Tag Archives: Apple

NaNoWriMo Update

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November is National Novel Writing Month.
NaNoWriMo award from 2022.

This is my third year participating in NaNoWriMo. Above was the award for my first attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in November, which I completed by Nov. 29.

What is NaNoWriMo? According to their website: “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.”

A funny thing happened a few months after my first try. My computer randomly began deleting files (not really funny!) I worked with Apple for three full days, but never got my manuscript “The Playgroup” back. It was gone along with many other things including my HOA newsletters. I thought I had a backup automatically scheduled every week. But I was wrong about that. Nothing hurt more than losing losing that one file of 50,000 words.

One day when my son was four or five, he deleted all my writing files from our Apple computer. I don’t know why he did it, or if he knew what he did. I literally started screaming and crying all at once. I must have terrified him.

That’s how I felt when my laptop randomly did the same thing. Apple knew what caused it, but didn’t admit to me that it was a known issue. They did say it wasn’t a software issue, but was due to hardware.

My second year of NaNoWriMo was 2023.

I had recovered mentally enough to recreate my manuscript. Then a few months later, I signed up for an online writing class on plots. I view my writing as more character driven and I wanted to improve my plotting. LA from Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 was taking classes with Gotham Writers. I decided to sign up, too. For my final assignment, which was creating a complex plot, I used my Playgroup manuscript for the outline. I got good feedback from the instructor on how to improve and make the plot stronger.

Fast forward to November 2024

I’m using the notes the instructor from Gotham Writers Workshop gave me to revise my manuscript. I had tinkered with it earlier this year, but got bogged down. I tend to revise only a few words here or there. Big changes eluded me.

But with NaNoWriMo and writing every day with accountability, I am getting to the meat of revising. I’m making big changes. I’m adding chapters and deleting a character. If it doesn’t move the story forward, it’s gone. It’s not really a matter of writing so many words each day as in previous years. It’s more sitting down every day and working on it for an hour or two and letting the drama unfold.

If you have participated in NaNoWriMo, what was your experience like?

When you edit or revise, do you tend to tinker around the edges or take a chain saw to your projects?

This is an odd one

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Rotary phone
Do you remember when phones looked like this? You might not be old enough, but I do.

I should file this under Public Service Announcement:

An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It was about iphones and a setting default that is “on.” It’s something I didn’t even know was on my phone. And I looked. Yes, it was on. I turned it off.

Here’s an excerpt:

Apple Turned On a Buried iPhone Setting. You Might Want It Off.

The ‘Discoverable by Others’ switch is on by default. Here’s what it does—and why it isn’t as scary as it sounds. By Joanna Stern

This creepy-sounding setting is leading people to think their name and location are being shared without their knowledge or consent. That’s not the case, says Apple, but you might want to turn it off anyway.

Last year, as a part of iOS 17.2, Apple released the Journal app. You can use it to jot down personal notes about your day, your life, what inspires you. You know, journal-y things.

You can turn on Journaling Suggestions. This recommends topics to write about based on things your phone (but not Apple) knows about you—music you’ve listened to, people you’ve called or messaged, photos you’ve recently taken, places you’ve visited, etc. You decide if you want to turn this on. When you first launch the Journal app, it will prompt you to do that. Those suggestions aren’t ever shared with Apple.

Here’s where it gets weird. When you go into Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions, you’ll see that Discoverable by Others is enabled by default—even if you never turned on suggestions. Under the setting it says, “Allow others to detect you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions.”

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-iphone-discoverable-by-others-journaling-suggestions-9d63086d?mod=wsjhp_columnists_pos3

I don’t quite get what this function does. The reporter of this story Stern reached out to Apple. They said it gives more suggestions on what to journal about, but doesn’t share info with others. That’s reassuring, but also confusing. What is Discoverable by Others anyway?

Were you aware of this journaling function? Or Discoverable by Others? Have you used it?

I wrote about weird coincidences on my iphone a few weeks ago HERE.

Who isn’t tech savvy?

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Bondi Blue iMac.
The first iMac we bought for our kids in Bondi Blue.

My kids grew up with iMacs. Apple is the only type of computer I’ve ever owned. I was talking to my son and I was telling him about last week when my husband didn’t know how to take a screen shot and asked me for help with basic tasks.

My kids are millennials — born in the years from 1981 to 1996 — my daughter being born at the tail end.

My son said that not only are boomers (referring to me and my husband) not great with computers, zoomers are also inept.

What’s a zoomer? It’s a new term I learned from my son for Gen Z. They were born in the mid-to-late 1990s up until early 2010s. (Technically my daughter could be a millennial or a zoomer.)

Case in point, my son said his wife’s youngest sibling (yes they are married!) is a zoomer. He graduated college in June. My son asked him to get a workout spreadsheet from his laptop.

“How?”

“It’s on the desktop in a folder,” my son explained.

“Where’s the desktop? What’s a folder?” was the zoomer’s reply.

Wouldn’t you think that young people who literally grew up with technology would know how to use computers? According to my son, zoomers are used to doing everything on phones — which work entirely different than laptops or desktops.

I googled it and discovered this to be true.

What’s your experience with zoomers and computers? Do you find it strange that zoomers are not as computer literate as the generation before them?

Bombarded with junk

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junk email
One of the many hundreds of junk emails I got today.

I hate email. Not all the time, but often enough.

Today my inbox is flooded with subscription confirmations like the one above.Which makes me wonder if my email has been hacked? I’m literally getting thousands of emails in all languages from random companies asking me to confirm my subscription request.

What is up with that?

Of course I can only read the ones in English. They are addressed to all sorts of different people, none of them me, but they state the subscription request came from my email address.

It makes me nervous that I have been hacked, have a virus or someone is out peddling my email address.

Here’s another one. I’m not Glen Veum.

Has anything like this happened to you? How did you stop it? Should I create a new email address?

Do you think I’ve been hacked?

I had to laugh…

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macbook air grey logo on laptop
Photo by Marc Mueller on Pexels.com

I did it. I ordered a new MacBook Air. After losing files due to some software glitch, I tried to update the operating system on my current machine. I was given a message that there wasn’t enough memory. So I’m stuck with the glitch.

I called my computer expert (my son) and he informed me the amount of storage on my MacBook Air was less than what he had on his phone. With more files disappearing including my manuscript from NaNoWriMo (I wrote about that HERE) I was feeling desperate.

I went back and forth on which laptop to buy — the MacBook Pro or Air. How much RAM and storage. I finally settled on the Air and maxed it out. I like the light weight of the Air compared to the heaviness of the Pro.

Anyway, the only thing that was available immediately was the standard MacBook Air, which I knew wouldn’t last long due to not enough memory. I’ve been waiting patiently for a couple weeks for my souped up laptop to arrive. I got an email that it will arrive today.

I had to laugh.

Did you see the announcement from Apple? They are introducing a BRAND SPANKING NEW MacBook Air that is lightyears and decades superior to the one I’m getting today. But of course.

It has a better chip, more RAM, a better screen — better everything.

Oh well. I don’t care. I just want my work to be backed up, And not to have my work disappear before my very eyes. I did get an email from Apple that they lowered the price on my new computer and will refund me the difference. So there’s that.

What are your thoughts about Apple and how they roll out new products?

Screenshot of the brand new MacBook Air introduced this week.

Not to dwell…

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The baby quail are delightful to watch. They get my mind off the unpleasant.

So. Apple contacted me at 7 a.m. yesterday. Just like they said they would. However the news was not good. At least the customer service was excellent with the tech keeping his word on when he’d call. He followed up with me several times throughout the process.

If you missed my post yesterday you can read it HERE to learn what happened.

“It looks like they have recovered all available files that could be recovered. They also stated that they will have no other ways to recover the data if it is still 
missing,” he said.

I looked through my computer to see what files they were able to recover. I noticed three and four copies of the files already there. So now I have a mess to clean up.

I felt a mourning loss for my work. I don’t look forward to my next newsletter that I have to start without the use of the two published newsletters to use as templates.

My son told me something I’ve never heard before. Ernest Hemingway lost 10 years of his work. It was all in one briefcase that he left on a train in France.

I’m not the only one to lose a manuscript. And it happened before computers and the cloud. Who knew?

“Did you know that D.H. Lawrence never edited his drafts?” My son told me. “He threw it out if he didn’t like it and started over.”

He told me to look at my NaNoWriMo missing manuscript as an opportunity, not a loss.

Thinking about that, he may be right. I get too married to my first rough draft. I make little edits here and there on later drafts, but I never get to the meat of throwing out scenes or restructuring my plot. I’ve submitted manuscripts to agents and publishers and have gotten interest. I’ve been given suggestions and have been asked for rewrites. But, after I resubmitted, I’d hear that I didn’t go far enough.

Do you find the silver lining in your mishaps? When life gives you lemons, do you make lemonade? Can you give an example?

Where did it go?

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Mule deer
A mule deer I saw on my morning walk.

When I sat down at my laptop yesterday morning something didn’t look right. The folder on my desktop called “All My Files” wasn’t there. It was there before I went to sleep. Gone 10 hours later.

I googled how to restore files. How to find files. Apparently the OS I’m using can hide documents from view. I went through five ways to find my files. I went to icloud. My missing files are still missing.

Finally. I went to the Apple website to book an appointment at the local “genius bar.” Instead I clicked on “call.” They called within seconds. I spent more than three hours on the phone yesterday with two techs. They searched near and far and in the cloud for my files. They both asked me if I had backed up my files on a thumb drive or external hard drive.

“No.”

What was I thinking about? Why didn’t I? I realized it had to do with our move. My two external hard drives that used to sit by my computer at home….didn’t make it back to that handy place where I used them. Out of sight. Out of mind.

I found my bright orange La Cie external hard drive and it’s now sitting next to my computer. I won’t make the mistake thinking my computer automatically stores all my files on icloud. Some files are there. But the ones most important to me are not. My entire NaNoWriMo 50,000-word manuscript is gone. My newsletter files are gone. There’s a gap of a few days in May when I finished the newsletter that are missing. There’s a month when I wrote the manuscript that is gone.

I had both of these files open on my laptop. Where did they go?

I’ve learned my lesson to make copies and backups.

My case with Apple has been escalated to engineering. They “may” be able to restore my hard drive with all my files. Or they may not.

I’ll let you know tomorrow. In any case they were very helpful and didn’t chastise me for not backing up. But I learned my lesson. What’s left is backed up.

A mule deer catching afternoon shade against our fence. The mulies have nothing to do with my post today — except keep me calm with their beauty.

How often do you backup your computer? Have you experienced a computer snafu that stressed you out? What was it?