Saturday, November 9, 2013

Computer maintenance – sigh

So I upgraded my Mac's operating system yesterday to the new OSX 10.9 Mavericks. Honestly? I didn't even know a new OS had been announced last summer, and I really do try to stay on top of tech updates. Oopsie!

(Apple has switched their OS naming hierarchy from wild felines to California-based appellations. But when I see "Mavericks," I think of the Dallas, TX, NBA team, not a west-coast beach known for its great surfing. I had to Google to find that out.)

At any rate, everything got updated with the new system. Including the Mail application. (Turns out it was a Good Thing I waited to install the update; they issued a patch to fix Mail a couple of days ago.)

I have Mail set up to deliver my Gmail messages. Imagine my surprise when I launched Mail and ZERO new items were available to read. Y'all know how hard it is for me to keep up with my e-mail, so I was, um, a little worried. (And yes, I know I can read Gmail online. But I don't.)

Ah, but there they were, in the Archived folder. And after a couple of minutes of background maintenance, everything showed up in its proper place.

Except this:
I recently wrote to Sen. Joe Manchin (sometimesD-WV) about his lame-brained idea to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And his reply, dated November 5, ended up in my Junk folder.

Which is exactly where it belongs, since he still thinks delaying is the right thing to do. I think he knows his bill is going nowhere. And honestly? I think his next move should be back to West Virginia and another run for the Governor's mansion. He did a much better job as a state leader than he's doing in the nation's Capitol.

But that's just me. (Although my husband left me one of his little overnight notes that said Bill Maher thinks Manchin is one of the three worst blue-dog Democrats in Washington. So I guess it's not just me. Heh.)

The other thing that happened is that my little Air now needs to go on a diet. I've pretty much run out of room.
I've deleted several applications that don't work under the new OS, and many-many-many duplicate photos, which just about doubled the free space. No wonder everything was soooooo slow. I'm going to upload some keepers (photos/printables/.pdfs) to Dropbox and ruthlessly edit the photos stored on the laptop. I back everything up to a portable hard drive, so there's really no reason – other than convenience – to have them taking up space.

And as soon as I get through the ACA application process, I'm going to ditch the Chrome browser, which is the number-two space hog on my machine, surpassed only by Adobe Reader.

Because if healthcare.gov didn't work on the old version of Safari (and it didn't), it sure isn't going to work on the new one.

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