Thursday, July 5, 2018

a minor death



My iPad died Monday night. It was working fine Monday, about half charged when I closed it for the last time and it went to sleep. Tuesday morning it was a black unresponsive screen which did not revive after being hooked up to the charger. It was only 5 years old.

I still have my older iPad, the one I thought I lost in the parking lot of a church and went out and bought the new one right away and the next day the church called me that the old one had been turned in. Still, I had apps and several half written blog posts on the dead one that I don't have on the old one.

My desktop is old enough now that I can no longer update the operating system, so says Marc. He thinks I should get a new one but this one still works fine for what I use it for. I think if I'm going to get a new anything, I'd rather have a laptop though I doubt any kind of new device is in the foreseeable future what with the house still under repair.

Speaking of which I called Rocky this morning and let him know we wouldn't be home today just in case he planned to show up (no, he has us for Friday) since we're going to see the new Jurassic World movie as long as Minnie the dog is over at my sister's house.

It rained gently all day yesterday, which we really needed, stopping before dark though Houston got hammered with 8” and, big surprise, once again flooded, Buffalo Bayou cresting it's banks and inundating the park where the 4th of July celebration stages were set up. The city cancelled the party about mid-day though the fireworks were still supposed to go on, but y'all stay home and watch it on TV. The usual fireworks that go on around here seemed more subdued than past years, not as many, not as fancy, and not for as long. I wonder if my neighbors are just as unhappy about the direction this country has taken as I am since rain has never dampened their enthusiasm in the past.





23 comments:

  1. I love that y'all go to movies. I never do. There's a huge new movie theater opening up in Tallahassee though on "our" side of town and so maybe we'll start taking advantage of that.
    Glad you got some rain.
    And I'm so sorry about your iPad.

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    1. we generally go three or four times a year. sometimes more but rarely. I used to get four extra movies every summer when the grandkids were coming out as that was one of the planned activities. I'm glad for the rain too even though it will prolong the mosquitos and it's possible the iPad can get resurrected so people are telling me.

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  2. sorry about your iPad. You might want to look into a Kindle Fire. They are tablets too, and MUCH cheaper. :)

    Sorry about the flooding. And the altered 4th plans.

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    1. well I don't live in Houston, it's just the big city, so the flooding didn't affect me at all and I had no plans to attend.

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  3. The fireworks in our area were also more subdued than normal. I would love to speculate that folks feel the way we do, Ms. Ellen, but I think a mid week holiday makes it harder to party as hearty.
    Our next door neighbors, who usually make the earth shake, listened to Shelley's request to "give us a break" since she and grands wouldn't be here to help with the six animals and didn't have anything but loud guests at their celebration this year. Yay us.
    We too need rain. Wildfire smoke is really horrible and my old lungs are fighting the good fight.
    How was the movie? We haven't gone to the "picture show" since last fall.

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    1. I'm sure you are right, wishful thinking on my part. and nice the neighbors were compliant.

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  4. Hi, Ellen. I spend WAY too much time on my iPad. Storage on it is so full that I have to choose to delete things every so often to keep it working. A few months ago I was SURE it was dead. Screen went black while I was using it. Nothing I could do would bring it back. I googled the problem. Read about others who thought theirs had died, Followed suggestions they gave. Guess what?! I got it back. I don't remember how------so what else is new?------ but if I were you, I would not give up. Something about a way to reset it. I have had Kindles do the same thing.

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    1. Thanks, I'll check it out, Apple store as a last resort.

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  5. Sorry about the iPad. I have a Kindle Fire and I love it, even though in everything else i am a Mac girl through and through. I bet you're right about the dampened spirits. I don't think its the rain.

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    1. being in the middle of the week probably had more to do with it. and yeah, we are Mac from the beginning, 1987 we bought our first two, one for us, one for the kids.

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  6. Boy, Houston just can't catch a break, can it? That's very weird about your iPad. Can you take it to an Apple Store the next time you're near one? The "Genius Bar" people might be able to get it sorted out. Or, as Run N Rose mentioned, maybe there's a way to do a reset.

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    1. Houston has no one to blame but itself. the sunken freeways were designed to double as holding tanks for floods and then they freak when hordes of cars and semis get engulfed. they've cut down all the tree covered acreages scattered around and wetlands and covered them with concrete. all the housing for at least the last 50 years has been built on slab instead of pier and beam. there are 5 major bayous that all run through the city and drain into either the Port of Houston or Galveston Bay. the growth and planning has been so inept that it only has to rain hard now for areas to flood and a real rain event now floods the whole city...every time instead of just once in a while.

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  7. I hope there will be a movie review.

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    1. somewhat but it is #5 in the Jurassic series so...

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  8. My lap is wearing out slowly and I avoid replacing it. Like an old friend

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  9. My tiny MP3 player did that to me, and two days on the charger wouldn't revive it. I bought a new one for $30. When it came, I pressed the ON button one more time on the old one, in farewell. It came to life, gasping. Put it back on the charger, and we're back in business. The new one is in the drawer.
    When I upgraded systems this year, I gave up too much, basically because I would not pay huge sums and go through a dozen upgrades since the last. So, I let my checkbook go down the river. That has permitted my innate laziness to overcome. It's not good. And, I let me entire genealogy record go. Hours and hours and hours of research. The good news is, not one member of my family showed interest, so a capital F to that, too.

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    1. I'm happy to keep my working well old desk top with it's old operating system. upgrades always make me nervous. will it have finally edged past my ability to understand and dance with the new technology.

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  10. Sorry, but if you use that pad much you are going to find you have to get a new one. It will quirk you to death. I hate technology!

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    1. I don't really use it that much, usually just in the evenings if I feel like writing or watching something.

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  11. Your old iPad might be able to download your new apps - & if you saved them to the cloud then they might even still have all your data. I'm kind of random what I let get saved to the cloud though, and I feel like you are anti-cloud, so this might not work for you anyway :)

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    1. nope, don't do the cloud but I will take it to the apple store and see what they can do.

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  12. My iPad came back to life also. I don’t know why it died or why the Apple came back in the light, I just accept it as a miracle and move on. Don’t give up on yours. It probably is an easy fix.

    I hope you enjoyed the movie. We just went to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor. It is a wonderful documentary on Fred Rogers. It was five hankie film and I loved every minute of it.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.