Computers

The hard drive on my laptop has been filling up and also failing slowly over the last several months, so I’d bought a new, larger drive for it and an upgrade to Win7 and waited for the semester to end to install it. I decided today was the day to take the plunge, and, of course, since it is a computer I’m dealing with, it went smooth as silk.

The computer wouldn’t let me make back up disks of the original recovery partition. Then when I put the new drive and the new operating system DVD in, nothing happened. I tried a variety of tricks to get something to work and nada.

I go to campus to the department IT shop and experienced what I call “Mechanic Syndrome.” I start up the computer for the techs and the DVD boots up and asks if I want to install Win7.

In the intervening hours, I have installed the OS and many of the main applications I use and am now restoring my data, settings and documents. It looks like it will take several days for everything to be restored and cleaned up properly. Indeed, in order to post this, I had to restore certain things first.

A colleague in grad school had as his signature file on email, “Computers were designed to help more people waste more time faster.” That bit of truth is so solid, it belongs in the Bible. Imagine the shock scholars would have if it were found on a newly discovered manuscript of Mark’s Gospel, in red letters no less.

Actually, it is in Scripture in Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” What profit has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun? (or by the light of an LED screen!)

“What could be so hard? It’s just ones and zeroes…”

{Remember, be sure to check in Christmas Day…}

SDG