A Mavericks Interlude

Where did it all go?

For a while, it seemed that I didn’t need the help of a beta operating system in order to mess up my e-mail. In preparation for taking a look at Mail in Yosemite, I backed up my computer, and after both Tardis and Spegulo were up to date, I started transferring mail into offline mailboxes. I probably keep too much mail in my inbox, as most of it could be sorted into a folder the day it arrived (maybe I should create a way of filtering mail from vendors more than a week old out of my inbox).

I typically keep mail in my inbox for about six months, unless I’m on some sort of mad purge (like this time). Anything I’ve moved into offline mailboxes can’t be found on my iOS devices, so keeping some of this stuff around isn’t too crazy (though, once again, there’s no excuse to having a five-month-old e-mail from Sur La Table in my inbox.

I probably shouldn’t be transferring a month’s worth of e-mail all at once, but that’s exactly what I did. Things were going pretty well, then I decided that I should quit mail, as if the database was going to going to do anything once I had closed the program.

As I quit the program, a dialog box popped up telling me that a large number of e-mails could not be moved. Damn. I opened Mail again and I saw nothing.

Well, not nothing. I had a message window. I had counts of unread mail for various mailboxes. None of the actual messages were showing up though. The Quit menu option was disabled. This was not a time for panic. I had two full backups. My current mail was still visible on my iPhone, and when I checked iCloud, it was all there. I decided to try to wait it out.

An hour and a half later, I still had the blank expanse where my e-mail should be. Quit was still disabled, so I force quit, and then reopened mail. Brief moment of tension. Sigh of relief. Everything was there.

I told Time Machine get back to the very, very important task of backing up my computer, no matter how recent the most recent backup was.

I read today that the Cult of Mac podcast has said that beta-testing Yosemite is not for the faint-at-heart. So far, my worst terror has come while working in Mavericks. Does that make me doughty? Or just lucky?

[I have yet to boot back into Yosemite. Soon.]