It has been a long, weird evening, with a lot of time spent on computer updates and a dead car battery. A little bit after work, I wanted to continue with OS and related updates I had been working on all week, in particular updating Macports for a new OS version. It complains about needing a new version of XCode. I read that you can run a command to install XCode CLI tools and that will be sufficient for CLI ports. I ran it, but it just installed the old version, and Macports continued to complain about an old version of Xcode.
I had to go into the office to pick up my paycheck, and brought my laptop along for the internet there. I ran into two people who work across the hall who I hadn’t seen since the lockdown started. Talked to them briefly, but they were on their way out.
I grabbed my paycheck, then opened up my laptop. I downloaded XCode, which, at 6GB, took quite a while even on the land-line internet there. When that was done, I started to unxip the xip file that was downloaded, but that too was taking forever. I didn’t feel like staying around any longer, so I slept the computer mid unxip and left. Deposited my check at the bank, went home, made some dinner.
During dinner, I let the XCode install finish. At that point, Macports was happy to install, so I started it on updating: sudo port upgrade outdated. It seemingly had to update just about, if not, everything. I let it go for a while, but, tethering to my phone, it was going through a lot of data. After 1-1.5 GB of transfer (I get 10GB LTE tethering a month), I stopped it: <ctl-c>.
I was reluctant to go to the library because it was getting late. I did some other stuff for a little while, but chomping at the bit to finish this update, I gave in and went to the library. It was getting to be around 22:30 at that point. I parked in the closest spot in the lot, connected to the wifi, and started up again. The downloads usually went quick, but the building that Macports does for each port was taking forever and running my computer hot, with fans blowing. I could see the battery draining. I quit other apps to reduce draw and turned my car’s fan up to blow on the laptop to try to have it need less of its own fan.
After a good while of that, when my battery was approaching dying time, I looked up how to download the updates without installing at the same time. After finding a StackOverflow solution, I stopped the upgrade again: <ctl-c>. I then ran: sudo port fetch outdated. This doesn’t actually get everything that’s needed, but that’s for later. It finished quickly, but at this point the battery was really low, beyond the point where it often dies without notice. I selected sleep from the menu. It was working on sleeping for a little while, but it didn’t quite get there: the light that normally stays on while it’s asleep died just after the screen went black.
I thought: “At least it finished the downloads.” I turned the key on my car to head back home, but it didn’t start, making a short attempt followed by some clicking and blinking. I tried a few more times, including some waiting in between, but no dice. So, I could call for help, or I could walk home and grab my Halo Bolt jumper. As could be expected with me, I opted for the latter.
Time being of the essence, worried about some cop having my car towed from the lot or something, I jogged the mile home. There was a little bit of a drizzle. I am not in the shape I used to be, and was a bit worn when I made it there.
I grabbed the Halo, but hadn’t charged it in a while, so put it on the charger to top it off. Of course, it was down below 25%. So, I waited. I didn’t want to wait too late though. It was sort of frustrating waiting, because I didn’t know how long it would take and I couldn’t really do much antsy to get going. It made it to the 50% mark at 23:50 and I waited till midnight to journey back. For some reason when I took it off the charge, the flashlight on the Halo started an occasional, weak blink, but pressing the button just seemed to go to full on and back to that mode.
I put the Halo, a light, and some tools in a backpack and jogged back. It was an easier jog, though I did get worn by the end again. I connected the Halo to the battery and pressed the jump button. The green light blinked several times, then turned off. It’s supposed to be solid green, but without much choice, I tried starting the car. No luck. Tried moving the clamps and doing the procedure a few more times, but still no luck.
I then gave in and called AAA, an annual gift from my mom that began in the years where I broke down at least once a year. I hadn’t used it since I got the new car in 2013 though. I told the guy I needed a jump or tow, gave him the information he needed, and he said someone would be there in 45 minutes.
I sat looking at stuff on my phone for a while, but it was hard to focus. I was also kind of hot sitting in the car after running. I got out and looked at my engine to see if anything looked wrong there. Also looked at my rear wheel area: Unrelated to the battery, but the hubs need replaced. I walked around a bit and looked at some postings on the library about Covid-19, etc. There were occasional drops of rain, but not much, and some lightning in the distance.
I kept glancing up the drive to watch for the truck, since the lot is behind the library and my car was behind a bush. He finally pulled in and saw me. I motioned toward the car and he pulled around. He didn’t say much. He said he had driven all the way from Mentor. He got out his jumper box, much bigger than the Halo, and hooked up. The car started right away, luckily. He had me sign something, then drove off.
I started heading home, but figured I should drive around a bit to let the battery charge. Just drove around the neighborhood. When I got home, I started my Halo charging just in case. Hopefully, if it’s needed, a full charge will be enough for it to work.
I started back on the Macports upgrade. The separate fetch version of upgrading with Macports, which I should have done with the library internet, looks like:
sudo su
port list outdated
port fetch rdepof:package1
port clean rdepof:package1
port fetch outdated
port clean outdated
where package1 is the name of a package from the list command, with those two lines repeated for each. Yes, that’s annoying that you can’t just do port fetch rdepof:outdated outdated, but computers are hard. Then later you can:
port upgrade outdated
making sure to not be connected to the internet (it will download the already downloaded ports otherwise). But, since I didn’t do the rdepof stuff and lazily just did port fetch outdated, it failed when getting to dependencies. To make sure it didn’t download more than it had to, I would connect to the internet, start the upgrade back up, let it download, then disconnect the internet again. After doing this several times, it finished without using much more of my data.
So, a success. I’m basically done getting my Macbook to MacOS High Sierra. But it was a long journey.