The Fabric Organization Answers

New post, so I can answer everyone at once.

It's good to see that the plurality currently agrees with my decision: organize by color. (The problem with organizing by amount is that I'd need to keep shifting things around until I was down to the cabbage.) Organizing by fiber type goes without saying -- I have separate sets of bins for wool, silk, linen, fur, and other.

And that last clicky button? The answer is "No."

Kernal Panic!!!!

So I finally got around to doing the major trouble-shooting on my iMac (complete with moving the computer desk and all up from the living room to the dining room, so the loom can move into the old desk space). And after various permutations of pulling and reinstalling the RAM, trying out the theoretically brand new (although 3-year-old in its packaging) RAM that I ended up with when I upgraded the original RAM, swapping RAM cards into different slots, etc. etc. etc, along with the usual accompaniments of rebooting, booting from the system disk, resetting the PRAM, and anything else scotica and I and the apple.com help pages could think of, I've come to the conclusion that the next step is to take the machine in to the shop.

Or is it?

I'm a year past the end of my Apple Care coverage, so any repairs and parts are out-of-pocket. The machine is four years old and, while far from obsolete, is at the point where you think twice about pouring money into it. And more to the point, what I've discovered during the past four years of having both a desktop and a laptop is that I don't really use two home computers. The iMac is wonderful when I need to edit something on the big screen. But I'd say 95% of my non-work computer time is spent on the laptop.

Having two computers has been a lifesaver when the laptop got stolen ... but that was primarily for the backup files. Time Machine now does a better job of backups than I ever did -- and does them from an unobtrusive location unlikely to be targeted by a burglar. (Not that one wants to plan for future burglaries, mind you.)

Further, truth to tell, the logistics of keeping key files synchronized on two different machines has been annoying and not always successful. I simply don't think in those terms. I like having habits and sticking to them.

So I'm now toying with the notion of not bothering to pour much money into getting it fixed and instead look into simply getting a large external screen to use with the laptop. The flaw in this path is that I'd find it difficult to treat the iMac as a piece of garbage to be disposed of if a new RAM chip could get it back in working order. So some of this is more thinking about future decisions and work habits. (Yes, I could give the iMac away "as is" to someone interesting in fixing it, but it's hard to wipe the disk if I can't get it working to some degree. Retrieving the files isn't an issue -- they're all backed up on Time Machine.)

I shall have to ponder this for a while yet. And a repair consultation at the Apple Store is, I believe, free for the initial stage, which would give me more information on which to base a decision.