Tag: tech

Weekend Project

I mentioned in a post a few days ago (so… like… 100 posts back… I post waaaaaaay to much) that I am going to set up a new office space in one of the kids’ rooms. I am going to put together a new desk and a work-from-home workstation to use with my work-issued laptop. I was also thinking of putting a personal machine in there just for schnitzengiggles. I figured it would be a windows box and I could put some games on it or something. Mostly it would just be used for youtube, but who knows.

Today I had a crazy idea.

If I am going to have a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac (I am 100% a Mac user outside of work)… why not a duel boot with a version of Linux? Debian or Ubuntu? Something like that?

That could be fun, right? Get a little swagger for my Computer Science degree going? Yeah… we’ll have to look into that more once everything is setup and running.

Vivaldi for iOS, At Last!

Finally! After ages of using Vivaldi as my browser of choice on my laptop, there is an iOS version of Vivaldi that I can use on my iPhone! I just installed it and synced it and now all the stuff I save off on my MacBook Pro should be available on my iPhone. Now I just have to put it onto my iPad. Thanks for the memories, Google Chrome for iOS but your day appears to have come to an end at last!

Happy MacOS Sonoma Release Day

Today is the release day for the new MacOS! Sonoma should be available, but it hasn’t shown up in my Mac App Store yet.

I have to say that there isn’t a whole lot here that I am excited about, apart from the normal “newer is better (and hopefully faster and more efficient, but who really knows)” vibe. I might look into widgets. I don’t really use them on my iPhone and barely acknowledge they exist on my iPad. Maybe I’ll see what’s out there for hockey and baseball and notepads and weather and news headlines and blogging stuff and random things like that.

I don’t use Safari so even though some of the updates are interesting, I am never going to see them. Oh well. That’s the downside of using third party browsers, I guess.

Whatever, Happy MacOS Sonoma Day, Apple fanboys and fangirls. Enjoy the day (assuming the download actually becomes available in your neck of the woods)!

Ironic yet unrelated note, I was prompted to take an OS update in Windows on my work machine today. What a small world, huh?

ADDENDUM: I guess the Mac App Store was just waiting for me to start complaining on the blog because the OS Update download became available to me just a few minutes after initially I published this post. Thanks, universe!

Wish My iPhone Luck

The lightning connection on my iPhone 14 Pro Max isn’t working. It’s been spotty for a couple of months, but over the last couple of weeks it’s failed completely. I plug a lightning cable into it and nothing happens. Zilch. Nada. Fun that something goes wrong right about the same time I decide to make it my go-to point and shoot camera again. As eight year old Bellana (my 22 year old step daughter) used to say, aw fiddlesticks.

I made a genius bar appointment for this afternoon to have it looked at. I had something similar happen with a headphone jack on an older model iPhone once before. In that instance they were not able to fix it and they gave me a new phone. I hope it doesn’t come to that today. I don’t want a new phone. I don’t want to have to go through the restore process. I did force an iCloud backup today, just to be on the safe side, but I hope I don’t have to use it.

Fitting that this is happening two days before Apple is expected to announce the new iPhone. Will it be called the iPhone 15? Probably but who knows. I am not planning to upgrade this year. I will probably do it next year, but I’m going to give it a miss for now. Part of the reason I hope I don’t have to replace my phone today is because it would suck to get a brand new 14 two days before the 15 is announced. That would be almost like adding insult to injury.

My genius bar appointment is in one hour and 35 minutes. Wish my poor, sick little iPhone 14 Pro Max luck. Poor, sick little monkey.

ADDENDUM: The iPhone lives! It was just some schmutz jammed into the port. The genius bar dude cleaned it out and now it works fine. Life is good!