apprehension of this ominous day struck.

My 11” MacBook Air is a 2012 model and deemed a vintage device and as such, do not qualify for further technical support. I was advised then to go to a third party repair shop. Do I have a choice at that point?

So off to a third party repair shop I went. Thankfully, these guys fixed the problem (they took a few days though) and I also had all my data recovered for an additional fee. Phew. My MacBook Air is now downgraded to MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 and should remain at this version for optimum performance.

But less than a month after that, the laptop acted up again resulting in the decision to do a total reformat. This was after backing up all the recovered data to an external drive. So so problematic.

While updates are good, it does not necessarily add value to older devices. One should be cautious before doing so, otherwise be prepared for some stress of losing data and then a little hole in the pocket to fix the damage and retrieve the precious.

Hopefully nothing disastrous will happen to my laptop on this ominous date this coming Friday. And I have since been backing up my iPhone XR on iCloud.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s a Rufous!

6 Mar

Last week, as we were getting ready to go out, I thought I’d checked the hole in the staghorn for no apparent reason. Suddenly, a little brown head popped out from it and scared the daylights out of me! I think likewise, the bird had a scare too.

I managed to have a good look at the bird as it flew away and can vouch it’s a Rufous Woodpecker. I saw enough pictures of the species on the internet when I was googling up the possibilities upon discovery of the woodpecker. So it’s good our feathered friend did not abandon the hole that he made.

Maybe in due course, there will be a family? We have to be cautious when approaching the staghorn especially when raking the leaves in order not to scare the woodpecker or ourselves in the future.

Tags: , , , ,

Borderless Love

3 Mar

We have a new pet! Sort of… The Golden Retriever actually belongs to our neighbor and he sure is a friendly one. Every now and then, he would come sit at the border between our houses and stares longingly into our garden.

And whenever hubby is out there with his plants, hubby would stretch over to give the adorable dog some love – scratching and petting the head, massaging and tickling the neck, and at the same time, absorb some doggy love in return. I do the same too if I am out in the garden and see the chummy canine.

Once the exchange is over, our adopted pet would saunter back inside his house and we’d go about our routine. I find this unexpected ‘arrangement’ rather therapeutic. While we sometimes long to have another four-legged furry ball to replace our beloved English Bulldog, the thought of the long term commitment makes us rethink again.

So for now, we are perfectly happy with our adopted pet, the Golden Retriever from next door, with his borderless love for us.

img_8326

Look at that face, so adorable!

Tags: , , , ,

Maybe I Can Bake, Part 2

2 Mar

The baking bug seems to have gotten me. After the success of the carrot cake, I itched to bake again! And so I did. This time I picked up two boxes! A the Zesty Orange Cake Mix and a Banana Honey Muffin for various reasons.

img_8308

Green’s baking mixes make you look good in the kitchen!

The main reason being I had leftover milk and butter from the last baking episode. They are food that I don’t usually consume, so baking was the only option to use them up.

Reason number two: the brand’s website showed an orange cake with poppyseeds choice but our regular grocer did not have this, only the one sans poppyseeds. And because I love poppyseeds—I used to eat poppyseed bagels whenever I could when I was living in New York City dinosaur years ago—I went out of the way to buy a pack of poppyseeds to add to the orange mix. Clever, ain’t I?

Reason number three: I actually have a muffin tray. Yeah… I know, for someone who doesn’t bake, my baking gadgets seems to be quite comprehensive. Previously, the tray was used to make mini quiches for M2 to bring to school. But now with her being away in college, the tray has not been used.

Back to my baking novelty, this time I was super efficient and needless to say, the Orange Cake was simply delicious as it now comes with poppyseeds. Next week, muffins! With poppyseeds as well.

img_8327

I skipped the icing topping and the cake is just right with a slight crunch of the poppyseeds

I must attribute the baking success to the brand, Green’s Baking of Australia and not so much of my skills in the kitchen. It’s the mix that makes me look good and feel good. Forget the 16/8 diet for the time being until this baking novelty wears off.

Tags: , , , ,

Newer Entries →