My poor iMac took a dump a minute ago. It totally lost all connection to my mouse and keyboard. Bluetooth totally died. The keyboard was connected via cable. I think this is the second time this has happened. Naturally I wanted to fix it. In my experience sometimes it’s best to really break something to fix it right, at least with IT. I say that from the standpoint of someone not working on anything critical. I’m just an average user and factory reset is usually an option. God forbid.

I forced a reboot. No other way without any input device. I made my iMac forget it’s bluetooth connections to the keyboard and the mouse. I’m not sure why I did this. It really messed things up for a minute, but it did make me go deeper than I’ve ever gone into the bluetooth settings. There was a bigger problem I had to address first.

My keyboard worked after forgetting it on bluetooth because it was wired directly. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use my keyboard to reconnect my mouse. I thought pretty much everything could be done with a keyboard, but I was disappointed. Honestly I think it may be some deeper issue due to my years and years of playing with this unit. But I was stuck. Stuck without a mouse in an environment where the keyboard apparently didn’t do everything.

To fix my mouse problem I had to go to the store and buy a cheap wired mouse. After checking my stash I realized I got rid of all my wired mice. I didn’t think I’d need them I guess. I like to git rid of things I don’t need. Sometimes it comes back to bite me. Fortunately this bite only too $9 out my hide.

So wham bam and my wireless mouse works again. I did some searching while trying to figure out ways to reconnect before I threw in the towel and went for a new wired mouse. That search led me to a way to reset the the bluetooth settings using the terminal. This is the kind of deep fix I was hoping to find before I started breaking things.

I’m not a hacker or anything. I don’t know much about code or command line interface (CLI), except that it exists and is the foundation upon which the graphic user interface (GUI) is built. I have done some small sessions trying to teach myself how to use the CLI, but it’s too much for me to want to get too deep into. But I do know enough to copy and paste a command into the terminal. And I found the command that rest the bluetooth settings.

I found the command I wanted using AI. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted an ai for command line stuff, but I did. I didn’t even think about it being risky until just now. Yeah, it’s probably best to be careful when tampering with the operating system. Lucky AI did me right this time. For the record the CLI put into the terminal was
“sudo pkill bluetoothd”

There was another thing suggested if that didn’t work. It involved slightly more work, so I took the CLI route. Funny thing, I went ahead and looked into the the second option anyway, and here I am typing all about it. Funny how time and effort is a concern sometimes. Then you end up spending time and effort documenting it all.

Anyway the second suggestion was to go to the library folder, then find the preferences folder, then find the “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” Delete it. I didn’t actually delete the file. I did find it and it showed it’s creation date and time consistant with when I did the CLI sudo pkill bluetoothd. I decided that was good enough for me.

I got a glazed donut from Willson’s Bakery this morning. It was a delicious breakfast. I got a cream horn for later, perhaps dinner, perhaps tomorrows breakfast. I’m really trying to diet again, but I figure a treat on the weekend won’t kill me. I just have to do good during the week, and this week I did good.

It’s the middle of February and the last few days it’s felt like spring. I wonder if it will hold or if a cold blast will come thought and kill everything that is starting to grow. Who can tell. What I can tell you is I don’t want to do yard work.

Today I’m posting a picture that is a little blurry. Even so I like it. I took this when I walked out my door a few days ago. It was morning. The light was yummy. I wish I had better focus on it, but I can’t change the past. I can only hope to do better in the future. Either way I like this now, and I want to share it. Maybe someone else sees some beauty here.

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