Gotcha!
—The other day, Sunday, February 28th, while quietly keying in my monthly train-calendar blog……
…….This new laptop went into a mysterious hissy-fIt — nothing but a black screen with the spinning multicolored soccer-ball.
My mouse still determined the location of that soccer-ball, but beyond that nothing.
My old MacBook Pro, an ancient dual-core, occasionally did that.
Reboot time! Kill the machine by holding down the power-button maybe ten seconds: making it reboot.
This new MacBook Pro doesn’t have a power-button.
Just flipping it open —1) makes it reboot if it had previously been shut down, or —2) wakes it back up if it had previously been put asleep.
After that I hafta log-in to get this new rig running.
Later my desktop-picture reappeared, along with my login thingy, but I couldn’t log in — nothing but the spinning soccer-ball.
I couldn’t shut off normally. I use the Apple menu, to which I couldn’t get. I hafta log-in to get to that menu.
So how do I kill a rig without a power-button, and not logged-in?
So began a surfeit of frenzied hair-pulling.
It was the weekend of course. All ‘pyooter, dog, and health emergencies occur on weekends.
At least it was Sunday; that’s only a one-day wait.
My guess was there was some magical trick for killing a no power-button laptop.
Google-time! I still had a working rig: my ancient MacBook Pro.
“How does one deactivate a MacBook Pro without a power-button?”
I got the usual Google gobble-de-gook: “use the power-button to force-quit your MacBook Pro.”
AHEM, weed through Google’s deluge of insanity; Apple’s help-desk was suggested. I used it before.
More madness and frustration: “please enter your Apple ID.”
I did that, or so I thought, but of course it bombed = “invalid this” or “invalid that,” followed by “too many failed login attempts = try again later.”
“Steve, you’re acting like Gates = unfriendly to aging stroke-survivors.”
I gotta change to a new Apple ID? 15 minutes is turning into three hours!
And how am I supposed to change my Apple ID when I can’t even see what I’m doing?
As a stroke-survivor I have sloppy keyboarding, and if my passcode type-ins are invisible, or are quickly made invisible, no wonder they don’t match. I can’t review what I mistyped.
After at least two hours of frenzied madness, I finally decided to just give up and go to bed. I would call my ‘pyooter-guru Monday, the next day.
I would allow this laptop to sleep all night, but on its battery — in hopes it would run out of volts and die.
6-8 hours of sleep allows my frenzy to die down.
When I awoke the next morning, the first thing I did was flip open this laptop to see if it was still hung; it was.
While still in bed I conjured a new question to hurl at Google: “how does one force-quit a MacBook Pro that lacks a power-button?”
I fired up my old rig, and hurled the question at Google.
VIOLA! Apparently I worded my question correctly.
“Hold down the Command, Control, and Touch-ID buttons all at the same time at least 10 seconds.”
BAM! The screen went totally black, and the spinning soccer-ball disappeared.
Suddenly there it was: the beloved Apple icon; this thing was re-booting!
HOORAY-HOORAY; I wouldn’t hafta drive 20 miles to wrastle my computer-guru. —Or try to explain things with stroke-addled speech.
So, back in business. This blog is being done into Apple’s “Pages” with voice-recognition.
…….This new laptop went into a mysterious hissy-fIt — nothing but a black screen with the spinning multicolored soccer-ball.
My mouse still determined the location of that soccer-ball, but beyond that nothing.
My old MacBook Pro, an ancient dual-core, occasionally did that.
Reboot time! Kill the machine by holding down the power-button maybe ten seconds: making it reboot.
This new MacBook Pro doesn’t have a power-button.
Just flipping it open —1) makes it reboot if it had previously been shut down, or —2) wakes it back up if it had previously been put asleep.
After that I hafta log-in to get this new rig running.
Later my desktop-picture reappeared, along with my login thingy, but I couldn’t log in — nothing but the spinning soccer-ball.
I couldn’t shut off normally. I use the Apple menu, to which I couldn’t get. I hafta log-in to get to that menu.
So how do I kill a rig without a power-button, and not logged-in?
So began a surfeit of frenzied hair-pulling.
It was the weekend of course. All ‘pyooter, dog, and health emergencies occur on weekends.
At least it was Sunday; that’s only a one-day wait.
My guess was there was some magical trick for killing a no power-button laptop.
Google-time! I still had a working rig: my ancient MacBook Pro.
“How does one deactivate a MacBook Pro without a power-button?”
I got the usual Google gobble-de-gook: “use the power-button to force-quit your MacBook Pro.”
AHEM, weed through Google’s deluge of insanity; Apple’s help-desk was suggested. I used it before.
More madness and frustration: “please enter your Apple ID.”
I did that, or so I thought, but of course it bombed = “invalid this” or “invalid that,” followed by “too many failed login attempts = try again later.”
“Steve, you’re acting like Gates = unfriendly to aging stroke-survivors.”
I gotta change to a new Apple ID? 15 minutes is turning into three hours!
And how am I supposed to change my Apple ID when I can’t even see what I’m doing?
As a stroke-survivor I have sloppy keyboarding, and if my passcode type-ins are invisible, or are quickly made invisible, no wonder they don’t match. I can’t review what I mistyped.
After at least two hours of frenzied madness, I finally decided to just give up and go to bed. I would call my ‘pyooter-guru Monday, the next day.
I would allow this laptop to sleep all night, but on its battery — in hopes it would run out of volts and die.
6-8 hours of sleep allows my frenzy to die down.
When I awoke the next morning, the first thing I did was flip open this laptop to see if it was still hung; it was.
While still in bed I conjured a new question to hurl at Google: “how does one force-quit a MacBook Pro that lacks a power-button?”
I fired up my old rig, and hurled the question at Google.
VIOLA! Apparently I worded my question correctly.
“Hold down the Command, Control, and Touch-ID buttons all at the same time at least 10 seconds.”
BAM! The screen went totally black, and the spinning soccer-ball disappeared.
Suddenly there it was: the beloved Apple icon; this thing was re-booting!
HOORAY-HOORAY; I wouldn’t hafta drive 20 miles to wrastle my computer-guru. —Or try to explain things with stroke-addled speech.
So, back in business. This blog is being done into Apple’s “Pages” with voice-recognition.
• The “Touch-ID button” is a new laptop thingy, for logging in via yer fingerprint.
• “Steve” is Steve Jobs, cofounder and one time CEO of Apple Computer. He died not too long ago. “Gates” is Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft. I don’t use Microsoft Word®, because it punishes stroke-survivors.
Labels: 'pyooter ruminations
posted by BobbaLew at 4:25 PM
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