Now the other thing occupying my thoughts Wednesday, besides ``do I have a moment to get up to the bathroom before something terrible happens?'' (the answer was yes all but one time, a contingency for which I'd readied several backup pairs of underwear) was more fun and digital. Also overdue.
Back in 2017 I had to rush to buy a new computer when my 2011-era MacBook Pro died suddenly and rapidly. The new one was all right, apart from the too-small solid-state drive. But over the years it started to show its age, particularly in 2021 when it decided the battery needed replacing, and it underscored this by kernel-panicking a good bit. I was planning its replacement when I destroyed my Scion tC, and then a couple weeks later got my job stolen. So I had to wait and hope the battery needing replacement wouldn't get so terrible before my finances were back in some kind ofokay shape. Well, after a half-year at a job paying triple what my old one did, I'm ... back to about where I would have been if my job weren't yanked away from me. But also, the 2017 computer has been crashing more, and the battery deciding that 40% charge is where it should go to emergency death-sleep.
So I bought a new computer. Refurbished, anyway, off of the Apple Store Online. I over-spent on this, following my father's advice about rare purchases (computers, cars, houses). But I got an M2 chip, whatever that means, and as much SSD as they could spare. I had it shipped to the Apple Store nearby, because while I could have had it sent home ... well, I don't think we've had a serious problem with porch piracy (among other things, the laptop Old Work sent me the day I wrecked my car sat on the porch 18 hours without my knowing about it), it's only polite not to needlessly tempt people. Also I felt like this is a big expense, there should be some ceremony to it, even if it's just going to the store and bringing it home. So after work, which was an office day, I came home, changed into more comfortable wear, and went out to get it.
The store was hopping, but one of the staff spotted me, scanned my receipt (yes, I printed it out), and checked my ID. And it was but the work of a moment for them to bring it out, bag it, and send me on my way. I was surprised they didn't have me sign a receipt for it, but I suppose they know what they're doing.
Setup was not bad, even given my interruptions every 15 minutes for the first hour to drink eight ounces of medicated water, and my, uh, irregular interruptions after that. What I had forgotten was that you could do a data transfer, old computer to new, as a peer-to-peer connection just by having the computers sitting near each other. The initial estimates of how long this would take were an alarming eight hours plus, but that dwindled to about two hours, which was a pretty good estimate. The thing was done right about the time I was done with the first round of drinking medicated water. It did do that thing, near the end, where it stayed at ``17 minutes remaining'' for about four days, but that finally evaporated sometime when I was busy with other things.
With that done I could try my first night on the shiny new computer and its ... remarkably sluggish connections to everything. Turns out while the transfer copied over all my files and applications and many settings, it didn't copy over my DNS settings (1.1.1.1 and 94.140.14.14), a thing it only took me until the next evening to think of. It also took about eight hours for the new computer to fully claim the backups made from my old computer, on a USB-normal stick that has to plug into the new USB-weirdly-tiny plugs the computer has through an adapter.
I figure at my leisure to get some USB-too-tiny sticks to plug into the ports and be my backup drive. I also figure to get the battery in my old computer replaced, so that I have a working backup computer just-in-case. My previous backup computer was the iBook that I got in 2001, which somehow has kept going even as the 2006 PowerBook G4 decided it didn't want to turn on anymore. (The 2011 computer, as mentioned above, contracted fatal deathness.) Of course, I'm not sure who to have fix it ... Capitol Macintosh is conveniently nearby, but when they had ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's computer, it got stolen along with a bunch of other stuff in a break-in. They've changed ownership since then, but still ... maybe the guys out in East Lansing who replaced my iPod's battery are available for this kind of thing. I should check whether they've turned up in the police blotter.
And now I bring you ... the last pictures from MJS's Pinball At The Zoo afterparty. Fun time, even if we for once left at a reasonable hour instead of closing the place out.
The wall of games round Pink Panther, the Centaur that I'm inexplicably strong on (did you know there's a five-ball multiball available on this early-80s game? Do you know I manage to pull that sort of nonsesne off?), and the Zaccaria table Time Machine that's got a neat segment that rises and lowers in the playfield.
Fireball playfield that MJS has hung up as part of the wall art.
Target Alpha! A different, I assume, model to the one that people might have bought at auction (see the poster from a few days ago). The table is one of the estimated 83,534 reskins of El Dorado, this time with a Future ... uh ... Skeet Shooting? theme.
Some of the albums that line the upper wall. It's a bit sad they're used for visual art rather than as music, well, other than the Rapping with Rodney Dangerfield album, but it's good that the art is still an ongoing appreciated thing. Album cover art got so wonderful there.
And here's the playfield of MJS's newest addition, the Doodle Bug ... the gimmick of the game is starting that little captive ball under the playfield in the middle there, which will rattle back and forth until you hit one of the estimated 74 ways to stop it. But each time it rattles, it scores ten, or a hundred, or a thousand points, which you can imagine makes for a very happy game. But note at the bottom, the flippers ... which will drain if you try to cradle the ball, so modern players? Who learn to cradle at all possible times? They're screwed.
Still, it's a fun game with great mod art, as you can see, and it's fun playing.
Trivia: In 1883 the French caricaturist Albert Robida published La Vingtième Siècle and La vie életrique, with illustrations of devices for submarine and air warfare. But also for a home device called the téléphonoscope, a device that could be used to recieve news, shop for clothes, take educational courses, or watch moving pictures; one picture shows madame watching in her boudoir late at night. Source: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold, Merritt Ierley.
Currently Reading: Archie 1000-Page Comics Dream, Editor Jamie Lee Rotante. The ''dream'' by the way is mostly that these are summer stories, so there's a lot of hanging out at the beach or going on camping expeditions where there's a string of disasters that all turn out swell in the end. Plus, so far, one story set inexplicably in The Future where the gang is on a spaceship and discovers a cloning machine just in time to save them from an invasion by badnasty jumpjumps.
