Tag: computers

Not right now god damn it

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I have had my current desktop for just a noodge over five years, and I am starting to think that I might need to replace it sooner rather than later. It is the most insanely aggravating tech problem I have encountered, in that it isn’t one tech problem. Shit just Keeps Going Wrong, and I can’t for the life of me isolate what the problem might be beyond a vague suspicion that my dedication to Apple products is about to bite me in the ass. If this were a home build, I could start replacing parts– I mean, that would be expensive and insane, but I could do it. I could keep replacing bits of the computer until this random fucking series of crashes, application hangups and hardware shutdowns — my trackpad, for God’s sake, keeps shutting down, and it has a physical on/off button– stopped, or I’d managed to create the iMac of Theseus and just gave the fuck up.

The Music app crashes. Chrome crashes. Safari crashes. The monitors are going wonky. The trackpad shuts down randomly. The entire computer keeps hard restarting in the middle of the night and when I first wake it up after a hard crash it takes a good ten minutes before everything starts behaving, and then it’s fine for an unpredictable amount of time– anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days– until it’s not anymore.

I don’t know how to diagnose this. I thought a Safari patch had cleaned it up but that only lasted a few days and now Music is crashing, and there are 65 fucking gigabytes of music on this damn computer, so moving to another one is going to be a huge pain in the ass. Also, just to make it worse, Apple isn’t making 27″ iMacs any longer, so I can either move to a smaller main monitor or a Mac Studio, and those start at two fucking grand before you buy a monitor to go with it. I mean, I can spread that out, and truth be told I can afford it, but I really don’t fucking want to right now. I want to fix this, and normally “fix my computer” is included among my skill sets, but there are enough things going wrong that I’m starting to suspect it’s either the motherboard or the hard drive, and … that’s a new computer, since I can’t replace either.

I mean, I could go back to Windows, but I could also shoot myself in the fucking face and not have to worry about it, and those options are of equal attractiveness right now. I loathe Windows and I’m not interested in going back into that ecosystem when every other piece of tech in the house has a picture of a piece of fruit on it. If Apple was still making 27″ iMacs this wouldn’t be that hard of a decision, because $1600 is a lot more palatable than $2000 plus a monitor. But even if I stuck with the two I have (and remember, I’m running a supervillain lair here)* it’s still $400 more than the iMac I’d probably end up with, which is pushing it.

Anyway, I’m off to spend three hours Googling “everything is wrong with my computer” until it crashes again. Wish me luck.

*Three monitors and a standing desk, and how the fuck is it possible that I can’t find a picture of my desk on this website anywhere? NO way.**

**EDIT: Found one, and added the link.

New hotness alert!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy4 Comments

Forgive me, for I have sinned; I spent money on Black Friday, the fruits of which arrived today in the form of that pretty-ass new 27″ monitor on the right there. The one it replaced was, in general, a capable device (and will continue in service, but on my wife’s desk) but was so old that I literally don’t remember when I bought it; it may well date to the computer before Apple switched to the current iMac setup, where the computer and the monitor are one piece. It’s possible that it dates back to my Chicago years, although I think it might be too thin for that.

Thing is, I have a new desk coming– it’s backordered, but it’s coming– and that desk is a bit wider and deeper than my current one, and has a spot underneath it where I can put the PS5. So I decided that meant it was okay to become the ultimate in geekery: a three-monitor person. And Amazon had these fuckers on sale steep on Black Friday; I saved about $220 on the two I ordered, one of which is just going to sit in the box until the new desk arrives in a couple of months and, when I install it, might go in oriented vertically. Why? Why the fuck not?

Also, it’s curved, and I don’t know if you’ve ever used a curved monitor before? I hadn’t, and while I can’t quite explain why I like it as much as I do, it’s kind of amazing, and between the curve, a more efficient stand, and the smaller bezels compared to the old monitor, it actually really doesn’t take up much more room on my desk– so even the one drawback I’d managed to come up with regarding spending the money & upgrading really didn’t pan out.

Next trick: figure out why the colors on that picture look so supersaturated. Which I think is the phone and not the (main) monitor.

Sure, this is a great idea

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I still need to move the microphone, which is currently pinned back in that corner, but this is the setup I’m looking at right now, which my wife described as “whatever comes after ludicrous.” That’s a perfectly fair assessment; I have lost my mind, and being this close to that screen is going to blind me in short order, I think. The PS5 is going to end up to the left of all the dice on a little table; I will need to acquire a little table, however. And clearly I need some more Funko Pops.

The angle the primary monitor is at isn’t as ergonomically sound as I’d like either, but I’ve got plenty of room to move my body and my keyboard so I’m facing it directly when I’m typing; I don’t think this will lead to strain, but we’ll see.

And, just for scale, the previous secondary monitor was the size of the TweetDeck window that’s currently displayed on the TV. So, yeah. I’ve clearly lost my mind.

Today, in totally unnecessary

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

This setup, which I have no intention of making permanent, is what happens when I realize I have a 43″ TV in my bedroom that is not ever used– has been sitting there not even plugged in for months, in fact– and decide to see what happens when I try and use it as a secondary monitor. I have been tossing around the idea of moving the PS5 into the office so that I’m not monopolizing the TV that’s in there with my nonsense, and this won’t be the TV I use if I actually do that, but it got me wondering. My iMac is a 27″ 5K monitor, and the previous secondary monitor was mostly used for TweetDeck or for keeping videos running on while I did other stuff on the primary monitor. If I use this one, the resolution isn’t as good as the primary but the size overwhelms it, so … I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing right now.

Maybe I use this TV as a monitor and buy another one for the table behind me to play on.

God, I need a summer job.

In which this isn’t fair

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Politics2 Comments

It is an unbelievably perfect demonstration of how fucking perverse all of existence is right now that, literally less than ten minutes after telling my wife that I was getting (hah!) stir-crazy and wanted to go out and impulse-buy something, I went outside and checked the mail and found a brand-new Goddamned Best Buy card waiting for me. The card currently carries no balance at all; I typically use it only for large purchases (really, the only reason I ever enter a Best Buy nowadays) and the last thing I bought was my desktop, which is a 2017 model. I could use a new laptop, as the battery on the old one is starting to go, or I could make the smarter choice and just replace the damn battery. Similarly, for the first time since my initial upgrade I’ve cast an eye at the new Apple Watch, but there’s just no good reason to do that either. In either case it would be spending money just to spend money, and I’m trying to be smarter about that crap nowadays.

(I do expect to have to shell out the money for the laptop battery pretty soon, which will be a couple hundred bucks. But the thing is … six? seven? years old and there’s no speed issues at all, and if I bought a new one it would be north of two grand. The only problem is the battery, and since I don’t go anywhere I can keep it plugged in most of the time. I even still have my work laptop at home in case of emergencies.)

(Checks to see if BB has PS5s available)

(They do not)

In general, the election has failed to improve my mood. Other than the presidency, which is all over but the shouting at this point, I went from “it looks like I’ve lost every other race I care about” the other day to “I have lost every other race I care about” today. The School Board race was especially heinous; not only did the plagiarizer not lose her seat to the crank, but the other district seat up for reelection, another person who voted to return, also won, and the teachers lost their best advocate on the Board in favor of an imperious ass who I am not at all looking forward to having to deal with, ever. My personal interactions with her when she was with the district were never good, plenty of people have much worse stories than I do, and her husband was fired for incompetence.

And yet, because this is South Bend and we hate education here, she actually got the most votes of any of the At-Large candidates. So. Dandy.

But yeah: I’ve been waiting for that moment when it feels like the weight falls off my shoulders, and apparently Biden at least theoretically clinching the Presidency hasn’t done it yet. In theory the rest of the networks (particularly the AP) getting the fuck in line and making the call might help, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax until the fucker is hauled out of the White House by his hairpiece, preferably to be tossed directly into jail to die alone in a deep pit. Apparently the AP is waiting for Biden’s margin to exceed half a point before they call Pennsylvania; I’m not sure what the holdup is otherwise. Either way, I thought I was going to feel better about all this by now.

Nioh 2: Halfway Done Review

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I’m in the neighborhood of a third to halfway through my first playthrough of Nioh 2, and to a very real extent I don’t even need to write this review, as it doesn’t take long to say “Other than the inventory system the game is damn near perfect, and I’m used to the inventory system by now.” Like, that’s the review. Nioh is one of my favorite games of all time– it’s kind of amazing how many of those games I discovered during this console generation– and the sequel improves on the original in damn near every way, adding a ton of new enemies, a few new overlapping systems, a couple (not as many as I’d like, which might be my only complaint) of new weapons, and other than that just keeps everything rolling. The original game’s horrifying, punishing, kill-you-in-a-second-if-you-stop-paying-attention difficulty is still there, for sure, and the boss fights so far have been really satisfying. About half of them I’ve managed to pull off within a couple of attempts, and the other half have been those great kind of boss fights that start off with getting obliterated in seconds without laying a finger on anything and then you just keep learning patterns and getting better until you win. The fact that I don’t have to be back to work for five weeks and I still wish I had more time to play should tell you something. I suppose it’s always possible the back half could go repetitive and dull, but I doubt it; everything’s been amazing so far.

Finally getting around to wiping the hard drive on my old iMac– or, at least, I’m staring at it as it slowly reformats itself. The computer has been replaced long enough that the computer I replaced it with has been paid off, but is still sitting, forlorn, on my desktop waiting for me to do something with it so I can have it recycled. I need to get the office under control– my wife pointed out that there was a litterbox clearly visible in the background of one of my instructional videos the other day, and I actually started one of them with the words “Welcome to my filthy office!”

That’s gotta stop, and the first step to getting that done is reclaiming the desk so that I can take everything else that used to be on the desk and put it back, which will, along with some heavy decluttering, go a long way to making the room look a lot better. Again, I’m off for weeks. It’s not like I don’t have time.

In which I am supposed to be a tech person

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy1 Comment

This is my desktop setup:

You will note that TweetDeck is on the right, smaller monitor, and that Scrivener is on the left, larger monitor, which is also the actual computer. That’s how I want it.

Tweetdeck opens in the primary monitor nine times out of ten, and if there’s a pattern to that tenth time I can’t find the goddamn thing. Scrivener opens in the secondary monitor every single time.

I understand that this is very much a first world goddamn problem but it is driving me nuts. I assure you I have Googled the shit out of this and I cannot find a solution that actually works to getting those apps to open where I want them, so if one of you could Google it and post the first link, which will be something I have never seen before and will solve the problem immediately, I would appreciate it. This issue has clearly decided that it will not be resolved until I am at least moderately humiliated and fuck it at this point I’m fine with that.

(Note that any solution involving right-clicking on an app and going to “options” no longer works with Mojave.)

And because it’s probably relevant:

(I have no idea if anything nasty can be done with the serial number for my computer, but I figure let’s not take chances.)

In which I am a supervillain

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

This picture is either a testament to Apple’s utter dereliction in terms of innovative design over the last eight years or a sign that they believe they’ve achieved actual perfection in the iMac’s form factor. From where I’m sitting, the 2011-model iMac in the middle and the screaming beast I purchased today to finally replace it look exactly identical. From the side, you can tell that the newer one is much thinner, but if I’d simply replaced one with the other and not told my wife I’d bought a new computer I doubt she’d ever have noticed.

If you were reading this and thinking Luther, weren’t we just talking about your tendency towards poor financial decisions earlier this week? that’s not unfair, but: I submit that I got this computer for fifteen percent off because it is actually the flagship of last year’s model and not this year’s, that I have enough cash on hand to pay for half of it at a single go, and that with all the overtime I’ve been making at work lately paying it off by the end of the summer is a very reachable goal despite the nice chunk of change I dropped on it. Am I going to do that? Probably not, actually, because it’s not strictly necessary– but as I’ve also said this week my initial desktop has been making worrying noises at me and generally behaving in a somewhat untrustworthy manner and I’d rather replace the computer at a time of my choosing and not because it decided to go away.

The third monitor on the right is just a monitor and will be remaining on the desk; I mostly use it to display TweetDeck and iTunes while I work on the primary monitor. I may look into if I can just use the older computer as a secondary monitor– I don’t think I can, at least not in the same plug-it-in-and-don’t-worry-about-it fashion that I can the actual monitor does. I can’t convince it that it’s just a monitor and not a computer, in other words.

Next step: move my actual keyboard and the touchpad over to the new computer. I’m typing this on the bullshit tiny wireless keyboard they included with it, and while it’s a substantial improvement over any other wireless keyboard I’ve used, it’s also tiny and ridiculous and I demand size and a number pad and high degrees of clickiness from my keyboards, and the Das Keyboard that I have on my desk is perfect for me. The wireless mouse also has to go. I don’t use this as a gaming machine, so I don’t need a mouse at all, and the touchpad is wonderful.

Welcome to the new hotness, I guess.