My life in a circuit
Arrgggghhhhh!
How many of us have cried some sort of expletive as we watch one of the most important tool of our craft, our computer, crash and die before our horrified eyes?
I don’t know what it is about me; perhaps my fingers exude some sort of death ray that insinuates itself from me to the depths of my hard drive but in the last four years living in my old farmhouse, I have managed to damage or destroy a series of computers.
It’s not like I am a technological serial killer. I don’t wake up each morning plotting to hunt down my next victim. It’s more like a hapless dance in which I twirl and sway, holding my electronic partner in my virtual arms, then in one misstep the whole choreography goes horribly wrong and I’m on my butt on the floor watching my data slip away into the ether as the light slowly fades from the ON button on my hard drive.
Even as I type this entry, I am “borrowing” my son’s handmedown computer (mine from about two or three killings back), with his adolescent admonition echoing in my mind…”Mom! Now don’t break my computer AGAIN!” Chastened, I sit in silence, carefully striking keys and clicking mouse buttons, hoping against hope I can get through this day without managing to send this system into a tizzy, all while waiting for Tech Support from Mumbai or some other far-flung corner of the world to officially respond to my latest plaintive email mewl for help.
I know what Rajiv (sorry “Dave”) is going to tell me, and I don’t blame him. It’s his job to deal with folks like me. You know the type. People born somewhere between the Greatest Generation and Gen-X, old enough to remember the joys of a Commodore 64 or TRS-80, yet not cool enough to graduate to a real iPod; our dusty turntables still jealously guarded from the threats of the New Age of Music and Technology. I know enough to type email, produce a document, surf the net, order books online, and occasionally download files that may or may not “potentially harm my computer.”
Whatever happened to good old fashioned work? The kind that did not require electricity? The toils of the hand and body and soil that at the end of the day produced a soreness in the muscles and a deep satisfaction in the soul? Where results were obvious; the new paint drying on the wall would imbue a new sense of well-being and “doneness,” the oven’s welcoming aroma of a slow-cooking meal, the sturdiness of a freshly installed fence providing a barrier against the cruel outside world, this is not reflected in our modern, so-called improved age.
I ran across a ledger the other day, the leather binding still tight, the pages retaining the crispness of the very moment upon which they were written, and the beautifully written entries still imparting the carefully collected data within as clearly as when first recorded…..
….in 1894.
No external hard drive there. No fancy USB port, DVD-+/- drive, floppy (gasp!), data stick, jpeg, wav, or any other combination of today’s wonders to preserve the stuff of life.
Just a book, with real words, written by real people, in their real lives, recording real events for posterity.
I wonder what Rajiv (Dave) would think of that.
Tagged as:
antique,
books,
Commodore 64,
computers,
history,
TRS-80
Dawn is a budgeting queen!
Computer woes
by 2ndhandroses on 2009/11/13
My life in a circuit
Arrgggghhhhh!
How many of us have cried some sort of expletive as we watch one of the most important tool of our craft, our computer, crash and die before our horrified eyes?
I don’t know what it is about me; perhaps my fingers exude some sort of death ray that insinuates itself from me to the depths of my hard drive but in the last four years living in my old farmhouse, I have managed to damage or destroy a series of computers.
It’s not like I am a technological serial killer. I don’t wake up each morning plotting to hunt down my next victim. It’s more like a hapless dance in which I twirl and sway, holding my electronic partner in my virtual arms, then in one misstep the whole choreography goes horribly wrong and I’m on my butt on the floor watching my data slip away into the ether as the light slowly fades from the ON button on my hard drive.
Even as I type this entry, I am “borrowing” my son’s handmedown computer (mine from about two or three killings back), with his adolescent admonition echoing in my mind…”Mom! Now don’t break my computer AGAIN!” Chastened, I sit in silence, carefully striking keys and clicking mouse buttons, hoping against hope I can get through this day without managing to send this system into a tizzy, all while waiting for Tech Support from Mumbai or some other far-flung corner of the world to officially respond to my latest plaintive email mewl for help.
I know what Rajiv (sorry “Dave”) is going to tell me, and I don’t blame him. It’s his job to deal with folks like me. You know the type. People born somewhere between the Greatest Generation and Gen-X, old enough to remember the joys of a Commodore 64 or TRS-80, yet not cool enough to graduate to a real iPod; our dusty turntables still jealously guarded from the threats of the New Age of Music and Technology. I know enough to type email, produce a document, surf the net, order books online, and occasionally download files that may or may not “potentially harm my computer.”
Whatever happened to good old fashioned work? The kind that did not require electricity? The toils of the hand and body and soil that at the end of the day produced a soreness in the muscles and a deep satisfaction in the soul? Where results were obvious; the new paint drying on the wall would imbue a new sense of well-being and “doneness,” the oven’s welcoming aroma of a slow-cooking meal, the sturdiness of a freshly installed fence providing a barrier against the cruel outside world, this is not reflected in our modern, so-called improved age.
I ran across a ledger the other day, the leather binding still tight, the pages retaining the crispness of the very moment upon which they were written, and the beautifully written entries still imparting the carefully collected data within as clearly as when first recorded…..
….in 1894.
No external hard drive there. No fancy USB port, DVD-+/- drive, floppy (gasp!), data stick, jpeg, wav, or any other combination of today’s wonders to preserve the stuff of life.
Just a book, with real words, written by real people, in their real lives, recording real events for posterity.
I wonder what Rajiv (Dave) would think of that.
Tagged as: antique, books, Commodore 64, computers, history, TRS-80