The Hughes muse never shuts up!

(See below.) (Long ago photo by BobbaLew.)

—Constant-readers of this blog probably noticed Yr Fthfl Srvnt hasn’t published anything for a week.
Blogging is my retirement gig. My bereavement counselor tells me I’m lucky to have a muse that won’t shaddup. I’m never bored or lonely, despite being jobless and wifeless — my wife died seven years ago.
This 10-year-old computer tanked. It’s hard-drive gave up. It was taking hours to reboot.
“Your hard-drive is failing,” my ‘pyooter-guru at Mac-Shack told me.
“So replace it,” I said, despite my inclination to get a new laptop. My rig is antique, only a dual-core. Newer MacBook Pro’s are quad-core = much faster.
“I don’t need rocket-speed, and I like that gigantic screen” (17-inch), I said. “It’s great for DVD’s, and displaying photos. I can afford to fix it.”
Apple no longer makes laptops with 17-inch screens.
So we did. Hard-drive replaced, and OS-X installed, “El Cappy” (El Capitan) per what was recently installed — an upgrade from its original Snow-Leopard.
But back to square-one = devoid of my 89-bazilyun files, apps, bookmarks, e-mail contacts, etc. All of which were “Time-Machined” (backed up) to an external hard-drive, which I hadn’t supplied.
I needed to “migrate” my old hard-drive to my new hard-drive, which I call “Beeg Mutha.”
So back to Mac-Shack and ‘pyooter-guru. I took along my external, which had been backing up the entire kibosh.
“Migrating” would take hours, I was told. That’s 89-bazilyun items. When complete my new hard-drive would display good old 4896 (above), the Pennsy GG1 I originally had as wallpaper on this laptop.
Finally a timer told me we had 53 minutes to go. My dog was waiting in the car. I decided to let ‘er migrate, while my dog walked me at a park near my home = 20 miles south. I would return later to pick up 4896.
When I returned I tested (rebooted), and there was 4896. I also tested various apps. Back in business! The Hughes muse never shuts up.
The other day I asked ‘pyooter-guru if he could set up this antique’s replacement when I get it. He said he could. Years ago he set up this computer — an online Apple-Store rehab — from my old G4 tower.
But it looks like doing so is dead simple. (Thank you Apple!) All I gotta do is “migrate” my old computer to my new computer, or in my case backup to new computer.
Returned home I found my text-files were in some foreign gibberish, Chinese or something. Another fevered phonecall to ‘pyooter-guru. We reset to English in my “system preferences” and restarted. Back in business!

• I took this photograph probably in 1968. I saw GG1 #4896 many times, but only got this one photograph. Pennsy’s GG1 electric was probably the greatest railroad locomotive ever made. It could put 9,000 horsepower to railhead — current diesel locomotives are 4,400 horsepower. 4896 is the only GG1 I ever went through; Washington Union Station in 1966. It was scrapped, of course.
• Since my wife died I now see a bereavement counselor.
• I much prefer Mac-Shack to a brick-and-mortar Apple-Store, where you take a number and wait in line for a pimply techno-geek who barely understands you, yet gladly charges you 89 bazilyun buckaroos for a repair that won’t fix, or sell you a new iPhone. At Mac-Shack I also get ‘pyooter-guru.
• As I understand it a “dual-core” has two central processors, whereas a “quad-core” has four.