Journaling June - Day 14
14^th June 2026

Journaling June Day 14
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Yesterday I had a couple of things turn up; one was a computer to replace a clients faulty system – since it was somewhat time-critical I just ordered a replacement rather than perhaps spend a day fault-finding, or risk ordering only the part I thought I would need (seemingly the motherboard), only to have a faulty or incompatible part turn up. It turned out their issue was just down to a failed CMOS battery.

The other thing that turned up was the huge monstrocity of a 27” iMac. Jeez, I hadn’t really considered how big these are, mostly only having dealt with 24” models. Even the courier service had to change plans and do some special rearrangement when they encountered the cumbersome parcel. The system didn’t appear to be all that well packaged and arrived as a wobbly iMac-wrapped in cardboard and black polytheene-shape, so I was concerned about what I might encounter once I unwrapped the thing. Thankfully the screen and stand were in tact, only a small chip to the glass at the edge, but that might have already been there.

Sure enough the system fails to load the OS, getting stuck half-way, but I’m hopeful that’s just a faulty hard drive and that swapping in an SSD and installing some flavor of Linux (I’m thinking of going with Kubuntu like my main system and have downloaded the latest version ready… using someone else’s wi-fi of course…), will get the thing operational.

That sounds simple enough but this is a 27” iMac, so I’m apprehensive about prizing off that pane of glass; I’ve done this with the smaller models, but this is hefty.

Also, because of some busy earlier days I was feeling my usual flusteriness today, like I need a recovery day after dealing with people and/or having a full day out. I got to sleep well enough (sometimes that can be a challenge with a busy day’s activities swirly around), but still I felt unsettled. This morning too I was feeling similar and I neither got out for a run or on my bike, although I did strim all the grass surrounding my house and loaded up my bread maker with some bananas that needed using up, for some tasty banana bread…

Oh, and a couple of days ago my neighbor who I sorted the bike out for brought me some of her rhubarb after I’d commented on how well her plant was doing, so yesterday I made me some rhubarb crumble with some of that.

I make it in the microwave, so it's not top-tier crumble, but it only takes 15-minutes to cook that way, and using electricity provided by my Power Oak and solar panels.

My plant(s) are doing less well this year than last, and one plant (or half of the plant that is in another spot) seems to have gone entirely.

But, two of my bushes have flowers on this year (one is at the top of the page), which is nice.

While I didn’t get out for a run today, I did my usual one yesterday, but sadly encountered a dead fox cub in the road, on a bend, so I had to discard that off the tarmac.

Anyway, for a change I’m sat out in the garden typing this up on my Dell Latitude D610; it’s a bit warm in the sun but I can just about read the screen well enough.

Oh, something else of note; while I was at my client’s house the other day, setting up her new printer, I realized another issue of bother regarding my phone following the update I’d done earlier in the week after which it had been randomly installing apps I didn’t want. One of those apps was a QR Code scanner and I thought “why would I even need this, the camera does this…” well, one of the “updates” has seen that feature removed from the camera, and instead a dedicated app IS required. Gaaa. The option in the camera worked well; I would just tap on the icon for QR code scanning, and it would then recognize either an app or web page and ask me if it was ok to proceed to the App Store or web browser. Simple. Convenient. Now I needed to (re)install a dedicated QR Code reader app, of which doesn’t work as neatly and is plagued with adverts. FFS.

Also, the Resize Me image resizing app is failing to send all of the images I try and share via email, and this seems to have come about since the update. I have tried uninstalling the app and reinstalling it (albeit to a "newer" version) and it seems little better, so perhaps the issue resides with Thunderbird... [I resorted to reinstalling Thunderbird on my phone, and setting up all of my mail accounts with it, and images are mostly now sending again from Resize Me...] Also, I discovered that Thunderbird on my desktop is no longer using my custom "You've got mail" audio notification... I'd accidentally deleted it, but I've put it back, and reapplied the setting, but still no... grr.