What the Junk?!

I'm so tired. I could not sleep last night.  It was after 5am when I finally got to sleep and I woke up before 10 am.  I have been yawning and useless all day! lol. I haven't written for NaNo yet but I will write at least a few lines.  I have my word count and I'm almost done with the story, but there is more to go.  I'm just too tired to write much.  If I write tonight it's no telling what may come out! :p

My 'new' MacBook Pro is all set up now. I moved everything over and I got my music on here today.  I also went ahead and made backups of my iPods and my iPad Mini.  I opened all my Scrivener works and made sure to save them to the backup folder.  I don't want to lose those again!  I don't remember if I mentioned it last night, but while I was waiting for Catalina to install on the MBP, I put my yule tree up.  I got it up and put the lights on but left the ornaments for today.  I put those on today and they looked nice.  Sadly though, I am missing a small box of ornaments.  It's a little box with four glass ornaments that I got from Family Dollar several years back.  They were only a dollar, but I love those four ornaments.  I can't find them!  I am not sure where they are, I looked tonight but didn't find them.  I'm not giving up though. I know there are here somewhere!  I'll try to remember to show a picture of the tree tomorrow.  I DID remember to take a picture of the laptop in the daylight.  Here you go:

This is my desk where I sit to write.  It's a nice spot to work on my writing or whatever I'm doing.  It's nice being able to see better with this bigger laptop too.  When it arrived, the seller had put a hard case on it similar to the one I have on the 13" one.  I popped it off out of curiosity to see what condition the actual laptop was in.  My 13" was scratched and banged up pretty badly when I got it.  This guy is FLAWLESS.  The only minute scratches I see are on the bottom.  The top is mint.  It looks like it just came from Apple and it's 8 years old!  I'm glad whoever had it before me took good care of it.  My nice laptop bag is too small to fit it.  BUT!  Some time back, I saw one of those laptop sleeves at Goodwill. It was brand new and it was pretty big.  I bought it knowing it was too big for my 13" MBP but I figured I could use it for something. It fits my 15" MBP perfectly!  My messenger bag that I used to carry to Starbucks to write pen pal letters is big enough to hold it, too! I will probably get a laptop bag in the future, but this will work well for now. The sleeve is well padded and the messenger bag is sturdy and it will still have room for other stuff and the laptop.

I got up and did my usual stuff.  I later got a text from my friend.  He asked if I were home and I teased him and said, no, I went to Myrtle Beach! lol. He came over in a few minutes and he had a box.  He bought me a MacBook Pro!!!!!!  It's just like mine, the same year, but it's 15" and it's got a huge hard drive and a faster processor. I was stunned.  It makes the struggle I went through this month to get my old on working worth it.  I love it! I already have Catalina on it and my photos from the on MBP.  I need to get my music tomorrow off my iPod, I couldn't seem to get it to copy over but that is no big deal at all! That won't be any issue at all.  I hooked the external up to it and moved the photos and I have moved my Scrivener stuff.  I have installed Scrivener, Evernote, and Chrome. (my most used apps) and several others.  Now, I'm just waiting for the two big folders from the desktop to copy over.  

I could do the music tonight, but I think I'll wait.... unless... If I can find the backup files from iMazing and drag them over, I'm set! We'll see how that goes.  It's going to be weird having a bigger laptop but it's a good kind of weird.  I love how big the screen is. It's so gorgeous!  Look:

I'll take a better picture tomorrow in natural light.  I'm in love with this thing! It's got as much RAM as the old one but the harddrive is four times the size. Whoo Hoo!  I already have my current works from Scrivener on here, too.  I'm a happy camper!

I didn't go out to anyone's house for Thanksgiving this year.  I did do my tradition and drove down the main 'drag' in my city to see everything closed. I do this twice a year, Thanksgiving night and Christmas night.  It's just something I've been doing for years.  I did that and I came home and wrote 1000 more words for NaNoWriMo.  I am close to the end of this book, I still have some words to go.  It's supposed to be the summer session at the academy where my skaters go. It's late August now so it won't be much more.  I would like to write at least a little bit every day leading up to the 3oth as I want to get the update everyday badge! :P  I may or may not work on my other story tonight. I'm not sure. I'm really tired so I might just relax for a bit.  I've been doing more recovery work and I think I have just about 99.8% of my stuff back so I'm happy about that.  I just need to get a new hard drive cable, install that and clone my drive.  That is going to be fun. @_@;

I have written on both my stories, over 2000 words for NaNo and 1000 for the other story. I might go back and add some to that later, I haven't decided yet. For now, I'm going to take a break from the computer and just relax. I may or may not post another blog post later. so many maybes. :p

I'm sorry for not posting for two days. I meant to post every day but you know how that goes!  I am glad I remembered to post tonight! :p  I am now over 41,000 words on NaNo and I wrote a bunch on my other fic last night too.  I am hoping to get some written on it tonight, too.  I always make sure to get my NaNo words in first.  I am very tired, so if I get any words at all on my other work I'll be happy.  

By the way, just out of curiosity, I downloaded another recovery software and it finds the parts on my drive that the one I was using won't find anymore. It only lets you recover 1Gb so I was able to get a few more things.  I am thinking if I download every recovery software that lets you get back so much stuff, eventually, I'll get it all back! lol, I would like to have it all.  The next bi thing on my work list is a new hard drive cable and I should be back in business with the internal drive I bought and I'll keep the 2 TB one for backups and such.

I washed a ridiculous amount of dishes today and I need to fix dinner but I am damned if I am going to dirty up any more plates or dishes tonight.  :p

I have been writing today, boi! I wrote over 2400 words for NaNoWriMo and then I went to my other story and wrote almost 2000!  I'm tired now.  I spend all day and part of the night trying to clone my drive.  I should have known something was off when it took so long.  It was a mess today.  I looked and found that it probably WAS the hard drive cable after all!  I am getting that adapter box tomorrow and I'll put the old hard drive in it.  If it recognizes it and reads it as a functioning drive, I know the next step is to replace the hard drive cable.  That should be fun! If that is the issue, it will be good to know.  Since I bought the little adapter thing, I can now use it as an extra backup drive.  It's 500 gb.  I am anxious to see it the drive it recognized. If it is I'm going to be irritated but happy if that makes any sense! Happy it works but irritated that I only needed an inexpensive cable.  Oh well, live and learn!  I'll update you tomorrow.  The package is coming via Amazon by USPS. It still makes me giddy when I get a package on a Sunday. I'm such a nerd. :P

My internal hard drive came today.  I unpacked it and opened the Macbook Pro and pulled out the old drive.  Then, I found that I had to get the screws from the sides of the drive to put in the new one to securely mount it.  I, of course, didn't have the right screwdriver!  I looked online and Lowe's had one that was a multi head one and it was only $10 so I left the computer and ran over there and got it. Easy peasy getting those little screws out then and I have a tool for future use!

I get the new drive in and turn on the computer to do the disk copy.  Well, disk utility is being snarky. I look up information and see it's a glitch with Disk utility in Catalina that causes this and to go get a clone software.  Oh no! I thought, more money.  I found Carbon Copy Clone and it has a free trial. It's a fully functioning trial, In other words, you can do everything as if it's the full version. YES! Thank you, CCC!  If I ever need you again I'll be happy to purchase the full version.  I'm currently in the process of copying the external to the new internal and I'm hoping that goes well. It took some doing to even get everything to start but it seems to be rolling along now.

While I that is running in the background, my mail lady came. (The hard drive came via UPS) My new tags for my car came! YAY!!!!!!!!  I went out to put the back one on and I was NOT going to put the new tag in the damn front window so I got some tools and sat down and worked on getting the tag holder on the front. I had to go slowly and work diligently so that I didn't mess up my bumper.  I also had to bring something outside to sit on because the ground is still wet and pretty saturated from all the rains.  I got the little holder on and then I went and found (after a search)  the screws to attach the plate to the holder.  I had put them in the little compartment in the new car in a Ziploc but of course, I had forgotten ALL about that.  I finally remembered and put my tag on.  I now have a car with front and back tags.  I'm so proud of myself.  My friend kept saying he was going to do it but it's been since July, so... 

I went out earlier before I knew I needed a screwdriver.  I knew via informed delivery that my new tags were coming today and I wanted to take my car over to Starbucks one more time with the STARBUX tags.  I got a Peppermint white mocha (delicious) and I took a picture of the car with the tags and Starbucks in the background.  I'm silly, I know but I don't care!

Of course with all the stuff I've been doing, I haven't written for NaNoWriMo yet.  I guess I'll be writing later this evening.  That isn't a problem at all.  I really want to work on my other story too, but NaNo work comes first!  The video I watched to make sure I was removing and installing the drive correctly gave links to the things he used.  He has a little 'case' to put the internal drive in to make it run like an external. I ordered one hoping I can access the drive.  I don't think I will be able to, but you never know! I'm hoping.  

Here are the pictures I took at Starbucks. :)

If you are wondering what the little blob is in the first picture on the upper right, it's LSP from Adventure Time! Oh, My Glob! lol

I know I have mentioned before that I live in a river city.  Well, yesterday and today we had some really heavy rains.  The river is projected to be well above flood stage.  I rode down to look at it today and it was crazy high and it hasn't even gotten as high as it's supposed to yet.  That current was crazy strong, too!  I meant to get pictures.  Maybe I can get some tomorrow. Tomorrow is also the day my hard drive is supposed to arrive.  I will hopefully be installing it tomorrow.  That is going to be interesting! I pulled up a few videos on YouTube. (installing it and cloning the drive to have it be the boot drive) and I saved them to my watch later list so I can have those play on the television.  It's not like I can watch them on the MBP while I'm working on it!  It's going to be interesting to do this tomorrow, but I think I can do it.  It was no trouble getting into the case when I maxed out the RAM.  I think I'll be okay. I just hope everything goes well and I have a good internal drive and then I'll do a complete backup on the external!

Yes, I think my poor hard drive finally kicked the bucket. I cannot get it to mount to get any more files off of it :(  I am sad, but I did get my information from my old Macbook on here today.  The only thing that I might be missing is the pictures I have put on the MBP since I got it.  Since those are all on SD cards from my current and former phones, I think I have 98% of my stuff back.  I even was able to get the pictures off my camera because I don't delete them when I get them off. (Just for that reason!)  

I ordered a new hard drive to put in the MBP and it is coming on Friday. I hope to be able to install that, clone the external to it and be able to run my computer from the internal.  Then I'll start a weekly backup in Time machine on the external!  I am not going through all of this again. It took most of the day to get all my stuff transferred.  I got my iPod touch and my iPad mini backed up too.  I had backups on the old drive.  I was able to rip all the songs from my old classic iPod so I have all my music, too.  I'm happy to have everything almost back to normal. I even got 2000 words for NaNo!

I am going to give the internal drive another go after I take it out.  I'm not getting rid of it in any case!  I might be able to attach it as a 'flash drive' and get my files.  That would be awesome!  I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish so far.  I feel everything is back to normal!  One thing though, I was trying to send photos to the MBP via Bluetooth and it wasn't working. I could send files FROM the MBP to the Pixel phone but not the other way! I was able to use my wireless keyboard, my Bluetooth speaker, etc.  I found out that I hadn't given permission in the settings. D'oh!  They are given and I was back in business! Yay!

My NaNoWriMo writing is on track. I'm getting in on the average right at 2000 words a day. Today I hit 20,710 words! It's going pretty well.  I just hope I have the other 29,000 words! :p

It's been a long day and I'm extremely tired.  I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and I'm totally dragging today.  Hopefully, I'll sleep well tonight.  I need it.  

My hard drive won't mount at all now so I might have lost my files.  I'm so glad I was able to get the Scrivener files last night!  I also set all my backups for Scrivener to go directly to Dropbox so I will never have to worry about losing anything again.  I can't do this again. I still hope that the drive will mount again but I am not holding my breath!