Going nuts

I’m feeling a lot better today than I did yesterday, which actually is quite surprising, given what I am about to narrate.

My day started off well, though, with a sighting of this nuthatch on the peanut feeder which I have put just outside the family room window in the hope of luring a nuthatch closer. I caught sight of him and slowly lowered my arm down to the chair in front of me to pick up the camera without frightening him off. By the time I’d got him in focus he’d flown over from the peanut feeder to the seed feeder and I was thrilled to get this shot.

The day went downhill thereafter. First of all I discovered that my 8TB external drive which acts as my Time Machine backup on my Mac was finally no longer prepared to work, having done seven years’ sterling service. Thus my Mac isn’t being backed up to that drive – and apparently hasn’t done so since 24th June, which I hadn’t noticed.

I found out it wasn’t working when I tried to access Time Machine to retrieve something I’d accidentally deleted. Fortunately I’m a belt-and-braces type of girl (old lady more like) and I also use Backblaze, an online backup system. Thus I was able to go online to retrieve what I’d lost, although it took a bit longer than Time Machine.

I’ve now ordered a new backup drive which will be delivered on Thursday and then will begin the lengthy process of backing up the entire contents of my Mac – nearly 3TB of data!*

As if that wasn’t enough minor frustration for one day, I then received a text message from our bank requesting verification for what the bank considered to be one or two suspicious purchases on my debit card. I followed the protocol, replied N for No to indicate I hadn't made the purchases, then was called by a member of the bank staff who confirmed that the bank had not authorised the payments. She then ran through my recent transactions with me. She first asked me to check my banking app to find the message in there giving her name, for verification purposes. There were two suspicious ones they had flagged up, which I agreed were fraudulent, and of course my debit card has now had to be cancelled.

Impressively, I was given a new card and number within minutes, which are already in my Apple wallet and ready to use, but the physical card will take a week to arrive in the post. I am now in the process of contacting all the people to whom I make regular payments to inform them of the change of card details. As I said, a minor irritation, but one which is sadly becoming more common.

*Smithers and I are agreed that shooting in RAW does rather add to the amount I'm having to back up!!!