I thought I had several computers… but then I had none. My week last week.

I’ve had a lot of computers… and I tend to keep the ones I’ve retired “just in case…”.

Well, that “just in case” scenario happened last week, and whaddya know, they all failed at once. I swear. It was incredible. What are the odds?!

(Actually, that isn’t entirely true. I did have my AirMac from 2012, but I couldn’t remember the password, so it was rendered useless, even though it wanted to help….)

THIS IS HOW IT WENT DOWN

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my newish (I purchased it 2 years ago, used, but very high quality and very powerful) desktop was starting to power down on its own. Not a good sign. So, thinking ahead, I backed up everything.

…Now, I know Apple has a cloud… and I pay for cloud storage, but I have no idea how to backup to it. So, I used an external hard drive.

“Good. That’s done. OK.” I said to myself… “And, if all else fails, I have two other desktops here that are all migrated together and have all of the same information”.

Or so I thought.

I’m getting ahead of myself…

Finally last week, my big, powerful, expensive computer powered itself down for the last time. I figured it was a motherboard and it could be fixed. In the meantime, I would use my previous big and powerful computer – which had a ‘known issue’.

A ‘known issue’ is when you do a little research and realize that the particular computer you bought ends up having issues that are posted all over the internet. I found this out about my previous computer and decided to retire it and start over, because I never wanted to have a complete failure of my computer – which is what this ‘known issue’ would do.

Fast forward, that ‘known issue’ previous computer has been sitting comfortably on another desk in my office, minding its own business, just waiting to come back into service to help me if I should need it – which I did, last week.

So, I fired it up. And, like a sweet old machine, it started. Yay! Then, after about 1 minute, it totally went black and was completely dead. The Known Issue had struck.

OK, well… I still had my very old computer on my jewelry table. (I use it to watch movies when I’m making jewelry.) I fired it up. No problem, it came alive! Relieved, I asked it to do anything other than play movies, and it got confused. The color whorl of death was all it could muster.

“Are you all kidding me?!” I have three desktop computers and you all fail me in one day?! How can this be?!

Since I’ve spend all of my disposable income on vet visits and hay spun of gold ($30/bale) this month, it only made sense that I’d need to purchase a new computer. Of course.

So I did. I went onto Apple’s ‘refurbished’ page and ordered a not so special not so powerful kinda basic and somewhat affordable computer to be overnighted to me.

Yay.

And when it arrived at 9pm the following day – no joke – I didn’t have any time left in my day to set it up… (so glad to have spent that extra overnight money…).

When I had my next day off to set up my newused computer, I couldn’t “migrate” (Apple’s easy way to make your new computer know all of the things your old computer knows…) all of my passcodes and shortcuts because all of my other computers were either dead or terminally frustrated.

So had to start over.

This made me cry.

But then I remembered that I have my AirMac from 2012! (I use it when traveling but I don’t travel much anymore so I forgot.). Ah! I’m saved! I can migrate information from this computer to my newused computer!

Or so I thought – again.

It seems that I had forgotten the specific password needed to do a migration from that computer. I tried everything I could think of. Every. Password. Ever. Since. The, Start. of Time.

Nothing. I was locked out of my own memory.

So… I gave in. I cried softly and just agreed to disagree with the universe… and soldiered on.

That’s where I’ve been.

Trying to recreate the wheel. And somewhat succeeding.

Here is a pic of my new, used, marginal but good-enough, smallish computer. I’m grateful to have him. Thank goodness he is willing to work for me today.

PS: All in all, although he is small and not powerful, his COLOR is amazing. Much better than any of my other computers. So, we’ve got that going for us!