iCloud Music Library Ate my Balls

Jul. 20th, 2015 10:56 pm
roadrunnertwice: Weedmaster P: "SON OF A DICK. BALL COCKS. NO. FUCKING." (Shitbox (Overcompensating))

If you want to try that free Apple Music trial, you should know that there are two components to it. One is safe (I think), and the other one has a solid chance of destroying data and garbling your music library. When it asks you to enable "iCloud Music Library," DON'T.

I did NOT know this, because it presents it to you like there's only one decision to make, so I got hosed.

Here's how it happened, I think. I use iTunes on a main computer (home) and a secondary one (work). I enabled iCloud Music Library on the second computer first, because I had to update my OS anyway and I was at work when the update came out. When I enabled it on my home computer, it:

  • Deleted my ratings for every song that existed in both my home library and my work one.
  • Duplicated a bunch of playlists, with some of the duplicates being zombie copies that kept coming back when I tried to unify them.
  • Possibly some other stuff I didn't find out about yet.

iCloud Library has some other problems too: a bunch of the songs that my home library made available at work ended up being the wrong version of the song, and the way it tried to combine playlists was a complete opaque mystery. But none of that matters, because I disabled it, made note of music I'd added to my home library in July, then reset my entire library to June 28 with a Time Machine backup. I will probably never turn that shit back on, and will probably not pay for Apple Music once the trial is over. Don't delete my fuckin' work. >:|

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May. 30th, 2012 11:43 pm
roadrunnertwice: Weedmaster P: "SON OF A DICK. BALL COCKS. NO. FUCKING." (Shitbox (Overcompensating))
The rest of the house is shoulder-deep in a computer-box, building a gaming PC for a friend of ours. I am staying out of that.

I think the last time I cracked open some compu-tower ribs was at the yarn shop back in 2009. We had these three mildly crappy Dell P4 towers for running the POS system and everything, but they were acting like they were the ultra crappy kind. Just slow as hell and unresponsive and bullshit. Stev and Hannah were all angsting about whether we could afford new ones and how to go about getting them, and I was like, "lemme take a look." Reader, these 3Ghz machines were choking along on a half-gig of RAM each. I got on Newegg, and was like "Gimme the credit card, I'll get you some rejuvenated computers for like $140."

Once the sticks arrived, I got the backroom and cafe computers beefed up and breathing easy in like 20 minutes. Then I upgraded the main counter PC, tried to power it back up, and got nuthin'. I cracked it open again to make sure I hadn't left anything loose, and we were all like "Uh, was that creepy amber light there the last time?" It was totally not.

I searched the internet for the manual again, and it turned out the amber light on the mobo meant "power fault," usually a bunk power supply. So I grabbed a screwdriver and tore the fucker out, tossed it in my backpack, got on my motorbike, and jetted up Milwaukie to Free Geek, where they confirmed it was toast and sold me a better one (for the $15 I had liberated from the petty cash drawer). Which totally solved the problem, and left me feeling like quite the techno-samurai moto-badass.

And then the whole shop folded explosively in August and we were all out of work, but at least the computers were non-bullshit for as long as the shop survived.
  • Current Music: David Bowie — Song For Bob Dylan
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I wasn't actually going to use Rsync anyway, but still.

Nov. 3rd, 2007 11:42 pm
roadrunnertwice: Me looking up at the camera, wearing big headphones and a striped shirt. (THE SHITBOX WENT TITS UP)
WHAT.

So I need a nice, simple, user-friendly automated backup system for my parents' Windows box. Turns out it doesn't exist. I mean, I didn't figure I'd be able to find anything as good as what I use on my Mac, but damn, there's not even a usable version of Rsync out here without manually replacing the Cygwin dll. BUGGER EVERYTHING EVER.

It looks like I'm stuck with Microsoft's NTBackup.exe. It has a fair amount to recommend it, but it is NOT user-friendly (which means I'm going to have to babysit it by phone), and it looks like restoring from a backup is going to be kind of a bitch.

This is why nerds are pressuring their family members to switch to Macs, lately: mortals simply cannot be expected to successfully administer a Windows system, and nerds cannot be expected to always be on hand.

(Oh, also, people who develop critical tax and accounting software? YOU MOTHERFUCKERS NEED TO STOP STORING USER DATA IN C:\PROGRAM FILES AND C:\WINDOWS. Jesus Aitch, my job would be so much easier if I could just rig something to copy the c:\documents and settings directory and the D drive, the way I'm supposed to be able to.)

EDIT: Okay, no, actually? I just spent an hour or so playing with NTBackup, and it is unspeakably baroque. It still thinks it's writing to a tape drive. In 2007.

EDIT: Huh! SyncBackSE actually looks like it might be exactly what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, uh... well, here's the customer support email I just sent them:

I downloaded a 30-day trial of SyncBackSE this evening, and while I was putting it through its paces, the yearly switch back to Standard Time rolled through, and our computer's clock automatically flipped back an hour.

Immediately, SyncBackSE threw a "Your trial has expired" dialogue at me and shut itself down.

I'm assuming what happened there was that you added a watchdog routine to keep people from diddling their clocks backward, and it triggered itself when the clock jumped. Which is totally hilarious, but it kind of leaves me up a creek. I actually *do* want to give your product a fair chance, since it looks damn promising; is there anything you guys can do for me?
  • Current Music: The Pillows—Hybrid Rainbow
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