Sunday, December 21, 2014

 

I purchased a MacBook Pro and a 27” iMac computer a few days after Carole picked me up from prison. That was in August of 2012. I remember being incredibly excited about the thought of getting my hands on a computer. During the decades that I served in prison, I wasn’t able to access a computer much. When I wrote, I wrote by hand. I knew that it would be a treat to receive a computer. Since I would have to learn everything new, I chose to buy Macs, as I understood they were easier, or more intuitive to learn.

Since then, I’ve invested thousands of hours learning more about computer and writing volumes of content on Macs. Over the past few months, I learned that Macs don’t live forever. My computers became really slow, which frustrated me because the computers are necessary for my work. The computers took a long time to boot up. Throughout the day my computers would freeze with an annoying spinning beach ball on the monitor.

This past Thursday I called a Mac specialist to visit my office. He diagnosed the problem as faulty hard drives. I ordered two new solid-state hard drives and he installed them on my computers this weekend. Now both of my computers are running like new. The service cost me about $1,000. But if he hadn’t fixed them, I would’ve spent closer to $5,000 to purchase new Apple computers. The computer technician told me that with the new hard drives, both machines would last another 18 months or longer. They’re much faster now, and I completed loads of work today because of the change, without a single spinning beach ball on the screen. If anyone has a slow Mac, the solution that worked for me was installing a new solid-state hard drive.

 

Days since my release from prison: 496

Miles that I ran today: 11.01

Miles that I ran so far this week: 11.01

Miles that I’ve run during the month of December: 111.47

Miles that I ran so far in 2014: 2,342.46

Miles that I need to run in order to reach my annual goal of 2,400 miles: 57.54

Miles I’m ahead of schedule to reach my 2,400-mile goal by the end of 2014: 10.11

My weight for today: 168