Toy not with the Master—#2

Constant-readers of this blog, and apparently there are a few, know a couple months ago I upgraded the operating-system on this Apple (Gasp!) MacBook-Pro.
I upgraded from OS-X Snow-Leopard (10.06), the original operating-system on this machine as purchased, to OS-X El Capitan (10.11), a recent OS-X iteration.
My rig had been infected with adware, apparently from the Internet. That was under Snow-Leopard. Plus more recent versions of my Firefox browser wouldn’t run under Snow-Leopard. Firefox could not be upgraded.
I was told more recent OS-Xs were better at fending off malware. The adware made this machine bog-slow.
So “El-Cappy,” which allowed Firefox upgrades. (A more recent Firefox might better screen out malware.)
Things are slightly different under El-Cappy. Ways of doing things under Snow-Leopard crash under El-Cappy.
El-Cappy also does much faster on a quad-core ‘pyooter. This eight-year-old rig is only dual-core. That’s slowed things some, but I don’t need rocket-speed.
I use Quicken-Essentials to do my checks, and I don’t do many. I pay bills online through a bank bill-pay.
I guess Quicken-Essentials wasn’t very successful. But it was what was available when my ancient Quicken-2003 quit printing checks. Apple did an OS-X rewrite that secret ly killed my 2003 check-printing.
I have Quicken 2015 or 2016, but I don’t use it yet. I’d hafta set up check-printing — that’s an entire afternoon.
So now I’m getting hairballs with Quicken-Essentials. Apparently printing checks was a last-minute add-on to QE. Quicken’s motive was that checks were dead. Everything would be online.
Plus printing under El Cappy is spastic. So far no catastrophic failures, but I often hafta retry, then dump my first printer-send. “Wake up,” I say to my printer. Fire up “system preferences.” Dump and resend.
With Quicken-Essentials you only get one attempt — although there is a reprint, but amidst the madness I never got that far.
Plus printing checks is different under El Cappy. Under Snow-Leopard I had the option of multiple checks, like three checks on a single check-page.
I no longer have that. Only one check at a time. I lost the multiple-check option. And of course I had to observe that. In other words, “guile-and-cunning” was engaged.
Second hairball: What if communication from El Cappy to my printer fails? Occasionally it does.
I’d rather print a check than do it manually. Manual is always messy with a stroke-survivor.
Engage more guile-and-cunning. What if I do another check identical to the one that didn’t print. Maybe that will print. Then I can delete the one that didn’t print.
Never mess with guile-and-cunning. Toy not with the Master! Getting a successful print may take two or three tries; and that’s only one check at a time.
Better printed than manual with tons of mistakes.

• RE: “Apple (Gasp!)......” —I been told Apple is Of-the-Devil. Jesus uses a Windoze PC.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.

Ringtone

Last night (Tuesday, December 27, 2011) yr fthfl srvnt successfully made an MP3 be the ringtone on his DroidX® SmartPhone.
It’s an MP3 I recorded myself long ago of a steam-locomotive whistle being blown for a railroad grade-crossing in West Virginia.
My brother and I were pacing the locomotive so I could record it with a rented video-camera.
That video will eventually be on YouTube.
It was 1993, and the locomotive was being used to haul an annual fall-foliage excursion.
It’s also a railfan excursion, which explains -a) the steam-locomotive, and -b) why we were chasing it.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
The locomotive was actually Nickel Plate 765, masquerading as Chesapeake & Ohio (railroad) 2765, the same wheel-arrangement, and fairly identical.
The excursion was traveling Chesapeake & Ohio’s old mainline through scenic New River Gorge.
I’ve ridden the excursion myself, and it’s thrilling.
My brother was working someplace in the Midwest, and was going to drive home to Boston for the weekend.
But I convinced him to detour his company-car to see this locomotive.
It blew him away, as I knew it would.
He’s a railfan of sorts, and they run 765 hard.
They can. It’s a restored locomotive, but 765 was an excellent locomotive.
Pere Marquette (“pair mar-KETT”) 1225, the Polar Express locomotive, is the same, but can’t run as hard.
It’s touchy. 765 is all over it.
I’ve wanted to do this a long time: make 765’s whistle be my ringtone.
I made the MP3 years ago, but Verizon, my cellphone provider, wouldn’t let me install it.
They wanted to install one of their proprietary ringtones; electronic Ride of the Valkyries, Saints Go Marching In, whatever.
So record it with my phone, which sounded terrible.
That was years ago, before my SmartPhone.
Verizon seems to have caved.
Supposedly I could make an MP3 be my ringtone on my SmartPhone.
Google “MP3 to ringtone on DroidX.”
Gobbledegook.
So first of all, transfer MP3 to SmartPhone.
A SmartPhone is a mini-computer, so I USB-ed it to this laptop.
There it is, on my laptop’s desktop.
Open file-structure on SmartPhone.
My train-whistle is a so-called music-file, so I opened the music-file folder on my SmartPhone — empty.
I duplicated my 2765 MP3 on my laptop, then moved the duplicate into my SmartPhone’s music-folder.
Okay, disconnect USB. Bring up file on Smartphone Play it.
WHOA! The sucker is on there and playing.
So make it my ringtone.
I happened to hit the menu-key as the file played.
But, another fevered Google-search.
More gobbledegook.
But I thought I saw “make ringtone” in that menu, so I played it again.
Yep, there it is: “make ringtone.”
I touched that, and called my SmartPhone from our landline.
WHOA! It actually did it!
I’m 67 years old. I’m not supposed to be able to do this.
Us old farts are supposedly technically challenged.
I called my SmartPhone again. It’s still there. This wasn’t a dream.
Part of the reason is because I previously had a standard bell-ring as my ringtone.
Someone in the Canandaigua YMCA locker-room apparently had the same ringtone, and their phone was ringing.
I unholstered my SmartPhone; was it ringing?
The guy walked by. “I thought that was my phone,” I said.
A few years ago I went along on a bus-ride of railfans to a dinner-train excursion down in Pennsylvania.
Quite a few of these people had an identical diesel-locomotive air-horn on their cellphones as their ringtone.
“PRAAAMMP-PRAAAMMP-PRAMP-PRAAAAAMMMP!”
“Whose phone is that? That your phone, Charlie?”
With 765’s whistle I’d know it was my phone.
This was not done the gobbledegook Google way.
Guile and cunning.
It wasn’t rocket-science.

• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, shortly after this trip. I pretty much recovered.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.