This post may be brief. I’m typing on my 2010 laptop, mustered into service because my 2015 laptop (purchase in 2016) suffered a possibly fatal event while I was in Ocean Grove this past week. I went to go use it on Thursday afternoon and discovered that the screen was blank and the computer was non-responsive (it wouldn’t restart with the hold-down-the-power trick, etc.). I brought it into the Apple store today, and they think it’s a warped battery, which can be replaced. The expected return date is July 16. If not, I suppose I will be the owner of a 2019 model sooner, rather than later.
I have backed up most things, but I hadn’t in a few days. One thing I hadn’t saved? My time log, starting Monday July 1. I archive them at the end of the week. So I spent some time Thursday trying to reconstruct my week from Monday morning. I think I was reasonably accurate, but if my computer can be put back into service with its existing files, we’ll be able to compare my reconstruction with reality and determine an accuracy percentage. Exciting! (And that’s about the only good thing I can think of from my computer woes.)
In the meantime, I’m hunting down passwords and figuring out links (most stuff comes up automatically on my current computer, so I hardly think about these things until they’re gone). And I’m cobbling together other systems. I can’t use the memory devices I record Before Breakfast on with this computer. Fortunately, I’m a few weeks ahead. I suppose I’ll figure something else out. We have a home computer I might employ for some things.
In any case, Ocean Grove was fantastic! I love visiting the Jersey shore for a week each summer. We had a lovely large veranda where we could see the ocean. I ate most meals out there, and my husband cooked every night: mussels, steak, lobster, mmmm. I ran on the board walk every morning. The master bedroom had many windows that I could open and sleep with the ocean breezes blowing over me. The kids got a good amount of sand, sea, and sunshine, and two of my children now have their names up on the wall at the Silverball pinball arcade in Asbury as high scorers in the under-13 category. So that was marvelous!
Plus, Day’s ice cream each night. Once we waited in a 45-minute line. Fortunately, the line wasn’t that long every day.
I’m going to hit publish to see if this works…
Photo: Eating at Day’s last summer, but there’s no way I’m trying to sync my iPhone with this computer to get a more recent shot…
If you save your passwords in a browser like Chrome it transfers between computers as long as you are logged into the browser itself 🙂
I had a similar incident when doing my PhD. Computer completely died and couldn’t be resurrected about 2 months before I submitted. Fortunately everything was in Dropbox and my only issue was that the formatting of my thesis was messed up in a PC to Mac change. I’ve never been more relieved to have cloud based services!
Ugh! Computer issues are the absolute worst. I hope your computer can be salvaged. A 2015 bought in 2016 seems like it should still be going strong!
Your vacation sounds lovely! I’m in a very different stage of parenting as we have a 16 month old. I was at my parents for the holiday. My husband wasn’t able to join us as he couldn’t get the time off work. Wrangling a 16-month old on my own for a couple of days was challenging at times. There were a couple of family get togethers and I feel like I barely talked to anyone at those gatherings. Or if I did, it was a very surface level “hi, how are you, it’s great to see you, etc.” There were 40+ people at my parents on Friday and while our son is usually super social, it was way too overwhelming for him… It was overwhelming for me at times, too, so I understand. But he was fussier than usual and would sometimes cry if a stranger looked at him/said hi to him… So not the most ‘fun’ getaway. But I did fit in a few games of Chutes and Ladders with my 5 yo niece while Paul was napping! I love playing board games and it distracted my niece from fighting with her older brother. Score!
Echoing what Megan said regarding having passwords saved in your browser. Even better, run things off a cloud-based program like Google Drive and you will never have to worry about saving things to a hard drive or backing things up. These are all done automatically as you go (as long as you are connected to the internet).
I hope the battery can be replaced! What happened to your laptop? Did the battery just randomly go bad?
Good thing you still have the old laptop!
I am glad you kept your old backup loptop!
@Phil – me too! Though I’m doing more of my work from the home desk top (that our kids normally use to play games or watch YouTube…)
I totally recommend using a service like LastPass (my preference) or 1Password or any of the well-regarded password managers. All the good ones require that you only remember one *master* password, and then the password manager will remember the rest for you, which makes it a TON easier to use passwords like (!N58n[v<VQ:"Rw35+B$cBy without the stress of having to remember or write it down.
Plus, most good password managers will also have mobile apps across all the major devices, so you can use it easily when logging into a site on your phone.
That aside, what a wonderful holiday! I especially loved the part about getting ice cream every night, mostly because I'm reading this post after a very long and stressful day, and I was just thinking that I wanted an ice cream or even just a little bag of M&M's, but ohhhh the calories. But your breezy and fun post made me realize how very short life (not to mention the berry season) is, so I'm going to pad down the hall of this hotel to the lobby store and get me some overpriced M&Ms.
Do you have iCloud? It syncs passwords between your Mac and iPhone. My Mac laptop was spazzing for a while, and having all passwords on the phone was a life saver.