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Two Quick Fixes
10 March 2023
Sometimes you go in for an oil change only to be told it's been 10 years since your last tune-up and all your fluids look like they came straight from the La Brea Tar Pits. "And one more thing, sir," our service tech timidly informed us. "Your tires are bald."
Other times there's a quick fix to a puzzling problem. So while we still must deal with those tires (in a size no longer made by at least two major manufacturers after a mere 22 years), here's a couple of example quick fixes to show the other side of the moon.
DEAD MOUSE
We bought the Logitech Precision Pro wireless mouse in September last year after returning a smaller Logitech mouse to Target because it was, well, just too cheap for words (or images).
We found the Precision Pro for $20 at Costco (not much more than the one we bought at Target) so we didn't think three times about it (even if we did think twice about it).
That was before we found a driver patch for the Wacom Intuos mouse we had been using for years (and years and years). And just to paint the complete picture, we use an Apple Magic Mouse on our other laptop. Mice keep us from inadvertent clicks on under-designed Web sites.
Anyway the other day the Logitech stopped responding. As it happens, we don't go through a day without some software update. Which recently included Monterey on our unsupported hardware and a slew of Adobe updates afterwards. So we're always suspicious of some software issue when something goes awry.
But not this time. A moment's reflection reminded us the Logitech, like the Magic Mouse (if unlike the Wacom mouse) runs on a battery. And batteries die. So we swapped out the battery and it came back to life.
Quick. Fixed.
PHOTO MECHANIC
Must be our month for mechanics. The other day we threw a folder of images at Photo Mechanic and it complained about our license. Too many activations.
Since when?
We need Photo Mechanic. We review everything we shoot with it because it's 1) fast (loads fast and displays fast) and 2) quickly copies a file or 3) opens it for editing in Photoshop.
So we launched Photo Mechanic on our backup laptop only to get the same complaint. Too many activations is too many.
Now this was a software issue, so we wrote to our contact at Photo Mechanic (who we last touched base with in 2019, ahem) and a few minutes later were told she had moved on in life. But Mick Orlosky cleared out an old activation for us and once again we were able to get both copies back in service.
We asked Mick what might have caused the problem.
"The errant OS install sometimes changes your 'MachineID' which is what Photo Mechanic uses to make sure you don't just migrate a license key to 12 different computers," he replied. Indeed, the unauthorized install of Ventura and subsequent recovery to Monterey changed the name of our main machine but not our backup. We had missed that.
Armed with that knowledge, we were able to solve a couple of other minor issues with some automated tasks a few days later.
Speaking of service, you really have to like Camera Bits (who sells Photo Mechanics). That was such a quick fix to our problem we didn't have a chance to wonder if anyone got our message.