Eureka! – 13 October 2023

It worked.

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I did what I should have done in the first place and read (actually listened to) the instructions on YouTube. The writer of the instructions was Andrew Tsai, a very clever bloke who was the first person I’d heard of who explained how to replace the internal mechanical hard disk in a computer with a solid state drive, an SSD for short. I listened to his instructions this morning and found my mistake. I’d gone for the quick and dirty approach when I should have taken the slow path. That’s what I did. I formatted the old scrambled SSD and then installed the new OS from a specially set up memory stick. That took an hour and a half. I knew I didn’t have time to do the next bit, because it was going to take a lot longer.
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By then I’d done Wordle and failed to find the Spelling Bee Pangram while waiting for the ping from the computer to tell me that it had finished the first install. We had a piece ’n’ jam each and got dressed to dance. Then we drove up to the town centre to one of the new churches that used to be a carpet shop next to B&Q, but today was the venue for a Tea Dance. We got there about fifteen minutes after the opening time and by then the room was about three quarters full. Also the car park outside was completely full with minibuses. My heart sank even further than it had yesterday. We WERE going to be the youngest folk in the hall.

There was a band, two guitars, a keyboard and drums and there was a singer. Scamp knew the keyboard player whose name was Alathea and went over to speak to her at the interval. Actually the musicians were really quite good, the singer, not so much. I thought we’d have to leave after half an hour, but eventually found Scamp’s method of tuning out sounds I don’t want to hear, and concentrated on listening to the band. One of the guys who dances at the Wednesday class arrived and we all sat and blethered for a while. We had our tea and a cake and Scamp and I did dance for a couple of tracks, but with a carpeted floor, anything other than a shamble across the floor was out of the question. After that, Jim left and so did we a few minutes later. We did learn that it was a once a year tea dance and the organisers were giving up after this one. I can’t say I blame them. Too many empty tables showing a lack of interest from our age group.

We drove home and I started on the second part of the marathon installation. This time it ran like clockwork and about an hour and a half later I had a working computer again running macOS Monterey. It looks no different to macOS Big Sur which it replaces, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to upgrade Lightroom now!

With only a couple of niggles to fix, I took a walk in St Mo’s to see if I could find anything worth photographing. I didn’t find anything inspiring, so I walked down to the shops and got some mozzarella to top the pizzas I was making for dinner. I took the long way home and risked a photo of the underpass that takes you through to Blackwood. Always something dodgy lying around there, but quite an interesting perspective. That got PoD.

“Rise” was the uninspiring prompt for the day. I ended up drawing a hot air balloon, or a giant light bulb, maybe. That must have been the poorest prompt so far this Inktober.

Tomorrow we’re intending to go to the dance class again, but hopefully the roadworks will now be clear … perhaps!