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Category: computers

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Fixing what is broke

More Work than They Bargained For (Isaac H. Evans), by Carol L. Douglas. A working schooner is the antithesis of our throwaway culture.

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” (Charles Dickens)
One of the easiest ways to get richer is to never spend every penny you earn. This dictum is apparently shared among my peers. Contrary to what the popular press would have you believe, more Americans are saving for retirement today than in the past; retirement plan contributions are rising, and retirement assets are at record levels, even accounting for inflation.
At times my household has been very, very poor. I’ve suffered catastrophic illness and been wiped out financially. I’ve had towering debt. The principle for recovery is always the same. As our parents said, you “pay yourself first” by putting a little money aside every week.
Detail from The Beggar of St. Paul, by Carol L. Douglas. I’m trying to adapt and reuse old stuff here.
Not only does this help you sleep better, it allows you to take risks. You can’t, for example, quit your job and become a missionary if you’re locked down by credit card debt, a mortgage, and student loans.
Our parents did this by never throwing anything away. That’s basically impossible in our modern throwaway culture. However, living on the coast of Maine helps; there are no shopping malls out here.  We try to buy less stuff and keep it as long as we can. For example, I drive a 2005 Prius with 241,000 miles on it. I’ve adopted the Maine habit of buying my clothes at Bean because they really do last forever.
My laptop travels with me so that you can travel with me. My former model, a Toshiba, has been a fantastic workhorse. Nevertheless, it was time for it to take its honestly-earned retirement. It has parts rattling around in the case and it is prone to shut off at inopportune moments.
I didn’t notice that its replacement had a manufacturing defect in the screen until after I’d spent two days installing software. I should have returned it immediately, but like everyone else, I dread entering the terrible maw of bad customer service that we, as a nation, suffer. There is a price to pay for the convenience of mass markets, and we pay it when anything goes wrong.
Illustration from Even from Far Away, by Carol L. Douglas. If you don’t throw old things out, you won’t have to replace them.
Then the SD card reader quit. I use it every day, and there’s no easy workaround. It had to be fixed. I spent all day yesterday allowing a technician from the Philippines to remotely-operate my computer as I watched in abject boredom. Eventually he reset the operating system, which essentially wiped the hard drive clean. Nothing doing; it was—of course—a  hardware problem all along. I now have an expensive, useless brick awaiting a long trip to a service center in Texas.
All of this is long way of saying that all my work for the last two months is buried in the treasure chest of a system backup. If we’ve been communicating about projects, workshops or classes, you need to take the whip hand, because I’m not sure I can find the information. 
Meanwhile, the ancient Toshiba has been recalled from retirement. I just know my Prius is out there in the driveway, grinning slyly to itself. It knows I will never replace it.
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Oh, the places we’ve been!

This may be a first in computer history: a blog entry written by hand, using a pen. I don’t recommend it; it’s cumbersome and slow and when you’re done you just have to type it in again. Plus, I’m not sure anything I wrote made any sense.

If the puff of blue smoke and whiff of brimstone hadn’t convinced me, the Last Rites performed by the IT department proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that my laptop had suddenly morphed into a doorstop.

It’s possible that my computer expired rather than look at any more dresses on the Internet. However, I recently received a chunk of change in exchange for a painting. My dear Prius is eight years old and has been gunning for a spa day. It’s a very smart car, so I knew enough to walk to the bank to deposit the check. But it never dawned on me that my laptop might actually pay attention to what I enter into its spreadsheets.*

It is now time for that most painful of tasks: comparison shopping. There are a million ways to make a wrong choice in today’s marketplace. (Some people enjoy shopping. Imagine that.)

Should I get a tablet? I travel a lot; my luggage is always too big. My IT department immediately vetoed that. I can hardly argue since he programs on both platforms. “A tablet will never give you the power you need and the apps are still primitive in comparison,” he said.

Former laptop, now doorstop or paperweight. Goodbye, Old Paint.

I purchased this laptop before the Great Crash of 2008. That’s a good long life for a laptop, but my kids have had the same brand and their laptops both had catastrophic fails. So brand loyalty alone is no guide.

At this point, someone always suggests that I buy a Mac. Been there, done that. I don’t want to pay the premium for the hardware or buy new software. PC architecture allows my IT department to upgrade hardware every time I start whining. (He has to; he’s married to me.)

We keep a spare laptop for emergencies. I can type on an old version of Word but there’s no card reader and no way to access any of the 15,000 or so photos on my hard drive. “This is why I tell you to store your photos on the server,” grumbled the IT department. Then he fished around and found me an old external card reader.

I always look for the silver lining. Perhaps my new computer will allow me to comment on my own blog, I mused. And I was chuffed to realize that my go-to guys for computer advice—besides the afore-mentioned IT department, of course—are my three daughters.

*I know inanimate objects watch carefully to see if you recently got paid, but how does my dentist know when I’ve suddenly come across a little gelt? He just told me I need a new crown.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! If you want to study in Rochester, drop me a line here.