Otter's Rock

This morning bright and early I called in to the local computer repair and told them about my problem. They say sure, they can fix it, but they are swamped and it will take at least a week and a half until they can even open it up to see what the problem might be, and then who knows how long before they can fix the problem. And, from how I described the problem, that it probably wasn't the install of the antivirus software, but rather an underlying issue, and that there's no telling how long it would take to find and fix it.

Me: in a week and a half I'm going on vacation. Where I will be at home, in the same town as the computer guy who sold me the laptop in the first place, who is a very good IT guy and also a guy who gets a TON of business from my Dad and will therefore probably jump me to the head of the line. And, if it is an underlying issue, might give me a discount on fixing it since he was the one who sold it to me.

So that's what I'm doing.

The issue is, my work laptop is terrible. It's old and sloooooooow and that's why I've been using my personal laptop to do everything work related since the lockdown started. And my work laptop is, um, not suited for things like video editing and teleconferencing. (Neither of which I had to do before covid. I mean, it was slow and annoying, but perfectly capable of things like writing stuff in Word and posting stuff on Facebook and sending emails.) So if I can just get through this week, Sunday afternoon I am getting in my car and driving to my parents' place and I'm doing the Monday-Thursday work from there, where I can borrow laptops that actually have enough speed and power to do the stuff I need in a reasonable time. (My parents, being professional photographers, have really robust computers.)

But to get through this week ... the online pre-recorded worship service gets filmed in chunks which I then edit together, and there's no way around that. My work laptop does not have a card reader to read the camera's SD card. My old personal laptop, which still works but is Windows 7, has a cardreader but no video editing software (and good luck finding it for Win7 at this point). So I will be transferring the files to a thumb drive using the old personal Win 7 machine, and then putting them on the work laptop and editing it there. I am currently trying a trial run to see if this is going to work at all or if I need to come up with something else.

Months and months ago, I got a new laptop. Well, new to me, because I wanted to keep with Windows 7 (I use Win 10 at work and HATE it, it's better than 8 but that's not saying much). Anyway, it was a used laptop, but it was inspected and certified, and it has been running just perfectly.

EXCEPT that Firefox kept freezing and crashing. All other programs were perfectly fine, it was just firefox. I did some troubleshooting, refreshed firefox, deleted and reinstalled, all that jazz. Nothing worked. So, today I backed up my firefox profile using MozBackup (which has always worked perfectly for me before). Then I uninstalled firefox and deleted the profile and then deleted the firefox folder in my program files folder. Like, EVERYTHING COMPLETELY GONE. NO EXCEPTIONS. So that whatever the problem is, it couldn't possibly come over, right?

Then I reinstalled Firefox, completely clean new installation. Then I tried to use MozBackup.

It didn't work. The backup I made today was "not a valid backup file."

Fortunately, the backup I made two weeks ago DID work, so while I've lost some tabs that were open and a few passwords to websites that I just started using, most of my stuff should be there.

If this didn't work--if I did all this and firefox STILL FREEZES PERIODICALLY, I will be so pissed.

ETA: nevermind, fixed the problem by running MozBackup again and this time, instead of taking the 4/23 backup that it came up with, browsed for and clicked on it from where I saved it in the first place.  Don't know why it made a difference, but it did!

My personal laptop is old and has problems.  Not with the actual computer part of it; with the power and big cracks in the case.  As in, big chips of plastic case come off every so often, and while the power cord itself works fine the place it plugs into only works intermittently.  If you can find the exact right place, and not jiggle the laptop or the cord at all and hold the whole thing perfectly still, it charges fine.  But it's really annoying.

So I was going to replace it.  It's Windows 7, and I use Windows 8 and10 at work.  They're both faster, but 7 is SO MUCH EASIER to use on a laptop.  (8 and 10 assume that a tablet is your primary way to use the OS, or at least a touchscreen laptop.)  So I wanted to keep it, since it's still being updated.  I bought a refurbished Windows 7 laptop online, tried it out, it worked fine.  I was getting ready to load all my programs and transfer my files (a huge bother), when a techie friend said "hey, it's so much easier and quicker to clone it, why don't you do that instead?"

Okay, great.  Fine.  I read some articles online so I know what I'm doing, download a cloning software and clone my old hard drive onto my new one ... and it won't boot up.  Try it again, same thing.  Now, at this point, I would like to just go back to how I started and manually transfer programs and files, but I don't think that's possible because it's been formatted a couple of times--doesn't that wipe out the OS?  So I download another cloning software and try that one.  Same problem, except now at least I can get it to run System Repair.  Which says there's a problem I can't fix.  But the System Image Recovery options are also available now, and I go there.  Yes, I can use the backup of the original laptop I made before trying to clone anything (I am no fool).  But!  In order to do that, I need a system repair disk or a Windows installation disc, neither of which I have.  It will make one for me, all I have to do is put in a blank disc! ... which I don't have.  Nothing in town is open on Sundays, and I'm not driving an hour to the nearest city where I know there will be a store open that would sell blank cds, it can wait until Monday.  At least my original laptop is okay.

While I was in college, I ripped all my CDs to my computer and, using Windows Media Player, put them into playlists.  I like these playlists.  I have kept them curated and organized and constantly expanding for the last decade and a half.  Every music I have acquired since then has been added to these playlists.  Whatever devices I use to listen to music must be compatible with these playlists.  Up until now this was easy, because all I had to do was sync my mp3 player, and it worked.  (Yes, I still use my separate, dedicated mp3 player.  Yes, it's another device to carry.  But it has a very long battery life, so by using it I'm not draining my cellphone battery, which doesn't last as long.)  And when I finally got around to syncing my playlists to my phone, it just worked there too, in the default music app that was preloaded, unhelpfully called "Music," which I have not been able to find on the app store.

So I thought that syncing my playlists to my new tablet, it, too, would be no problem.  Ahahahaha.  No.  I have tried syncing multiple times.  I have tried many different apps.  I converted all my playlists from the default WMP format to the more-common m3u format.  I have tried both copying and pasting the files, and using Windows Media Player's sync feature.  But no matter what I try, the playlists either a) don't read the playlists, only the songs and albums, b) read the playlists, but can only seem to play one or two of them, or c) reads the playlists, can play one or two, and says it's playing the rest even when there is no sound coming out of the device.  I've checked forums, googled, nothing.

In the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal, as I have both my mp3 player and my phone with all my music on them.  But it is FRUSTRATING.

For reference, in case it helps: the phone is a Samsung Galaxy S5, and the tablet is a Lenovo Tab A-10, and both are Android devices.  I have tried many players and can't remember them all, but I know I have tried both Google's Play Music and the other Music app that was preloaded on the device.

(By the way googling for apps with good playlist ability is useless, because what the reviewers gush about is the ability of the app to make playlists for you.  Which, okay, fine, if you trust the computer to make the right matches, no problem.  But there is no way the computer would be able to do anything half as good--for my personal tastes--as what I already have.  For example, one of my playlists is called "Folksy."  It contains some twangy country, some rockabilly old rock, some folk songs, some Gospel hymns, and a few other odds and ends including Rosemary Clooney's recording of This Ole House.  Now, a computer algorithm might get the rest of those ... but would it also pull in the Rosemary Clooney without also pulling in the rest of her songs which would be totally unsuitable for the "folksy" playlist?  I think not.)

So, I have several different emails for different purposes, and I am very adamant that The Streams Do Not Cross.  Partly this is due to a confluence of fannish/personal/professional issues, and partly it's because I am anal about such things.  Two I access via webmail, and one I use Thunderbird for.  I would like to switch one of the webmail ones to an email client such as Thunderbird that would download the messages and store them on my harddrive.  BUT I don't want to use Thunderbird, because I don't want the streams to cross.  (Unless there's a way to use Thunderbird with two completely separate accounts where they don't connect at all?  I know how to set up Thunderbird with multiple email accounts to the same inbox, sorted into folders, but not to have two completely separate inboxes, and anyway, two programs would probably be easier for me mentally to manage than both on the same one.)

So!  I need recs.  Free-or-cheap email app for PCs, not Thunderbird, what do you recommend?  Do I just switch back to Outlook?  (Which, I could do, the learning curve would be small, but at the same time ... it seems like such a retrograde maneuver.)

OMG, you guys, this is so funny.  It's a medieval help desk, and this is for anyone who's ever worked technical support.  (It's in Norwegian, but the subtitles are in English.)