The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial

Rude shirt, Banza mask and a new sticker for the laptop

That one was rather fun – ordered all the cat 6

Buy 3, get one free – thanks, Golf Pro Cody!

Fry’s Electronics is officially going out of business after 36 years

Via Dresser, Wisconsin

This year will fly by, right?

At least the skyway doors were unlocked

Hope these taste half as good as the branding

Solid, but almost too spicy for my baby

Haven’t had much time to explore today, though

They are finally here!

For most of my life, I’ve been a music hoarder. Visiting record stores all over the world, I’ve collected rare (and not so rare) records, tapes and CDs from a core group of artists that I like. I did vinyl the first time around, made mix tapes on cassette, fell in love with the “pure” sound of CDs and have spent countless hours ripping CDs to MP3/AAC files to be synched with laptops, iMacs, iPods and iPhones. Things I’ve never done: Napster, the resurgence of vinyl and streaming services. A week ago, I decided to do something about that last one.

My daughters are probably thinking “about damn time, old guy.” They are both big fans of Spotify and each gave me a few tutorials on how they use that service and what they like about it. It seems to me that the real competition in this space right now is between Spotify and Apple Music, so I decided to look at that option too. They both have family plans available for about $15 per month, so I signed up to try Apple Music first. They are different in some ways, but similar in most of the important areas. Apple Music probably gets the initial nod from me, just because I am so invested in the Apple ecosystem.

What do I like so far? I finally understand how the integration works with my current library, so it’s cool to have my existing files available in the cloud to be played across all devices automatically. I like the curated artist stations and themed playlists (even if they seem to be somewhat repetitive) and it’s nice to have real radio station feeds integrated again (hello, KROQ). I love that you can download up to 100,000 files locally, as I don’t always have a reliable network connection. It’s great to be able to just listen to things by anybody instantly, without having to risk money buying something you end up not liking (or only need to listen to once).

What are the bad things? The $180 I’ll pay annually to Apple is money I probably would’ve spent at places like the Electric Fetus. According to Jimmy Page, questions abound regarding the fairness of streaming royalty payments to artists and writers. I don’t like the general concept that I’m renting access to these songs and don’t really own them. I don’t have to worry about Apple going out of business any time soon (cough, cough, Zune), but once you start down this road, you are locked in to pay or your stuff goes away. And you can also have the Netflix issue of artists deciding to pull their stuff at any time.

Right now, though, Apple Music seems to be a nice middle road for me. I get the benefits of streaming services, but can still buy things the old way whenever I want. The price isn’t unreasonable and there is still a lot of functionality for me to learn (profiles, interacting with friends and family, music discovery, MusicKit, Apple Music APIs). Strangely, scrobbling via Last.fm only seems to work with the old files in my library, so it would nice to figure out how to integrate between this site and my Apple Music profile.

Abridged edition

Brown & Greene Floral, Linden Hills

Best $20 purchase in a long time

With the whole fam too

Chicago Mix, FTW

Almost time to go tree shopping

No postage returns @ Double Tree by Hilton, Saint Paul

“The best phone in the family”

All for under 30 bucks!

It’s that time of year again – the iPhone Upgrade Program notified me that I could trade in my iPhone 11 Pro from last year for a new model. After reviewing the options, I decided to pre-order a 256GB Pacific Blue iPhone 12 Pro. My most important features continue to be the camera and battery life, but it turns out storage size wasn’t as big a deal as I thought last year. I jumped up to the 512GB version on the 11, but I wasn’t even using 100GB. I’m still a no-case guy, but the colors don’t really do anything for me one way or the other (same with the other new accessories).

The Apple Store app pre-order process is still very easy and I didn’t have any problems submitting it a week ago. Shipping notifications and tracking from UPS went as expected and the new phone was delivered on time Friday afternoon. I don’t mind the lack of a power adapter or “crapbuds” in the box, as I don’t need either. After losing my original pair of AirPods Pro, it has really become apparent how much you need wireless headphones in the Apple ecosystem. It’s just so much easier than having nineteen different adaptors and cables. I found it strange that there was no up-sell during the pre-order process from AT&T to move to a 5G plan, so I’ll have to change that on my own to test the 5G features (no real rush on that yet, as I don’t know about their local coverage, flavors of 5G or impact on battery life).

After unboxing the new phone, I did one final iCloud backup of the old one. The setup process on the new one required having the old phone nearby and started off smoothly, but I ended up having a bunch of issues this time around. The process did something to my watch, which didn’t initially unlock my iMac (but at least I didn’t lose any of my health data). One of my 2FA apps, Google Authenticator, didn’t transfer settings and I had to follow the directions in this post to help with that (TOTP Authenticator transferred seamlessly). My credit union app and debit card required a bunch of manual set up to restore, but my Apple Card transferred over with no issues. Tweetbot needed new auth tokens to work, my personal 7minutemiles.com email had to be re-authenticated, Siri CarPlay location services settings didn’t transfer and it took a long time to pull down all of the items from the iCloud backup.

I also had an issue with the new phone trusting my iMac, but that just turned out to be user error. I still do not like synching music and photos in the Finder instead of iTunes/Music, but I think I finally have things set up correctly now (there were a bunch of random songs selected for sync in the album tab of the music selection, even though I only wanted to sync by playlist). Very thankful that 1Password transferred over with no issues, as that is a vital service for me now. It’s weird reading a Matthew Panzarino iPhone review that didn’t involve a visit to Disneyland, but I guess that’s the reality of 2020. I do agree with him about the general feel of the 12 line versus the 11, but don’t really buy into the Rolex analogy.

Colleen is waiting for the Max, as she wants to have the “best” phone in the family. It will be interesting to see how the larger camera sensor in that model does with overall photo quality, but that one is just too big for my hands and pockets. I think MK wants a mini and SK is probably due for a new one as well. Onward!

$90 off list is a damn good deal, Bezos

Brake Bread 🍞

http://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-12-pro-camera-review-glacier

Bring it, winter

I’m wearing this new one if we get to go back again

Come and visit after I kick the bucket

It’s exhausting reading about the issues of 2020, but there is one topic I can’t stop thinking about. What will be the long-term impact on the economy if people change their thinking (and spending) on what’s really important to them? On one hand, I feel like there will be a lot of pent-up demand for things like travel. On the other hand, how many industries will find demand drop-off for good? My own personal spending priorities have shifted quite a bit during the pandemic (out of necessity), but I can easily picture some of these changes being permanent…

2005 Subaru Outback Wagon @ Inver Grove Honda

Shells seem to be MIA around here

Highland Bridge construction site

2.5 pounds of Montana craftsmanship

MIA: Mt. Dew Zero Sugar, caffeine-free diet Pepsi, Sprite Zero, Cherry Coke Zero

Fruit Stripe, Chuckles and Crunchie

Super One Foods, Virginia, Minnesota

Mt. Dew flavor with fruit juice?

Great! Lakes Candy Company

If you’ve been following along with the upgrade saga of Mr. Jackpot, I’ve got good and bad news to report. The good news is that I think I’m finally back on track now, but the bad news is that I basically need to start all over from scratch. When we last left the story, I had the fan cable problem resolved and was busy clean installing all of my apps and re-building the Music library. This was progressing nicely – I had made my first pass through all of the old music files, adding only songs and albums I wanted to keep, along with finding or updating album artwork for every file. That was about as far as I made it before we went out of town for a few days. When I came back home, the iMac was on with the dreaded flashing question mark folder.

It didn’t seem like we had experienced a power outage, so I first tried a hard restart. The Apple logo appeared and the progress bar started across, but just before it reached the end, the screen went black and the iMac appeared to shut off. I connected the external clone drive I made of the original internal SSD and rebooted again holding down the option key. This brought up the screen that allows you to select which drive you want to boot from, so I selected the clone and hit enter. That made it through to the user login screen, followed by the multi-language kernel panic message. After that went away, the panic log window appeared:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f8e24b231): nvme: “Fatal error occurred. CSTS=0x1 US[1]=0x0 US[0]=0xb VID=0x126f DID=0x2262
. FW Revision=42A0S63A\n”@/AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/
IONVMeFamily-470.100.17/IONVMeController.cpp:5320
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff83cb2c39e0 : 0xffffff800c51f5cd
0xffffff83cb2c3a30 : 0xffffff800c658b05
0xffffff83cb2c3a70 : 0xffffff800c64a68e
0xffffff83cb2c3ac0 : 0xffffff800c4c5a40
0xffffff83cb2c3ae0 : 0xffffff800c51ec97
0xffffff83cb2c3be0 : 0xffffff800c51f087
0xffffff83cb2c3c30 : 0xffffff800ccc27ec
0xffffff83cb2c3ca0 : 0xffffff7f8e24b231
0xffffff83cb2c3cc0 : 0xffffff7f8e236362
0xffffff83cb2c3e20 : 0xffffff800cc33409
0xffffff83cb2c3e90 : 0xffffff800cc33329
0xffffff83cb2c3ec0 : 0xffffff800c561565
0xffffff83cb2c3f40 : 0xffffff800c561091
0xffffff83cb2c3fa0 : 0xffffff800c4c513e
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.iokit.IONVMeFamily(2.1)[1898DCFE-5C18-3D87-B9E7-DFC0D22FD7EE]@0xffffff7f8e228000->0xffffff7f8e26afff
dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleMobileFileIntegrity(1.0.5)[0425E074-601A-3487-A54F-1E675D065186]@0xffffff7f8cf87000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[3C56BB73-D149-3E84-A2EB-DF806779B96C]@0xffffff7f8d101000
dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleEFINVRAM(2.1)[4E64E519-CD9C-3D03-8E62-1074E9AD54A7]@0xffffff7f8d309000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(2.1)[E13E9C61-F1F5-3A81-B1EF-65669C3CBDBF]@0xffffff7f8ce65000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOReportFamily(47)[1FB49168-0280-3F04-A99A-F830C915E994]@0xffffff7f8d02f000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Mac OS version:
19F96

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 19.5.0: Thu Apr 30 18:25:59 PDT 2020; root:xnu-6153.121.1~7/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 7B7F06EE-1B75-345E-B898-2FD4FEC20F0D
Kernel slide: 0x000000000c200000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800c400000
__HIB text base: 0xffffff800c300000
System model name: iMac18,2 (Mac-77F17D7DA9285301)
System shutdown begun: NO
Panic diags file available: YES (0x0)

This wasn’t super helpful while Googling, but I thought I could at least stay booted to the clone. Unfortunately, when I tried to launch Disk Utility and check the new internal SSD, the screen went black again and the iMac shut down. I tried this process several times and every single time it would eventually shut down. My initial thought was that the new RAM was bad, since it was happening on both internal and external drives and I had that happen once before when I worked at Northwest Airlines.

I sent Other World Computing a support request and went back to work using my phone and laptop. OWC didn’t reply to my initial support request, so a few days later I started an online support chat with them to ask about the status of my ticket. Even that took a few hours before someone popped up, but eventually a tech suggested I get a wired keyboard and try to 1) reset the PRAM and 2) boot into diagnostic mode.

Since I didn’t want to buy a new keyboard, I rode into work and borrowed an extra Windows keyboard. The PRAM reset (option-command-P-R) didn’t make any difference, but I was able to boot into diagnostic mode (hold the “D” key while starting up). It ran tests for about five minutes, but then came back with “No issues found. Reference Code: ADP000.” I left the machine up for about 30 minutes in that mode and it never kernel panicked. I tried to reset the SMC by unplugging the power for 15 seconds, then plugging it back in, but that made no difference. Lastly, I tried to boot into recovery mode (option-R) and was able to get as far as launching Disk Utility before it crashed. I did recovery mode one more time in an effort to launch the Catalina installer, but that also ended in a crash midway through installation.

I then talked to Armon (who was an Apple Genius when I hired him) and he said to try booting into verbose mode, then single user mode. When I did verbose mode (option-V), all of the usual junk appeared on the screen, then it switched back to the white Apple logo with the progress bar. It did finish all the way across, then launched a Catalina install screen (!?). That stayed up for about two minutes before crashing and shutting down. I got to the command prompt in single user mode (option-S), but when I tried to mount the drive (/sbin/mount -uw /), it kept displaying “disk2s1: device is write locked.” I then tried to use internet recovery mode (shift-option-command-R), which connected successfully to my WiFi network and loaded a disk image into memory without crashing. I started Disk Utility to reformat the internal SSD, but it did not appear in the window of available drives. Commands in Terminal couldn’t see it either. Huh.

At this point, I asked OWC support via email if this model could really support 32GB of RAM, as some online sites listed 16GB as the maximum. They told me that it could actually support up to 64GB of RAM and that they were highly suspect of the RAM being bad. I told him that I was going to open it back up and reinstall the stock RAM, then see what happened. I really didn’t want to go through that whole process again, but I really didn’t have any other option (aside from taking it somewhere like The Foundation). I spent an hour or so doing the surgery, then tried to boot up from the internal drive. Fingers crossed, but startup ended with yet another kernel panic. ARGH!

I did the surgery *again* and reinstalled both the new RAM and the old internal SSD. Fired it back up and it’s been running without a kernel panic for two days now. I emailed OWC and told them I needed to RMA the new SSD and I’m still waiting for a reply. I know they have a COVID note on their support page (“we are seeing increased levels of engagement across all of our customer contact systems”), but it’s been a bit disappointing to go through this experience. At least I’m getting very familiar with the inside of this particular model. Which, of course, means that there will definitely be an extra cool new iMac announced at WWDC…

Finally replaced our old mattress

Long lines today at the grocery store (but thankful they were open)

Support your local venues

After several months of frustration with managing my (admittedly) large collection of music and photos on our three-year-old iMac, I decided it was time to either look at a new machine or try to rebuild and optimize the current one. Since the new options I liked were all in the $3,000 or more category, I decided to research cheaper options with Mr. Jackpot, our 2017 21.5-inch Retina 4K model (iMac 18.2).

The 3GHz quad-core i5 processor should still be OK for a few more years and I really like the quality of the screen. I’ve been running just the standard 8GB of RAM, though, which seems meager now. For storage, I originally picked the 256GB SSD option internally, with two external 2TB drives connected via standard USB ports. My gut feeling was that this was now a major performance bottleneck, since the operating system was the only thing on the fast SSD and the photo library and music files were on the slower spinning disc drives with no Thunderbolt interfaces.

I’ve been a customer and fan of Other World Computing in Illinois for most of my IT career. I looked at the upgrade options for this model on their site and reviewed the excellent installation videos several times before deciding to place an order. My goal was to upgrade the RAM from 8GB to 32GB, replace the small internal SSD with their 2TB OWC Aura Pro X2 product, then find a suitable Thunderbolt 3 external SSD option. After consulting with my friend Terry, I opted for a non-OWC option, ordering the 2TB Samsung T5 Portable SSD from Amazon (which, of course, was just made obsolete a few days ago with a T7 version).

OWC rated these installs “skill level: advanced” and I was a little nervous. They provided all of the needed tools and parts, but it was still a challenging installation. Last Sunday was rainy anyways, so the timing for this project was spot on. It ended up taking most of the afternoon, with only one initial issue. The Torx screwdrivers OWC provides don’t have very big handles, so I needed to improvise the T8 by attaching a wrench for more torque to loosen the screws on the power unit (which also had some tricky cable connections). Once everything was apart, popping in the RAM and the SSD chips was easy. I reversed the process to close it back up, then started a clean install of macOS Mojave.

Mojave doesn’t have the greatest reputation right now. Personally, I haven’t had a lot of direct issues with it, but I’ve been carrying along a lot of cruft over the years by doing upgrades and not clean installs. I figured a lot of the issues I’ve had with photos and music are probably related to this, so I wanted to make backups of everything (in multiple places), create a clean install of the operating system, load the latest versions of my applications, then copy over personal files. Time Machine was used for backup number one, Carbon Copy Cloner was used for backup number two (and to create a bootable external drive) and Backblaze was used for backup number three.

Finding license codes for my purchased software took a bit of time. Some companies do a great job of helping with this (thanks, Panic), while others sent me emails after purchase that I archive. It’s interesting how many apps are now subscription services – you just need to remember your credentials to log in, download and activate those products (which now include all of the Office 365 apps, Photoshop Creative Cloud and services like Backblaze). The App Store for Mac remembers your purchases made via that sales channel, so those were easy. Had to use my Cisco login to get access to the AnyConnect VPN client, but otherwise I was able to get everything back in an hour or so. I did end up upgrading 1Password to the latest version, which is also now subscription based.

One area that I need to spend more time on is iCloud. So many things are now tied my AppleID, but it seems like the process is cleaner on iOS than it is on the Mac. I’ve used iCloud for contacts and calendars since it was introduced, but only recently upgraded to the 2TB storage tier for iPhone backups and iCloud Drive usage. I apparently also used my Google Apps account for synching some contacts and calendars, so I need to get that sorted out (and all moved under iCloud). Throw in Facebook and Office 365 integration and my Contacts app is a disaster right now. I do really like how iCloud Drive works, so I will likely move most of my non-media files to that. Also a big fan of using iCloud with the Notes app – super easy to share across devices and basically replaces Stickies for me.

As I progressed with the customization of the new SSDs, I wasn’t very happy with performance. I couldn’t figure out what the issue was, so I turned on the screen saver and went for a walk. When I got back, the machine locked up on me and I had to do a hard power reset to get it to reboot. I noticed the middle of the screen was really hot, so I went back to the install videos and realized I might’ve missed plugging the fan back in. I downloaded the free version of Macs Fan Control and sure enough, the fan was not spinning (and all the temp indicators were high). Guessing the heat was throttling the CPU performance, so it was back to the screen removal tool to pop back inside and reconnect the cable. Thankfully, I was able to reach it without having to take everything apart again. It’s been blazing fast (and cool) ever since and now I’m a very happy camper.

There is still a lot of work ahead of me, but everything is humming along. I’ve started to rebuild the music library using Music, with the files stored on the external Samsung. So far I’ve just downloaded past purchases and ripped a couple of new CDs, but my old library will get added next. I turned off all of the Apple Music and online syncing stuff and performance seems to be fine. I’m hoping Photos running on the internal SSD will also work better, but I haven’t started that yet. Also hoping I don’t need to reset my iPhone to factory default to get photo sync to work correctly in the Finder, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Isn’t technology grand?

Breakfast of Champions

In honor of Mother’s Day 2020, I thought I would finally start the “Hummel Project.” As part of the sale of the house on Lombard, I bubble-wrapped most of mom’s Hummel figurines and filled several bins that now take up half of my dining room. I’m not sure what to do with them – the market for Hummels was bad even before the current situation. My goal is to take photos of each one, then try to find them new homes.

If you see any you’d like (or know of a place that might be interested in them), please drop me a note. Photo gallery of the first bin after the jump.

http://first-avenue.com/buy/catalog/product/first-avenue-calendar-puzzle

MK and her purple hooptie

Hit the boutique (safely)

Richie Rich was my Leng’s Fountain go-to buy

We were almost out too

My policy on home drinking is being revised

Eating way too much of it, though

Forgot about that company

The ongoing saga of my double vision has now lead to a semi-permanent solution. I had always been the one person in my family without glasses, but one of the lasting side effects of my brain aneurysm has been diplopia at farther distances. Thanks to the treatment plans of Dr. Amy Chang and therapist Courtney Mitchell at Hennepin Heathcare, I can now read screens at most distances and watch TV without glasses. Even at farther distances, I can usually find an angle to hold my head to remove any doubling up (although Dr. Chang says that I’m cheating when I do that).

At the end of January, we decided that I’d stop using the 3M Prism inserts in the pair of non-prescription lenses I had purchased from Amazon. We started at a +30 strength in the beginning and dropped all the way down to +8 with the temporary inserts. Dr. Chang wrote a prescription for a permanent pair of glasses that included a +6 Prism for the top half of the lens and some magnification on the bottom half to assist with reading small letters close up (i.e. – cheaters). I’ve had 20/20 vision for most of my life, but age has caught up to me and some things just don’t work the same as they did before (regardless of the aneurysm side effects).

On the advice of a friend, I took the prescription to Warby Parker in the Galleria. Since I’ve never done this before, I wasn’t sure what my insurance would cover, but they had people in the store that seemed knowledgable about my situation and helped me pick out frames and make adjustments for this particular prescription. I paid for everything and was told the glasses would be ready for pick-up and fitting in 7-10 days. After two weeks of not hearing anything, I looked up my order on their website, which had a “please call us about your order” message displayed. No phone calls or emails during this time – WTH? The person I talked to when I called was very nice, but told me that their lab couldn’t produce my prescription, saying the prism strength couldn’t be higher than +5 and that they would just cancel the order. Ugh.

So in the end, I just went to Target Optical in West Saint Paul, which fitted me in a nice pair of Ray-Bans that they shipped in under a week for around $300. It took me a little while to get used to the progressive aspect of my prescription, but once I figured that out, they work really well. I do still prefer to not wear glasses when I can (like right now while I type on the iMac), but it’s nice to have them for driving and for reading the small type on menus in low-light situations. It will be interesting to see how they work for golf and biking later this spring…

The toffee is good too

Pop > Soda

Only five days to go…

It will last a lifetime

Lived here most of my life and had never seen this alley before

Uncle Greg would be proud

Happy iPhone Upgrade Day for kid one

Only one on the island

Computers are so last year

The Milaca MegaMall

L.A. is lucky to get you

At least I get 2% back now…

So much CHS Field time this week

Models, models, models

When it’s in the 90s in the Twin Cities, Grand Marais sounds awfully good