Month: February 2015

It works now…

So just to set the record straight: While the email issue still baffles me (but seems to have worked itself out), it turns out the iTunes issue was to some extent my own fault–an artifact of creating a separate library for video on an external drive. Once I figured out what had happened, it was relatively easy to fix by recopying my media folder and doing a global find and replace in one XML file.

This sort of makes me wonder (again) how people who are afraid to go under the hood of their computers and do things like edit XML files get by sometimes. But the answer is that they probably just don’t get themselves into situations where they would need to do so in the first place.

Anyway, all my music lives where it’s supposed to now for the first time in years and has been pretty much de-duped, etc. All I need to do now is fix lots of dates and determine which “protected” items from my ex’s account that were never converted to DRM-free versions I need to re-acquire (not many, it seems…).

Refreshingly cancer-free since 2007™

I had my annual checkup at the oncologist’s yesterday and all was well with the world. After next year, the tenth anniversary of my original diagnosis, I apparently get to stop coming back for these annual visits, which are kind of expensive because for some reason my insurance treats them as outpatient hospital admissions rather than as the 30-minute doctor’s appointments (with labs) that they actually are.

I have avoided writing a lot about this subject, maybe because I didn’t feel like I “deserved” to since my experience was not nearly as gruesome as some people’s are. But once you’ve had that diagnosis, it does make things a little different for the rest of your life. It also makes you a little paranoid. I’m a little less so today.

It just works…

…except when it doesn’t.

I’ve owned nothing but Macs–eight of them–for almost twenty years and let me just say that my recent migration to the new iMac has been one of the most annoying and traumatic moves ever. It seemed like things were going along pretty well; all my iPhoto libraries moved over just fine, even though they had been created with a very old version of iPhoto. I got all my assorted video software working fine…and it was so very fast.

But I’ve had big problems getting my email accounts to work, which should have been just about the easiest part of the process. Granted, I have an unusual setup (and should probably just migrate everything to Gmail) but it was a fucking nightmare, and worse yet, once I got things working OK, all my settings just disappeared and I had to start over again. Right now, I’m guardedly optimistic that the mail is under control.

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 7.14.52 PM

Moving my iTunes library seemed to go really well too, and I used this as an excuse to do a lot of cleanup and merging. I put in quite a bit of work. And then, as soon as the latest iTunes upgrade was installed, it all disappeared. My library was empty and when I looked at the library file, its last update showed as sometime in December. Before I bought the new computer. My music was still there and I’m currently rebuilding my library from an XML file. I have no clue what it’s going to look like when I finish.

Suffice to say I’m not amused…

On the 8th of February

Never really noticed this coincidence before. On 8 February 2000, I announced that I was going to be moving back eastward at some unspecified point in the future. Exactly five years later, I announced the actual move. It took a while, obviously, but here I am. And I still stand by my decision. As it happens, 8 February 2007 also was the start of my transformation into the librarian you know and love today.

Pretty good date, all in all.

I used to do these “five years ago, etc.” posts fairly often. I haven’t been doing them so much lately as I’ve been trying to focus on the present and the future. But I was looking for something tonight in reference to another post, and I got sucked in. So here you go…