Shout out to the Forum Gurus here

[AZgl1800]

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I have a Dell Inspiron N5010 that has been my PITA machine, but it has been one heck of a teacher.

I want to thank all of the Gurus on this forum for being patient with an old codger who has physical brain cell memory problems ( 18 wheeler totalled my Goldwing Motorcycle ). See avatar

It takes me having to go over things a 100 times it seems before it sinks in, but today, I made the Dell N5010 a very nice little Family Loaner to send off to my sister and her hubby..... they are having a real horrible experience with Win10 to the point it has ruined their retirement life surfing on the Internet.

Today's accomplishments;

Replaced the broken display screen
Replaced the HDD with a SSD
Fresh install of 18.3 Cinnamon and used 'Something Else' to create /root and /home and /Backup and /swap partitions during the install.

installed Aptik and the gtk-gui for it.
ran Aptik and used a Saved file of the Dell before I did all the above, and that was a superlative experience.
nearly everything was restored to exactly the way it was on the HDD including the users 'greg' and 'josie' right up to the point that Upgrade Manager still shows a Check Mark for being Uptodate.

all I had to do was set the Desktop Backgrounds for 'greg' and 'josie' ( aptik did not catch that for some reason )

had to edit 'fstab' so that bootup would find the /Backup partition and mount it so I can see it in NEMO

had to setup Timeshift and create a Manual Baseline, and setup Daily backups.

it is now ready to put on the FedEx truck and ship it off to Utah in the wild hinterlands, 5 hours from the nearest metro area.... Rural is where they live, Cleveland, Utah.

I have the desktops emulating what I saw on their Windows PCs when we visited 2 weeks ago at our Family Reunion in Colorado Springs, CO.

to say that I am on Cloud Nine does not quite cover how I feel.

to have done all of this in 6 hours from Start to Finish, for me, is a Major Milestone.

The Icing on the Cake is Power Button 'ON' to Desktop including my logon password is 25 seconds.
not too bad for an old ancient relic of a laptop.

Another bit of icing is the horrible heat the fan used to push out the side has been reduced to 87*F, compared to ~ 110*F ( measured with IR tempgun ) with room temp of 74*F

Thank you all, I can't begin to list all the names of who helped me get to this point.
Each of you know who you are, I gave each of you a bit of consternation as we moved along.

[HaveaMint]

Nice job there for sure and in record time (pat on back) I also have ridden Bikes since the 60's and sold my last one a year or so ago. I see way too many people driving their phone instead of their car so I decided to give it up. Lets hope the laptop doesn't fall out of the back of the truck and a Motorcycle runs it over (oh the irony). But great job you did and I'm certain they will enjoy it.

[lsemmens]

Good one AZgl1500. Don't panic about the brain cells too much. I was written off by a drunk in 2001 - they tell me that I have 21% permanent brain damage. I reckon it was the bit I never used, anyway. Seriously, even after all these years I notice some improvements as the brain writes new pathways and synapses.

I was in a Tin Top then, had I been on a bike........ I'd still love a Harley having ridden Jap stuff all my life, just can't afford one.

[HaveaMint]

I had a 1980 FXWG for 23 years and got in a money pinch having to sell it and my 1954 Chevy P/U to get things together. A Harley is totally different for sure.
I like the Sig you have "Out of my mind - please leave a message" Mine should be "At the end of the ringing between my ears leave a message". After the 60's and 70's I probably lost 23% of my brain cells which left me with 10. ( I tend to stretch things a bit)

[AZgl1800]

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I have continuous Tinnitus, roaring ringing noises that are non-stop 24/7.
makes it hard to go to sleep, and I usually don't until I crash from exhaustion.

born totally deaf, a doctor operated on both ears and did something when I was 8 years old.
told me that it would take 8-10 years for me to be able to have "normal hearing" and that would last for maybe 20 years, and then I would start back downhill again.

left ear is down 20+ DB, the right ear they claim is down 30 DB....
they want me to wear hearing aids, and I'm saying "you want to make the whole damn world as loud as the ringing in my ears?? no thanks...

I was once talked into doing that, $8,000 down the friggin drain.
totally useless, all it did was make the world scream at me.
took them out and put them on the shelf.

My Honda GL1800 lets me get away from the world, I can cruise along and concentrate on the birds, the bees, and the friggin cellphone drivers.... who I really try to avoid... so far, so good for cell drivers.

not so well with that Penske semi-tractor truck.... he hit the brakes hard, ABS was broken, the truck turn 90* left and crashed me and the truck into the median wall. lucky I was wearing full ballistic protective gear. even so, 5 days in ICU and 12 more in recovery.... not fun.

[HaveaMint]

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I remember back in late 80's I was leaving a beer joint (still in my 30's) I always felt if I can kick start this dam thing (Harley) and not fall over I'm good to drive. Well I lived in the country so it was a good scoot to get home and a brisk night. I made it about 15-20 miles and the brisk air went to my head. I missed my turn off and went 10 miles to the next turn north homeward, about 8-10 miles I fell asleep which I swore you could never do on a Bike. I woke up with bike broke and me cut up from sliding to a stop in the ditch face first in the middle of a fire ant bed. To make things worse Nobody would stop to give me a lift home to get the pickup to scoop up the bike, finally someone stopped and I thanked them for stopping telling them that nobody else would stop. They laughed and asked me if I had seen myself in the mirror, well it wasn't pretty with dried blood all over me. Ahhh the dumb things we do as kids.