Tag Archives: VESA

home, technology

My big time office makeover…

The featured photo is of my new setup for my old computer, and the snazzy new lighting strip. I can control the lights from my computer (home app). They’re pretty cool.

Yesterday ended up being very busy. I ordered a bunch of stuff for my office, and most of it showed up yesterday. It started with a slim dock port I got for the new computer, so I would have some ports that could handle my old peripherals until it’s time to replace them with USB C type devices. Then I got a new table for my old computer. I was going to add the old machine to my pile of discarded computers, but then I determined that I might be able to use the old computer for media… making videos, playing music, watching movies or videos etc.

The new table is very nice. It’s made of solid pine, and has a lovely aroma of fresh wood. I was in the middle of putting it together when my new HomePod Mini showed up with a smart socket and smart Nanoleaf strip lights. I hadn’t planned to buy the socket or the lights, but Apple did a successful suggestive sell move. I’m actually glad I bought the strip lights, because they look really cool and offer much needed lighting to my usually dim workspace.

I spent about an hour putting the table together, mostly screwing in the forty screws it took. It’s perfect for what I needed it for, but putting it together came with a price. I got two blisters on my right palm. It was also quite an effort to get it upstairs to my room. The thing weighs a lot. It’ll probably last for the rest of my life, though.

After I got the table set up, I put the old computer on it, and started configuring things. I unpacked the light strip and wondered where I should put it. Then I realized it was just about the right length to go around the front of the new table. Now, I have new lighting on my new table holding the old computer.

Blisters from putting together my new table…
But it’s a very nice, solid wood table.
Roses Bill sent on Valentine’s Day.

Meanwhile, I’ve been slowly setting up the new computer, which is turning out to be more difficult than I expected. Starting with the new VESA arm and ending with transferring files– mostly music files, some of which are on CDs– has been a real pain. For some reason, even though Apple still sells the SuperDrive (with the USB connection), I had to buy a special connection to get it to work on the new computer. And even then, there’s no telling if it actually will work. Half the time, when I try to import a CD, the Internet gets knocked offline.

I will say this, though… When the Internet is robust, and I have all of the speakers going, it really sounds good. The trouble is, our Internet has become very fragile lately. This was a problem even before I got the new computer. My next upgrade will be a CD tower for all of the CDs I’ve accumulated since we’ve been in Germany. I don’t buy them unless the music is something I really want in my collection and I can’t download it. I have a whole lot of CDs in storage, too. If I ever move back to the USA and live in my own house, I’ll have a wall full of them.

I actually moved my old office chair back into my workspace. It works better than the new one Bill got me for Christmas. I put that one in the entertainment/Noyzi’s room. Someday, maybe we’ll use that room more often than we do.

By the time I’d written two fresh blog posts and practiced guitar, I was pretty exhausted. When Bill got home, he walked the dogs. Today, I’m not expecting any deliveries, so I plan to walk the dogs. The exercise will do us all some good, although Arran looks like he’s getting kind of tired. He seems determined to stay with us for as long as he possibly can. He truly adores us on a rare level. Unfortunately, the lymphoma will eventually win.

This post is probably not that interesting to most people. I could be writing snark about the Duggars, especially Josh– who appears to have gotten into some trouble in prison. I haven’t read Jinger Vuolo’s book, and I probably won’t, because to me, it seems like she traded one cult for another.

I could also write about Timmy Rodrigues, who has apparently found himself a partner for courting… I could write about that, but I don’t care enough about it to watch the videos. Or, I’ve just been busier than usual. That could be a very snarky post. Maybe Toni will come back to chastise me. 😀

Meh, we’ll see. I’d like to get to a point at which I feel comfortable and functional with my new equipment. I sure have more computers than I ever thought I would. It’s hard to believe there was a significant portion of my life when I didn’t even have ONE computer. Now, I have six of them… and three of them don’t really work anymore and need to be ditched.

Yeah… I’ve been unusually busy this week. I hope the building projects will be finished soon.

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lessons learned, technology, YouTube

Every day brings its own surprise learning curves…

As I suspected it would, my new computer arrived a day earlier than expected. I stuck around the house all afternoon, waiting for it to show up. The dogs didn’t get a walk for the second day in a row. As I excitedly unboxed my new machine, there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind. When I ordered the new iMac, there was a notation that it would come to me without a stand. That worried me a little bit, but then I pushed the thought out of my mind. How can Apple sell me a computer with no way to stand it up?

Then I looked on Apple.com to see if there was a separate accessory I needed to buy. When I bought my Apple Watch a couple of years ago, I had to buy a charger separately. I figured maybe it was a situation like that– Apple trying to look more environmentally conscious while making people spend more money. But then, when I bought an Apple Watch for Bill, it came with a charger. I did see a stand available for sale, but the price was about 1000 euros.

Well, the fancy new blue computer got to me yesterday, and indeed, there was no stand. I tore the box open trying to find one, but none was to be found. Why? Because I inadvertently bought a VESA model. Until yesterday, I didn’t know what VESA was. Now, I know that it stands for Video Electronics Standards Association. For some reason, it also refers to a mount on the back of televisions and monitors that allow people to wall mount or use custom “arms” or stands for their computers or TVs.

Most Apple computers come with fixed stands that can’t be removed. But that doesn’t work for every user, because some people stand at their desks, or they are very tall or very short. Or they are neat freaks and/or lack desk space, and they want to be able to mount the monitor on the wall or clamp it to the side of the desk instead of just setting it on the desktop. Some people want to be able to move the monitor in a way that will work best for them. I don’t have that problem myself. In fact, our current house has sloped ceilings, so the ability to mount a monitor on the wall would not be useful for me.

Apple.com reverts to Apple.de where I live. I do translate the site when I use it, but sometimes things get lost in translation. I swear, until yesterday, I didn’t know what a VESA mount was. I had never heard of it, and didn’t know why it would be preferable to having a plain old factory made stand. Just now, I went to the Apple store and “built” a computer to the same specifications as the one I just received. I still didn’t see an option for VESA versus a conventional fixed stand. So, how this happened to me, I don’t know. I do know that it’s not worth the hassle to return the computer, because it came all the way from Hong Kong, and I don’t want to wait longer, when I can just buy a VESA monitor arm.

So, yesterday afternoon, after poring over articles, videos, and Amazon.de, I finally selected what I hope will be a good stand for my new computer. Then, I will begin the painful process of transitioning to my pretty blue machine… which has all new USB C and Thunderbolt ports. That means a lot of my old peripherals will need to be upgraded or converted. I bought a new dock just that purpose, and it already warns me that the CD drive I bought separately when I purchased my second iMac (which died in 2019) won’t be supported. That drive has a USB connection, which is now obsolete.

I also bought a converter so the fancy headphones I bought last spring will work with the new computer. I have a microphone interface that connects with a USB. That’s probably going to have to be replaced, too. Upgrading computers is expensive!

I really would have liked to have waited a little bit longer to get a new computer. Lately, my desktop has just been a real pain to deal with. I’m sure there’s something I could do to make it less of a pain. I simply lack the patience to try to figure out what. Luckily, it’s not yet in its death throes, so I can hang with the old computer for a few more days until I get the new system ready to go. I’ll even bet that in the long run, I’ll be glad I got the VESA Apple instead of the standard one. It seems to be the choice of techies.

One of the videos I watched. Note that the computer has a stand. Mine doesn’t have that. It’s just the monitor.
How I wish I’d seen this video last week.

The weird thing is… everybody in the videos about using a VESA mount on a Mac says that Apple doesn’t really advertise the availability of the VESA model. So a lot of folks were rigging their Macs equipped with conventional (and apparently unremovable) stands, showing how to use VESA monitor arms with the stand hanging down. One guy actually sawed the stand off of his Mac! Here I am, with a VESA model I wouldn’t have chosen to order, had I known what the fuck a VESA mount is before yesterday afternoon! Hopefully, the arm I chose will work seamlessly with my new computer. I don’t see why it wouldn’t… but then, making assumptions is what got me into this mess in the first place.

When my new arm gets to me, I plan to watch this guy’s video in full. His was the most useful of all of them.

I should have married a computer techie. Alas, my man just plans Army exercises that prepare people to go off to war. I just hope I manage to get this right. I have a history of not quite doing things to precision, only to see them fall apart later. 😉 Like, for instance, when I was in grad school and tried to put together a CD rack without the proper tools. By the time I got it put together, it was pretty rickety looking. It looked ugly, but worked for a few months. Then one night, the whole thing collapsed in a huge mess. We’re talking hundreds of CDs that had been carefully alphabetized lying in a pile in the middle of the wreckage. There was much cursing.

I do much better with things that don’t require assembly. Or, at least things that don’t require complicated assembly and tools. Bill isn’t much of a handyman, though, and he’s a busy guy. That means that sometimes I have to figure these things out for myself.

Well, I suppose I’ll get to work on my next task for the day… I have noticed today that my old computer is working better than it has for the past couple of weeks. I got a notice this morning from Apple that my hard drive on this computer needed updating. I clicked a button, and sure enough, I am getting much better performance today. If this had only happened a week ago, maybe I would have held off on this big purchase that is currently vexing me. It’s yet another surprising lesson learned, I guess.

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