About Me

Adventures in installing Windows 10 on a Macbook Pro

As y’all know I’m a Mac user. My primary computer is Aroree, a mid-2012 Macbook Pro. Aroree currently has 16 gigs of RAM in it just because, while not officially supported by Apple, RAM was available to let me actually upgrade to that. And I did that upgrade because it got rid of a lot of performance issues I was seeing with Yosemite. (That I actually had to upgrade to 16 gigs to do that was vexing, but well hey.) And now that I’m on El Capitan, it certainly hasn’t done any harm to have that much RAM to play with with that iteration of the OS, either.

With all this RAM to play with, though, I decided to move forward with setting up a new Windows partition to have available for work-related purposes. I don’t normally need to deal with Windows as a private user, but I do need it for work, since I have to test against assorted Windows-based browsers.

And my prior laptop, Winnowill, has gotten too old and creaky to be useful anymore as a workhorse box. Its OS X side is permanently stuck on Lion, since it’s too old to upgrade past there. And while I was able to install Windows 10 on it, it’s still only got 4 gigs of RAM to play with, and that’s not enough to effectively run a VM and have any cycles free to do anything else on the box.

If I were just manually loading browsers, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. But what I’m actually doing is spending a lot of my time writing Python automation scripts to load browsers for me, way more quickly than I could do it manually, and test the things that need testing. So I need a Windows installation that can sit there and be my automation target, while I run the actual automation from a Linux install. Ideally, I need Windows available while I can do other things on the same box.

Hence, making a new VM on Aroree. I can report with satisfaction that I now have Windows 10 set up as a Bootcamp partition on this machine, doing double duty as a VM using Parallels 11. (I’d considered trying VirtualBox as well, since I’ve been using VirtualBox at work on my Mac mini there, but Parallels is what I’m familiar with at home.) With the VM running in full screen mode, I can switch back and forth between it and the desktop spaces in OS X, and that’s neat.

Within Windows, I’m running Selenium to do the actual automation. I’ve got Chrome and Firefox installed, along with the IE 11 and Edge that came with Windows 10. (There are drivers for IE and one in development for Edge, which’ll be interesting to play with later.) And over on my work laptop, in Linux, I can work on my Python scripts and run them across my home network without having to worry about VPN performance issues. Fun. 🙂

BUT. Installing Windows 10 on this machine was more annoying than it should have been. Bootcamp was prepared to deal with it, in theory. In actual practice, it wanted me to make a USB installer for Windows 10 which it could then use to run setup. Only it then completely failed to register the USB drive as bootable. A bit of Googling indicated that apparently Bootcamp was expecting that USB drive to be in a USB 2 port. Which I do not have on my Macbook. Its USB ports are USB 3. And Windows 10 wasn’t prepared to talk to those ports prior to installation. AUGH.

Which meant I had to punt to plan B: creating an install DVD from the ISO and using that instead. That actually let me install Windows on the Bootcamp partition. Only I had no networking, because the install DVD didn’t have the actual drivers needed for making Windows talk to Mac hardware. So I had to run the Windows setup a second time, this time off the USB drive, from within Windows. And this time I actually got the drivers I needed to make sure that Windows could talk to our wifi, if I was booted straight into it from Bootcamp.

ETA 11:17am: Am reminded via Twitter that I left out another problem I ran into, at this point. Once I got Bootcamp trying to install drivers within Windows, it hung for no apparent reason while trying to install RealTek audio. Googling for that problem led me to a bunch of other folks on the Apple forums talking about that, and I wound up having to get into the Windows Task Manager to kill the RealTek setup so that the main Bootcamp setup could continue. Once I did that, I was FINALLY able to finish the install.

That took most of the day yesterday. And once THAT was finally accomplished, I was able to install Parallels and get it talking to the Bootcamp partition so that I could run Windows as a VM as well.

Only then I discovered, wait a minute, Windows wasn’t activated. AUGH. Googling about that showed me that apparently that Windows ISO I downloaded–off of Microsoft’s own site, mind you–was not part of the usual activation path they’re expecting. I.e., previous Windows users upgrading already activated copies of Windows.

So I got on the phone to Microsoft’s tech support to try to see what I could do. Which was also more annoying than it should have been. First tech I talked to basically said “whelp you need to buy an activation key” and tried to redirect me to the store. Only I got disconnected, and had to call back and re-explain the problem to a second tech, who then finally connected me to the store. The store person however was not able to answer my question of “okay, so is it accurate that I need to actually buy an activation key?” Because if her answer had been yes, I was going to terminate that conversation and send Dara to the Microsoft employee store to buy us a licensed copy that way.

(Note: I would also have been rather irritated if that had happened, because it would have been disingenuous of Microsoft to provide a free ISO and then expect people to pay for activation keys for it. And by ‘disingenuous’ I mean really fucking annoying.)

To my surprise, however, her answer was “let me connect you with our Windows experts”. So I finally got punted over to a third tech who, after I explained that I had done an install off of microsoft.com’s own ISO and was now having activation problems, asked me for permission to remotely access the machine. When I let him do that, he did a few sanity checks and then finally actually activated it. Which was kind of fun to watch. End result: YAY, fully activated copy of Windows.

Took me all damn day to do it, but at least now it’s done and I can return to working on the actual automation.

Noting all of this for general posterity, and also for any other techie Mac users who might need to do the same thing I’ve just done. Learn from my example, y’all!

December 31, 2015 by
Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Here Be Magic Boxed Set, by Various Authors, Post No. 2

This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but this is what happens when you spend most of your workday dealing with computer crankiness. But my delay is your gain, because this means y’all get to have a doubleheader today in the week-long Boosting the Signal feature on the Here Be Magic boxed set! Today’s post brings a new name to the Boosting the Signal author list: fellow HBM member Linda Mooney. Linda’s contribution to the boxed set is the story Tall, Tall Trees, and she’s offering up a deleted scene from that tale for you today. Her characters in that story have the very straightforward goal of surviving to save their lives and their love, while in this piece, the medicine woman Aunty Vo has a more immediate goal: withstanding the wrath of Pellera’s father.

web-page-separator

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Aunty Vo stared at the collection of personal items she’d managed to gather to take with her. Her old bones told her the upcoming rains would result in a flood unlike anything anyone had ever witnessed or survived. To say she was frightened would be a mistake. She was terrified beyond words, and almost beyond thought.

“Old woman! Where are you, old woman? Answer me!” A voice bellowed from the front room. She immediately knew who it was.

She took her time making her way through the curtain to find Maton and two of his cronies standing by the fire. They were armed with clubs and axes. By the expressions on their faces, she could tell they had a more sinister purpose for being here than asking for a hunting spell. She knew why they’d sought her out, and hardened herself.

“Watch your tongue, Maton. I do not like your tone,” she informed their leader.

“I demand to know where my daughter has gone,” Maton ordered. “Give me the information I seek.”

“I do not know where she’s gone,” the medicine woman replied coolly. It was the truth. She had only given Pellera and Oron her blessing and advice. She had no knowledge of what they did after they left. However, Maton refused to listen.

“You do know, old woman. Cortab saw them leave here not long ago. Where were they going? To the treeber home compound?”

Aunty Vo did not attempt to hide her disgust. “I did not say I hadn’t seen them. Only that I do not know where they went after they left.”

“Why were they here in the first place?” The man continued to irritate her.

“You know I am not obligated to tell you anything. What I do or say to those who seek my help is sacrosanct. But this one time I will tell you they were seeking my blessing on their union. Something you had no intention of giving. Now go away and leave me in peace.”

She turned to exit the room. She never expected Maton to lunge for her and grab her arm with bruising fingers.

“Tell me what I want to know!” he hotly demanded.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Let me go, Maton. I am telling you nothing more, and bullying will not work on me.” She glanced at the other two, who’d retreated to the front door flap to watch in uncomfortable silence. “If you continue to follow this man, you will be met with death. Heed my warning.”

The fingers squeezed more tightly, making her wince.

“You are a cruel and unjust man, Maton. Your forthcoming death will be beneficial to this tribe’s welfare.”

The man paled but he remained absolute. “Are you threatening me?”

She never flinched. “Are you? Don’t forget, Maton, I have the ears of the gods, and they have mine. They’ve whispered of your demise, and they are taking delight in it. Go look for your precious child…before it’s too late.”

“What do you mean by that? Before it’s too late?” He gave her arm a shake.

“Maton?” One of the men by the doorway interceded. “Maton, we need to hurry if we’re going to make any sort of headway before dark.”

Aunty Vo gave him her best shadowy smile. One she knew struck fear in men’s hearts whenever she graced them with it. “Yes, Maton. You’d best hurry. Your hours are numbered.”

Her soft prophecy had the effect she was seeking. The man shuddered, and he removed his hand.

“Hours? You mean years,” he tried to correct her.

“No, Maton. You heard me correctly the first time. Your time among the living is being measured in hours. I strongly suggest you to put them to good use, beginning with trying to make amends with your own flesh and blood before it’s too late.”

Jerking her arm from the man’s grasp, she left the outer room where she soon heard the men depart. After wrapping the few precious items she could not bear to leave behind, she bundled them in a sling and placed it over her head where it rested on one shoulder and across her body. Tying a flask of water and a bag of food around her waist, she grabbed her bowl of light and began her journey through the deep recesses of the caves where she would find shelter.

There, she would wait out the aftermath of the flooding rains, and the devastation they would bring.

web-page-separator

Buy the Book: Amazon | All Romance eBooks | Nook | iBooks | Kobo

Follow Linda Mooney On: Official Site | Official Store | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon Author Page

Follow Here Be Magic Authors On: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Google+

December 31, 2015 by
Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Here Be Magic Boxed Set, by Various Authors, Post No. 1

Welcome to the first of the special Boosting the Signal run of posts featuring the Here Be Magic boxed set! This is a digital release put out by the blogging group I’m in, Here Be Magic. And while I’m not actually in this boxed set myself, I wanted to give it some signalboosting love, so I invited the participating authors to send me pieces to promote the release. The first of these is from previous Boosting the Signal guest Shawna Reppert, whose story in the set is from her Ravensblood universe. Raven’s Song is set between books 1 and 2 of that series. If you’ve read Book 1, you might have a good idea already of what her protagonist’s goal is: to prove that he is capable of goodness. Here’s Corwyn Ravenscroft on that very topic!

web-page-separator

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

I thought the hard part was over.

No, I can’t say that. It is over. I would never want to live those last dark months again. Watching William descend further and further into blood-soaked madness, terrified all the time that he would discover my duplicity. Terrified that he would win, and that all of the Three Communities would be forced into the hell that his followers had walked into of their own accord. Betraying both my master and my students to keep that from happening, never knowing whether I was buying back my soul or damning it further.

At the risk of tempting fate, I will say that nothing I face again in my life could be worse than those months.

But at least then I fought with weapons I knew. My skill with magic, which is both my birthright and my life’s study. The guile and dissembling gleaned from years of survival within William’s inner circle.

I confess that I hadn’t had any thought then of what lay on the other side of defeating William and gaining my pardon. Perhaps, deep down, I hadn’t expected to survive. In my darkest moments, I hadn’t believed I deserved to.

Now here I am, back in the world. A free citizen. With an agent of Guardian International Investigations for a lover, gods help us both.

I’ve been a dark mage for all of my adult life, minus the last half-year or so. I’m not sure I know how to be anything else. ‘Normal’ isn’t as easy as it looked from the outside. I can pick up the piano again, easily enough. There’s sheet music to remind me of where my fingers go. I can find no guide to making acquaintances not built on alliances and advantage.

As far as anything beyond acquaintance, well… Under William’s tutelage I learned how to seduce, when urge or occasion arose. When the mood struck, I’ve allowed myself to be seduced. When it comes to the sort of long-term relationship that normal people have, the sort based on love and trust and honesty, I can only say that I’m willing to try, for Cassandra’s sake. For my own sake, to be truthful, because I can’t imagine walking into this new life without her at my side.

There are still plenty of people waiting for me to fail. To smile and nod and tell each other that they knew it all along. That there’s no way that a Ravenscroft could be anything other than dark.

I refuse to prove them right. Not only because I can be as arrogant and stubborn as I’ve often been accused of being. But because I’ve fought too hard for this new life to let it go. I have far too much to lose.

And because there are a small number of people who believe that I might succeed. And they matter more.

web-page-separator

Buy the Book: Amazon | All Romance eBooks | Nook | iBooks | Kobo

Follow Shawna Reppert On: Official Site | Facebook | Twitter

Follow Here Be Magic Authors On: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Google+

December 29, 2015 by
Boosting the Signal

New Boosting the Signal special feature: the Here Be Magic boxed set!

I hope y’all enjoyed the special run of Boosting the Signal feature posts that I did for the 2015 NIWA anthology, Asylum! Since that seemed to do pretty well overall, I’m going to do a similar one for another recent release by a group I’m involved with: i.e., the newly released boxed set by my fellow bloggers at Here Be Magic.

This is a digital boxed set, and you can read up about it right over here on participating author Linda Mooney’s site. I’m not actually in this boxed set (I was going to be, but was not able to finish a novella for it in time), but since this is a release by my Here Be Magic peeps, I wanted to give it some signalboosting love regardless. And if you’ve been following my periodic HBM posts, or the HBM blog in general, you’ll know that the authors in this group are a mixed bag of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and fantasy. The boxed set reflects this!

What’s the difference between a boxed set and an anthology, you might be asking? Fundamentally speaking, not much, actually. This is one gigantic ebook that contains multiple stories, but in this case, the stories are longer than the short stories you’d expect to find in an anthology. We’re talking novellas here, folks.

I’ve got a few pieces from participating authors that I hope will boost your interest in checking the release out, so stick around. These posts will start TOMORROW.

December 28, 2015 by
Movies

Movie review: Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens

Dara and I, accompanied by friends Mimi and Layna, have finally seen The Force Awakens.

YOU GUYS. That? That right there? That was a goddamned Star Wars film. And let me put this in perspective for you: do you all know the last time I would have walked out of a movie theater entirely emotionally satisfied with a Star Wars film? That would have been 1980–the year The Empire Strikes Back came out.

And I can say this. Even having had a major plot point spoiled for me (and I am STILL cranky at the player on Dungeon Boss chat who blew that for me, grr), I was still full of the feels. And I have many, many thoughts on what I just witnessed, and I shall now share them with you all!

Needless to say, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS OMG SO MANY SPOILERS YOUR FLEET CANNOT REPEL SPOILERS OF THIS MAGNITUDE AND DID I MENTION SPOILERS? If you’re coming over from one of the social media networks or from LJ or Dreamwidth to read this, I beg you: please stay right on angelahighland.com if you want to drop comments. Because there will be spoilers and I want to minimize their presence anywhere this post gets mirrored. If I see you drop a spoiler-related comment on any of my social media networks where this post goes up, I WILL DELETE THAT COMMENT. Do not make Han cranky!

Han says NO.

Han says NO.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding! Let’s get to it, shall we? And did I mention OMG SPOILERS?

Continue Reading

December 25, 2015 by
Carina Press

Heads up to all: one-day sale on carinapress.com

Everyone, TODAY ONLY (that’s December 23rd), Carina Press is running a site-wide coupon code for 50% off everything in their book catalog. The code is DAY2315!

So if you haven’t read the Rebels of Adalonia books yet, today would be a very, VERY good time to go straight to the Carina site and scarf ’em. Here are the direct links to Valor, Vengeance, and Victory on the Carina site:

Valor of the Healer

Vengeance of the Hunter

Victory of the Hawk

And remember, these books are not standalone novels, so you need to read all three to get the complete story. Reading order is Valor, Vengeance, Victory.

And! Since the coupon code applies to everything in Carina’s catalog, if you see anything else up there that looks appealing, go ahead and stock up!

December 23, 2015 by
About Me

Medical news for me in category Kinda Cool, for once

One of the oddest little details about my medical history is a childhood injury I had to my left ankle that never healed right, and which left me, throughout my adolescence and into my adulthood, with this weird-looking lump on my ankle. I no longer have a clear memory of when exactly I injured it, date-wise. But I do still have a memory of a bad fall about six blocks away from my house, on one of those long walks when I was heading either to the little convenience store where I liked to get candy when I was a kid, or to the shopping center that required me to cross Preston Highway. (I did a lot of walking as a kid, yeah. Which contributes a lot to why I’m used to doing it as an adult.)

That fall, as I recall, either badly sprained my ankle or maybe even broke it. I had to limp home. And since my family was poor, we couldn’t really afford to get it properly treated. So it healed up weird and has had this lump on it ever since. I have a band picture of me holding a flute from sixth grade, and the ankle bump was showing in that. And that’s been why I’ve always been a little self-conscious about wearing sandals and pantyhose, because it makes my weird-looking ankle really obvious. This has been the main reason as well that I wear hiking boots, aside from how I do a lot of walking on my daily commutes–high-topped hiking boots give good protection to my ankles.

Over the years I’ve had to explain the ankle to various doctors, chiropractors, and massage therapists. It’s been x-rayed repeatedly, and the overall verdict was that I’d developed a bone spur in there. But it’s never interfered with my walking, so I haven’t bothered to get it seriously treated. It’s never really hurt either, though historically, it has bugged me if it takes a direct impact.

Which brings me to why I bring all this up in the first place. At Thanksgiving this year, I happened to slip on the floor heading into the kitchen, since there was a slick spot right in front of the oven. I let out quite the yell when I hit the floor, startling our various guests–particularly when it became apparent that I had a nasty bruise right on the bump on my ankle. And I had to explain to said guests that actually, the lump had already been there. I wasn’t as badly injured as I looked.

The bruise faded away after a few days. And in general it didn’t even hurt much at any point–again because of those hiking boots I wear providing the ankle good support and protection when I’m out about my daily business.

But here’s the thing. I’ve noticed in the last couple of days that the lump has been shrinking. Significantly. It’s not entirely gone, but the shape of my ankle has distinctly changed. I can also feel much smaller bumps in the greater bump, which I don’t recall having had there before.

In other words, an injury I’ve had since childhood has shown some signs of actually maybe finally healing. This is weirding me right out, though in a good way. And it hasn’t been hurting either, though I can feel periodic weird pulses in there–something akin to how I felt nerve pulses when my hand was healing, the summer when I broke my arm.

I’m not expecting the bump to go away, though it’d be really neat if it did. It’d be nice to have symmetrical ankles for once. In the meantime though it’s kind of a neat mystery, trying to figure out exactly what’s happening. I’ve been wondering whether the bone spur in there happened to take enough of a hit that it broke up some. Dara is wondering whether the new medication I started taking in September, Singulair, is contributing to reducing lifelong inflammation in the surrounding tissue.

(I got put on the Singulair to reduce some of the chronic rhinitus problems I’ve been having, and it’s been helping with that considerably. But it’s also been addressing various other dermagraphia-type problems I seem to have, so I apparently have issues with inflammation all over the place? So it wouldn’t be entirely out of left field if the Singulair’s having an effect on the ankle, too.)

December 16, 2015 by