The Day After
Nov. 5th, 2008 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogIt's the end of a long and amazing day. Not quite 24 hours after we christened a new era in American history, I am now in a totally unexpected place in the history of my own technology.
This is all that remains of my computer systems of the past four-and-a-half years:
Longtime fans will recall the weird circumstances, in October of 2006, that led to my computer getting suddenly larger and less mobile. Through a freak accident occasioned by the desperate measures of our debilitating October snowstorm, I lost use of my laptop, and only through the kindness and dedication of my Tech Team, I was able to keep going in roughly the previous state of data after my hard drive got Frankensteined into a desktop unit laying around Vinny's computer store.
That all worked fine until today. There'd been signs. Slower performance at times, much louder cranking of drives and fans in the dead of night, but nothing like today until today. We still suspected a power-supply issue when I arrived at his new shop on West Ridge Road in Rochester toward the middle of this afternoon.
He switched out the power supply, the video card, even the processor itself, nothing registering a blip on his monitor. Then he mentioned the M-word, and that's when I knew I would never get this baby back in my hands anytime soon.
So I switched to the Plan B I'd had all along. When one of my church's desktops got fried over the summer, he'd laid out instructions for me to remove its hard drive and connect it externally to another unit. (Fascinatingly, the church newsletter just arrived yesterday, thanking me for my hard work in saving data from that crash. More proof that God's the same as anyone else in not letting a good deed go unpunished.) I suggested we do that with my unit, and he readily agreed. I almost let him switch out a Linux drive from inside the box which I'd never used in over two years, but when I pointed out the real home of my data, the XP-carrying hard drive carried over from the '04 laptop in '06, we had a new problem. Such drives no longer connect via the same cabling, and we'd need an adapter unit that he didn't have.
Fortunately, one was available from one of several computer retailers on the main drag of the Village of Webster, two towns over from his shop. We sailed over the Bay Bridge, into the Town of Webster ("Where Life Is Worth Living!") and fifteen dollars later, I had the casing for the past four-plus years of my life. We headed back over the bridge ("Now Leaving Webster- Your Life Isn't Worth Living Anymore! Jump Off!"), and five painful minutes later, all my files were showing up through a USB connection on the monitor of one of his diagnostic units.
Mission Accomplished- part one.
----
Taking the new external drive and some advice on my shopping list, I quickly secured a midrange laptop which I promptly christened Barack Hussein Toshiba, in honor of the developments of the preceding 24 hours. It's out of the box, already running Internet and Mozilla, and tomorrow will begin the arduous process of transferring all the data and programs to it- hopefully, prayerfully, none of them with Vista issues. I'll post Barry's picture after he's back to where I need him to be. Already, though, I'm amazed by (a) how much faster he is than what I've been tolerating for almost five years, (b) how much space there's gonna be on my desk now that I don't have a CRT-tube boat anchor occupying it, and (c)why the hell I waited so long to do this.
This is all that remains of my computer systems of the past four-and-a-half years:
Longtime fans will recall the weird circumstances, in October of 2006, that led to my computer getting suddenly larger and less mobile. Through a freak accident occasioned by the desperate measures of our debilitating October snowstorm, I lost use of my laptop, and only through the kindness and dedication of my Tech Team, I was able to keep going in roughly the previous state of data after my hard drive got Frankensteined into a desktop unit laying around Vinny's computer store.
That all worked fine until today. There'd been signs. Slower performance at times, much louder cranking of drives and fans in the dead of night, but nothing like today until today. We still suspected a power-supply issue when I arrived at his new shop on West Ridge Road in Rochester toward the middle of this afternoon.
He switched out the power supply, the video card, even the processor itself, nothing registering a blip on his monitor. Then he mentioned the M-word, and that's when I knew I would never get this baby back in my hands anytime soon.
So I switched to the Plan B I'd had all along. When one of my church's desktops got fried over the summer, he'd laid out instructions for me to remove its hard drive and connect it externally to another unit. (Fascinatingly, the church newsletter just arrived yesterday, thanking me for my hard work in saving data from that crash. More proof that God's the same as anyone else in not letting a good deed go unpunished.) I suggested we do that with my unit, and he readily agreed. I almost let him switch out a Linux drive from inside the box which I'd never used in over two years, but when I pointed out the real home of my data, the XP-carrying hard drive carried over from the '04 laptop in '06, we had a new problem. Such drives no longer connect via the same cabling, and we'd need an adapter unit that he didn't have.
Fortunately, one was available from one of several computer retailers on the main drag of the Village of Webster, two towns over from his shop. We sailed over the Bay Bridge, into the Town of Webster ("Where Life Is Worth Living!") and fifteen dollars later, I had the casing for the past four-plus years of my life. We headed back over the bridge ("Now Leaving Webster- Your Life Isn't Worth Living Anymore! Jump Off!"), and five painful minutes later, all my files were showing up through a USB connection on the monitor of one of his diagnostic units.
Mission Accomplished- part one.
----
Taking the new external drive and some advice on my shopping list, I quickly secured a midrange laptop which I promptly christened Barack Hussein Toshiba, in honor of the developments of the preceding 24 hours. It's out of the box, already running Internet and Mozilla, and tomorrow will begin the arduous process of transferring all the data and programs to it- hopefully, prayerfully, none of them with Vista issues. I'll post Barry's picture after he's back to where I need him to be. Already, though, I'm amazed by (a) how much faster he is than what I've been tolerating for almost five years, (b) how much space there's gonna be on my desk now that I don't have a CRT-tube boat anchor occupying it, and (c)why the hell I waited so long to do this.
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Date: 2008-11-07 03:13 am (UTC)