At last I feel somewhat safe in returning to my blogs. No, I did not pass away, so to speak, nor did I join the Republican Party. What I did was become a victim of modern technology. Blood's Law of Modern Technology, which I have stated before is as follows: (a) If anything works to start with, it will quit working. (b) If it quits working, no one can fix it.
Thus my love affair with my MacBook Pro came to a tumultuous end. One day, as I was loading photos into my iphoto library, the library disappeared. I loaded a few more photos into the library, and those photos disappeared. Alas, I said, I believe my photos are gone. Thus ensued about ten days of 10-12 hours a day frustration. I first tried everything I knew to retrieve them. Then I called the tech department at BYU where they still help retired faculty. They told me to call AppleCare, which could be renamed Apple? Who Cares? After waiting several 20 minute stretches on their automated phone system, I reached an eager techie who asked what I needed help with. I explained, and he said, I've never heard of that problem, let me connect you with someone who can help you. Another 20 minutes, another techie who never heard of that problem but knew someone else to pass the buck to so he could be taken off the hook, so to speak. A final, third techie who had no idea about such matters so I bid the vaunted Apple Care by-by. In between time, I went to the great Apple Store where the floor is populated with techies in tattered jeans waiting to pounce on someone who comes in the door so they can start the meter on charges. One of them listened to my plight, plugged in my computer, said "This is such a mess I have no idea where to start. Sorry, I can't help you. See you later."
I got on the internet and asked Google how to recover lost photos and was steered to a software that is supposed to retrieve deleted photos from memory cards. You would think Apple techies would at least know this much, but apparently that is expecting too much. I tried the software, and managed to retrieve about 500 photos I otherwise would have lost. About 300 of the photos I didn't care about, but about 200 were the photos from our June Blood family reunion, which I had thought were totally lost and was ready to think about swearing. In all, I lost about 4,500 photos with lots of flowers, cactus, family, scenery, mountains and who knows what else. I thought I was backed up on my Maxtor hard drive but failed to see that if stuff got deleted from the main computer and I didn't have the backup locked on the external hard drive, the external drive would just mimic what was on the main computer, thinking I no longer wanted to have it there.
Thus, I spent many long days restoring the 15,000 or so photos I did have in safe backup mode in two main photo libraries. That may sound easy, but if you are a technological idiot, and you get weary of two-sentence instructions in dumbbell computer manuals, you may spend days on something that someone who knows how to do it, such as a ten year old, could do in an hour or two.
I fell out of love with my Mac. It betrayed me, and no one can figure out why. I had several options, which I considered. One, was to chuck my Mac in the trash or kick it out the door and tell it never to bother me again. Two, was to swear never to get on a computer again or write another sentence on a blog again and spend the rest of my life watching Barney Fife, Hawkeye, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock reruns, and not answer the phone.
Instead, I devised a twenty-step recovery program, which I will tell you about later. I am only in phase two of this complex program, and there is no guarantee I will make it to step 5, let alone step 20.
Thank you for patiently watching to see if and when I would ever rise from the depths again to continue where I left off. Unfortunately, I am even more grouchy and curmudgeonly than I was before, but there is so much more to gripe and whine about.
