Losing the black magic that is used against me, it's hard but I'm coming through..

So today my switch from pre-paid to subscription went live, the actual switching to the working new sim card wasn't much of a problem. Turn roaming on, turn data on and reboot the phone. Nothing really.

The past days I've made backups of just about everything on my phone, including from the phone's calendar (instead of Google Calendar, the phone's calendar isn't backed up immediately by any default app). So all I had to do was backup Whatsapp and add it to the new phone, right?

Welllllll.... Whatsapp needs access to your whole phone, and has an option to make backups of itself, but it does not have an easy option to import those messages again. What instead you need to do is uninstall Whatsapp, reinstall it and it should find the backup you had... should, because it doesn't. Whatsapp makes a backup of everything to the default SDCard, which in most cases is the internal memory. If you don't check that, it won't find the messages on the new phone. Took me three times reinstalling to figure that one out, and by that time I couldn't get text messages anymore for the registration of Whatsapp, only phone messages (Call me).

The next three times I tried I tried to get it to see the stuff I deliberately put on the external SDCard. All three were fails.
Apparently the newest versions expect your data to be on the Google Drive, a little ditty that isn't explained anywhere. But even then it doesn't work.

1. Whatsapp expects the format of the backup file to have today's date in it. Yesterday's date it won't find.
2. It expects it to be on the Google Drive, in some obscure map I haven't found yet.
3a. I copied the correctly named file to the new phone's memory, in the correct map.
3b. I copied it into a map on the external SDCard.
3c. I copied it into the Google Drive.
3d. All places had the same setup, Whatsapp/Databases/file.crypt ... all failed.

So the only thing I can come up with is that I - tomorrow, because I'm on 7 to 12 hour waiting lists for new texts/call me no - take the nano sim card out of my new phone, put it in the micro card convertor, put that in my old phone, re-register my phone number to that Whatsapp, tell it to use Google Drive, tell it to backup immediately, then switch the sim card back to my new phone, uninstall that Whatsapp, reinstall it and hope that in the next registration cycle it can now find my old messages.

But really Whatsapp, if you have a button in the app that says "Backup now", then how fricking difficult can it be to add a restore from local source button? Even an option to tell where to look? You need access to my whole phone, but have problems finding your own file on my nearly empty SDCard?

Jord, IT it is what we make it - stolen from ML1.

Where did I mention I have an iPhone?
For your correct information, it was from a Huawei Ascend G700 running Android 4.2.1 to a Huawei P9 lite running Android 7.0, although that all has little to do with the fact that Whatsapp doesn't have a restore backup button.

Fan mail:

Chris S wrote:

You really are pathetic. Last time you banned me for a month because I called you a bully, which is exactly what you are.

This time I stood up against the biggest two trolls in Boinc, Pat Daly and Gary Charpentier, and what do you do? Pander to them by hiding my perfectly reasonable thread, and ban me for a week. Yes we all know now they are your best mates, funny company you keep, and it will be commented upon.

But yes, nobody was surprised to read your admission that you are receiving treatment by a psychologist for depression, it has been obvious for some time now that you aren't in full control of your faculties. Bernie is on board now, and Kathryn is almost back in harness.

For gods sake man go, and go now. else you will be pushed.

I am sorry, but David will now be receiving yet another international airmail signed for letter to the SSL complaining about you. He will be getting fed up with receiving yet another one, just as i am fed up having to write them.

I feel sorry for him, for his state of mind. I do hope that he will see the light and that he may need talking with a psychologist as well. It's helped me a lot these past months. And you know what, Chris? You won't get me down with your relentless attacks.

Bill Gates wrote:

* check and fix file system
* scan for bad sectors
....
this disk is working correctly and no errors were found

Don't believe it, it was tossing weirdness trying to copy files

As I've got three copies of everything on it ...
Bill Gates wrote:

uncheck quick format
... 30% ... Windoze is unable to format your drive
sit on it and rotate

Now jus' a cotton pickn' second. It is an SSD so it has spares and all that allocation goes on in the background and is hidden from the O/S!

GRUMBLE GRUMBLE GRUMBLE

Hum, wonder if the Mac disk utilities ...
Tim Cook wrote:

Secure erase writes random data on every sector and then write zeros on every sector
format ... erasing ... 1% ... 100%
writing volume information
writing directories
This drive is ready for use press OK

WTF? Are the wincrap drivers that screwed up?

Back in winders box, copy the 25Gb that belongs on, back. No weirdness or wonky.

But can I trust it?

sigh

But doesn't OS X format the filesystem to Hierarchical File System Plus, which Windows can't read? Or was it formatted to FAT32? Certainly not as NTFS, because as far as my research shows it would only format that to read-only (whatever the use is of that).

But doesn't OS X format the filesystem to Hierarchical File System Plus, which Windows can't read? Or was it formatted to FAT32? Certainly not as NTFS, because as far as my research shows it would only format that to read-only (whatever the use is of that).

Disk Utility has a drop down box to pick the filesystem. FAT, exFAT, HFS+ and if you have the extensions installed/enabled NTFS. If you are one of the lucky ones APFS is also there, HFS+ is depreciated. There is also a drop down to pick MBR, GUID or the really outdated Apple Partition Map if you have to support non-intel macs.

In my case FAT32, as the thumb drive was only 32GB.

PS Macs will read/write most of the Unix filesystems, but that isn't a surprise. The man pages hint you may be able to format UFS but I haven't tried it.

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Nice advert for their new Dreamliner: a Boeing 787-8 flew a flight path in the form of a Boeing over the USA.

https://www.flightradar24.com/BOE004/e54ad6b (make sure to zoom out.... and to select "Show route" in the lower left)

Edit: It's since landed and now all you have to do is click "Yes, show flight history".

300,000Kg of CO2
https://qz.com/1045617/boeings-plan-to-draw-an-airplane-in-the-sky-dumped-at-least-300000-kg-of-carbon-dioxide-into-the-atmosphere/

300,000Kg of CO2
https://qz.com/1045617/boeings-plan-to-draw-an-airplane-in-the-sky-dumped-at-least-300000-kg-of-carbon-dioxide-into-the-atmosphere/

I don't mind how much CO2 tRump dumps into USA airspace - it's his country, and he can do what he likes: we shouldn't interfere in the internal affairs of another country.

But woe betide him if any of that CO2 should invade another country's airspace, like mine.

Two chill pills, an irony pill and a sarcasm pill are indicated, then a long hit of nitrous oxide.

I would add a good deep breath of Helium for good measure ;-)

You would think someone would care more about their dear departed than
NOT SUFFICIENT FUNDS
I guess if you really want them to end up in the county's mass yearly burial ...

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More Excitement. Just a hint of sequeling tire -- too short, which means it will be bad -- then a loud bang and crunching sounds and breaking glass hitting the pavement. Grab cell, keys, and move swiftly to see how bad the injuries are. Advice, don't crash into a cop car in a small town. The entire sworn on duty police force responded, along with fire and rescue and cops from two neighboring jurisdictions, non-sworn "volunteers" and even a ghetto bird. Quite a show of flashing lights. It is a small town so it wasn't that many but more that a dozen is an impressive number for the area.

Of course before they move anything the reports and photos ... and more photos and measurements, lots of chalk marks ...

Then before they tow they have to safe the cop car, shotgun, rifle, extra ammo, etc.

Oh, it wasn't me if I forgot to say. There are a lot of crashes at the corner one house down from me. Enough it has a four way red hold. Too often I'm calling emergency. This time I didn't need to as the cops were already there.

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In the picture above shouldn't the dog's man/maid servant be carrying the umbrella not the dog. Standards are obviously slipping.

London is a more beautiful city than London.

Uhuh. :)

Compleaat witthh spulling mishtuks....

I would rather see items like that in a "public" museum where they could be enjoyed and studied by the population at large (using the appropriate protective measures of course), rather than stuck in some over-rich person's collection never to be looked at only sold on to an even richer person in a few years time.