Getting On with It, or, I Postpone Setting Up My New Computer

Consider as made the usual apology for not posting for a long while.  I am not living in my car or under a bridge--yet-- but in my house at home.  As the Beatles sang a few (!) years ago, "I get by with a little help from my friends."  And my family.  And a little freelancing here and there.  And with the help of a part time job working at what I discreetly call The Big Blue Box Store, so as not to violate any company policies should I ever want to do a gripe-and-moan about my experiences there.  Started as a seasonal employee late last March, but was promoted to permanent part time a couple weeks ago.  No raise in pay, but if I take advantage of the medical benefits it offers, it should keep me clear of any awkwardness when the Obamacare ax falls in October.

And as of the 27th of this month, all this might be augmented by the pay I'd get teaching a couple sections of English at our county community college.  My friend Frieda* tipped me off they were hiring adjunct professors, I went on the website and applied, and the head of the Liberal Arts department liked what he saw.  English Literature, and Writing, it would be, and since due to the same Obamacare the college took forever determining their hiring needs, I'll have less than a week to check out the curriculum and draw up lesson plans and evaluation procedures.

Scary.

But the really scary thing was the behavior of my computer, the very one I'm composing this post on, the HP Pavilion Slimline s7600y I purchased in January 2007.  As a teacher on the college level (my past integration into Oxford ways makes me very reluctant to call myself a "professor" of any kind), I'll have to have a computer that works.  There will be student work to pull up, grades to be submitted, emails to be answered and written, and, heaven help us, possible instances of plagiarism to investigate.  I can't be spending a literal hour and a half doing fifteen minutes worth of work, because the stupid system is taking so jolly long to load.

And that's what it was doing every lousy day, up to two weeks ago.  I've gone to sleep on the floor of my study wrapped up in an old blanket with the dog more than once, waiting for a download to complete. Frustrating isn't half the word for it.  And with everything I have to complete and do, especially with the public schools restarting in a week or so and substitute teacher calls resuming soon thereafter, I don't have time for the nonsense.

So two weeks ago I went online to see if HP or any other brand had any slimline towers I could afford.  (Call me a stick-in-the-mud for going for a PC again.  I have my reasons, which I won't detail here.  And it has to be a slimline, for space reasons.)  And lo!  Best Buy had one, an HP 400 Slimline, very highly rated, on sale for $369.99.  Excellent price, especially as Amazon.com was offering the same machine for $599.99.

Now, I have no money.  Everybody knows that.  But as I said before, as a community college teacher I can't be limping along with a computer I constantly have to hard-reboot to make it function.  So after church two Sundays ago I travelled over to the nearest Best Buy that had the HP 400 in stock and bought the silly thing.

Of course, it wasn't a matter of plunking down the $369.99-plus-tax and walking out with it.  Oh, no.  This puppy runs Windows 8, and as the song says, "Suddenly, nothing, nothing, nothing is the same."  Windows 8 doesn't play nice with older software.  Me, I have a lot of what I believe are called "legacy" programs running on my current machine's XP-Pro operating system. Like, um, WordPerfect 6.1, which I like just fine.  And Quicken 2009.  And Lotus Organizer 5.0.  I have no desire to upgrade or change to different software, and even if I did, I don't have the hundreds of dollars that would run me.  This being the case, I had to throw down another goodish chunk of change for the "Win Pro Pack 8" that's supposed to let me run my old software on Windows 8, once I create a virtual partition for them.  And in the wisdom of the geniuses in Redmond, Washington, Win8 won't run any Windows Office versions before Office 2013.  Thanks, guys.  So there's another charge for the "Home and Student 2013" version of that, because, WordPerfect lover that I am, most church secretaries prefer to converse in Word.  Throw in a 32GB flashdrive to create the operating system backup, and we're talking a real investment.

But as I said, the way the old s7600y was dragging along, it was necessary.

So why am I still working on the old computer?

Well, part of it is the fact that I wanted/needed to clear the decks before I set up the new computer.  I literally had not entered anything into my financial software since before tax time last April, and my study was awash in receipts, statements, file folders, and other accounting flotsam and jetsam.  There was no room to put the new system together.

And what if I can't get the virtual partition to work?  I wanted to get my Quicken accounts all entered and balanced before I cut myself off myself off from the use of the software, because it's mentally wearing to not really know where I am financially.  Now, I know good and well I'll still have the use of the old computer, once I get a second monitor.  It's not like it's totally given up the ghost.  Really, what I wanted to do was to clear out my mind as I cleared the paperwork out of my study.  I didn't feel I could enjoy the new computer until I had.

I haven't had many hours in the day to spare for this task these past two weeks.  Bt at last it's done, everything is balanced (well, mostly everything), and as of two nights ago the paperwork is filed and put away.  And as of this afternoon, I've finished entering my checking account transactions into my physical checkbook register, which I hadn't done since last February, for goodness sakes.

So why does the new machine still sit unopened in its box over here on the floor?  Why haven't I run to break it open and explore its wonders?

Maybe because I know it's going to take hours and hours to set up, and I don't feel like investing that right now.

Maybe because I'm afraid, as I said above, that I won't be able to get the virtual partition to work.  Or that if I can, it's going to take forever and I'll be cut off from virtual civilization (i.e., the software programs I depend on) until I can get it all to behave.

It's not that I'm afraid of Windows 8, not in itself, apart from what it'll mean for my accustomed programs. Clerk at the Best Buy let me fool with it a little, and I'm sure I can deal with it, even though it seems a little silly.  I mean, don't we all have enough problems with "Ooooo, shiny!" tendencies these days without graphic tiles sitting on our desktops tempting us to open Facebook and Hulu and Netflix when we should be working?

Maybe I'm so addicted to having a computer (that is, the Internet) running that I don't want to shut the old one down long enough to set the new one up.  (When I was doing up the s7600y I had a laptop open next to it.)

Which leads me to maybe the biggest reason I haven't set the 400 up yet.  Because, gosh darn it, for the last week or more my old PC has gone back to functioning.  It has hardly frozen up at all.  No problem opening anything.  Videos and audio files have been playing just fine.  You'd think it'd gotten wind I was planning on replacing it and wanted me to change my mind.  Maybe it will keep it up.  So why should I stop using it?

Besides, I got a call the other day from the Liberal Arts department secretary at the community college and she said that due to low pre-enrollment, there's a good chance the classes I was supposed to teach will be cancelled or rolled into the schedules of full-time faculty.  They won't know for sure until final enrollment the end of this coming week.  So maybe the need that job posed will disappear.

Maybe.

And maybe this old machine will go contrary on me again.  And maybe I'd like to use the drafting software I downloaded awhile back, that I can never seem to get open, let alone draw with.  Maybe there will be enough students for those English sections, and I'll be stuck after the 27th with an old computer that won't work and a new one sitting in the box with no time to install it.

So I guess I'd better woman up and at least begin.  Besides, I'll be moving the old one down to the dining room.  It'll still be there when I need it, I just won't be asking it to do quite so much.

And maybe with a newer, faster computer, I might post here more often.

Or maybe not.

Modern Cyber Life, Joyous More Than Ever

I've given in. I'm doing a total reformat of my desktop computer's hard drive.

I finally got the desktop view early this morning, and I verified I had an Internet connection. That was something, but not enough. Still slower than dirt.

So I set it for another Standard Recovery and went to bed. This afternoon, when I came back to it, it was back to the black-background Windows XP logo screen and again, stuck. When finally I gained the desktop, a few clicks of the mouse revealed that most of my data was gone or hiding anyway.

What had I to lose? Out came the recovery disks and I'm feeding them to the PC one by one even now. The next few days will be a parade of software reinstallations. I've saved a list of what I had on it, but I guess that if I forget a program or two, that means I didn't use it that much anyway.

The Joys of Modern Cyber Life

First, some background:

Last summer, I got a feeling the DVD/CD drive in my desktop computer wasn't exactly working right. First it wouldn't play some CDs. Then it refused to burn some tracks I needed to practice for our big Welsh choir concert that was coming up Labor Day weekend.

But . . . that drive was put in only last February. It couldn't be broken already! Maybe the problem was with the CDs. Or with the burning software. Or whatever. Besides, did I have time to spend four-plus hours on the phone with HP working out the problem? No, I did not. And what if they charged me the $99 for out-of-warranty phone tech support even before I could find out if the new drive itself was still in warranty? I had too much to do. I'd deal with it later.

Then this past Christmas, my friend Ruth* sent me a CD version of the Gutenberg Bible on PDF. And I couldn't open it. And it crept upon me that if the "new" drive was still covered by a warranty, it certainly would expire by early February.

Gotta do something. Yes. Then I found out I could do Live Chat on the HP site for free. And yes, it did take several hours. Twice. But regardless of everything the techs and I tried, we came to the fatal conclusion that that optical drive was fried. And guess what-- the warranty only lasted for 112 days (weird, huh?). Meaning it expired just before the time the trouble began. The HP rep offered to direct me immediately to their sales department for a replacement, but I wanted to shop around.

So I did. And found out that TigerDirect.com had the model I needed for about half the price. I emailed a friend who does business servicing computers, and he offered to put my new drive in for free. So I ordered it.

Whereupon, the TigerDirect website transferred me to a catalog page. On it was an ad for an IBM ThinkPad laptop computer.

No, I wasn't immediately in the market for a new laptop. But I currently had no laptop that really worked. I mean, how much can you do with a machine that only runs Windows 3.11? And this was a ThinkPad. With a TrackPoint mouse. Which I had to have on my next laptop, since I hate mice. And the price was really, really, good-- well under $300. Yeah, it was factory reconditioned, but my first laptop was a refurbished model, and it still works, after its fashion.

I consulted my computer geek friend again. And ordered it.

And it's a jolly good thing I did. Because the new optical drive arrived, I took it and my desktop processor over to my friend's, and a couple days later he calls and says, "I"ve got good news and bad news. Good news is, I've got the new drive installed and it's working. But your computer's working reeealllly sloooow. I tried installing some new CD burning software on it and after two hours it timed out and wouldn't finish!"

He thought maybe it was because I had certain programs running in the background and suggested I take them off. Like my Carbonite backup service. Fat chance of that. Carbonite pulled my chestnuts out of the fire last April when I got that trojan horse, and no way I'm going back to external hard drives.

He did what he could, but when I got my machine back it was basically unusable. Don't know what happened or when, but something had messed things up prodigiously. I mean, taking a half hour just to boot up? And I could not get on line. At all.

I've spent the past few days trying just about everything to get my system straightened out. A thorough anti-virus scan (which took nearly three days last weekend) flushed out a trojan horse (Timeo Danaos et ferentes donas), which I disposed of. It improved performance . . . for about ten minutes. Then it was back to cyber molasses.

Meanwhile, I've got the new laptop, and thank God for that. But I couldn't get online from it, either!!

Grrrrrrrrr!!!!! I swear, sometimes I'd like to yank all this computer junk out and just hurl it out my third floor study window!! And forswear the whole IT life entirely!

Except if I did that, I couldn't post on my blog or Facebook about how frustrated I am about it all.

So that meant more tech support, this time on the phone with my Internet service provider. Twice. First guy thought maybe the service was down, even it they had no indication of that on their end. Working with the second guy, a few days later, I found out that the problem on the laptop had to do with a password problem and was purely coincidental. And he got me set up with my home wireless network-- up to then, I had a connection only by the kindness of my neighbors who let me piggyback on theirs.

But the desktop computer is still a big glowing doorstop. I've spent the past few days slowly, painfully, getting files that Carbonite couldn't back up (due to no Internet connection) onto a flash drive and, temporarily, onto the laptop. Tried everything I could to avoid doing a system recovery, but it was inevitable.

As I write, I'm waiting for the Standard Recovery to finish working. That's the kind that's supposed to preserve your data, though not programs you've installed yourself. Technically, it should be done by now. But it seems to be stuck on the Windows welcome screen with a big hourglass and a line saying "Please wait...." Bluddy ick!! I've been waiting at least the past twenty minutes!

Can't be helped . . . Gotta try a hard reboot.

Booting up. Back to the Please Wait window . . .

Nothing's happening . . .

Oh, look, screen's gone black . . .

No, wait . . . Computer setup window. Joy. More to do and it's 2:30 AM already.

Fear not, I won't subject you to the process. Not what I call entertainment for the blog-reading public. I'll get back with you when my computer's working properly again.

Or not.

Cold Turkey

I've been thinking of deleting the Games folder and all its contents off my computer.

Ever since my first computer, acquired in my second year of theological college in the autumn of 1993, I've given up computer games for Lent. I don't say this to brag on myself; rather, it shows how addictive I've found them. I needed to wrench myself away for a time each year, and I definitely needed Outside Help to do it.

Back then, it was Tetris. I'd get so engrossed in playing it (instead of working on my essays) that during chapel services, while kneeling for the Intercessions, I'd see tetraminos floating down the screen of my closed eyes.

Later, it was Freecell and Spider Solitaire. I came to understand that seven weeks of abstinance was not enough to give me mastery over my obsession, so four or five years ago I began to fast from playing computer games during the four weeks of Advent as well.

But I've been attending a very reformed Presbyterian church this past year (when I'm not preaching, myself), and they're very big on not being bound by purely man-made rules, like the idea one should give things up for Advent and Lent. So this Advent immediately past, I played Spider Solitaire all I jolly well pleased. And sometimes when I didn't really please. I'd get on and start dealing and redealing and keep going and going . . .

And I'm thinking, this has got to stop. I have too much to do to waste whole half hours two or three or four times a day placing one virtual card on another. Which means radical action: Delete!

But why don't I just make a New Year's resolution to control myself and just play a game a day? Or save the fun for Saturday evenings or whenever?

Because if I had any resolve I wouldn't be frying my brain with these toys the way I do now. I need to go cold turkey and get rid of them.

True, if I do that I would miss the enjoyment I get out of playing them. I'd lose the pleasure of knowing that here, at least, something is going where it belongs and staying there. And how else will I while away the minutes while waiting for files to download? And what will I do to allay the truly visceral desire that seizes me to click on the Spider Solitaire icon and play and play? I know that if I delete that file it's going to drive me crazy.

Which is why I gotta stop. That's physical addiction, and it just ain't right.

Then there's the weird state of mind I get into when I play computer games. Some psychologist should study the phenomenon. I could claim they put me into a very creative state, but nothing ever comes of it.

One part of my consciousness will be focussed on playing the game. But in another part of my mind, I often begin to see . . . scenes. Scenes from a play, or maybe a movie. Nothing I've ever seen or heard or read; something original and new. But always seeming to take place in the past, and always with the exchanges in some sort of dialect. Brooklynese or Yiddish or Irish. Trouble is, even though I can make out the drift of the dialog, I can never make out what the characters are actually saying.

A typical episode: Three people, two men and a woman, in the disorderly kitchen of a cheap apartment, probably somewhere in the Bronx. I see it in black and white. The men, both in shirtsleeves, one with a hat on, sit at the kitchen table, intently discussing something. The woman, a bleached blonde, hovers between the table and the stove, bringing coffee when demanded and putting in her 2 cents whether asked for it or no. She is the wife, I think, of the man without the hat. The men seem to be plotting something, I can't tell what. A bank robbery or a hijacking or whatever. At one point, they nearly come to blows. Not over whether to do the job; rather, over how to pull it off. The woman intervenes. She seems to be saying they're both wrong and should listen to her. She's as deep in it as they are, she simply has a more level head. Her advice may well guarantee the success of their plan. Will they listen to her? Do I want them to listen to her and be successful? Who is the hero of this little play? One of these guys, or a detective somewhere? How can I know? That's all I get!

But more often, the effect of a strong dose of computer games isn't so dramatic. More often, the unoccupied part of my brain sends up . . . old songs. I mean, really old songs. From the first part of the 20th century, or before. Songs I haven't thought of for months or years, songs I have no reason to think of.

Songs like "Hello, Ma Baby" (1899). Yesterday, it was "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" (1934). Today, I channelled "I'll Take Romance" (1937).

Where do they come from? Why do they come when I'm trying to decide whether to use the free space to free up that black four to move it to the five, or to shift that red king? Is this some wondrous facility I'll lose if I delete that file?

Yes, maybe. But what about all those other things I'm losing out on now, like balancing my accounts and writing my novel and stripping the hallway floor?

(I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking . . . )

(Excuse me a minute.)

I . . . I . . . did it. At least, I dumped the folder with the shortcuts in it. Which means those games may still be someplace on the machine, but I can't get to them.

Aaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!!

Graphite Fingers

Congratulate me. I've just nearly-finished my first bit of architecture work in over two years.

"Bit" is the operative word. It is the slightest, the lightest of projects. A whim, a wisp, a trifle. A mere scribble done to edify the fabricators of a new structural beam, that will be installed to replace an existing bearing wall in a local residence. No design, no actual calculations on my part, just documentation of existing conditions with notes on the distance to be spanned by the new support.

Nevertheless, it might prove important for me, since it's for the Executive Presbyter of my presbytery, and if any of our churches need renovation work, it would be nice to be referred.

I did the drawing by hand. Even if my AutoCAD program hadn't expired last December, I wouldn't have used it for this project, since it was a student version and everything you printed out from it bore the scarlet letter of "PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT." In other words, "Naughty, naughty, you've used this relatively-cheap student version for your professional work, instead of paying us for the full version that costs ten times more!" Nope, that'd look bad.

There are free computer drafting programs available on line. But I've already learned AutoCAD and why do I want to confuse myself learning a different one? At least, a different one that nobody uses in any professional office.

So it's drawn in my old pencil-on-vellum style, barring a couple of things on which I need more information from the owners. On things like this, hand-drafting can be faster in some ways.

Still, it'd be nice to have my own full version of AutoCAD, even without 3-D. But at well over $1,000 for an individual license, how can I manage that?

Well, maybe, by way of eBay . . . I'm watching an auction for a full version of AutoCAD LT . . . which ends tomorrow at 12:51 my time . . . which is ten minutes before I'm due at the final planning meeting for the local committee for the North American Festival of Wales that's taking place here in Pittsburgh over Labor Day weekend . . . a meeting that's fifty minutes away and that I must attend . . .

Hmm. I guess I'll watch it till I have to leave, throw in a bid if the spirit moves me, and let the results take care of themselves.

Lost in the Digital Ewigkeit

Over the course of my erratic ministry career I've written several skits and plays for youth Sunday school classes, both for performance and to illustrate lessons. It seemed to me that the scripts might be useful to other pastors and Christian educators (not to mention that it would be nice to make a shekel or two out of them), but how to get them published? I have a friend with a close relative who works for Group Publishing, but she tells me they don't accept work over the transom. What's a poor, unknown playlet-wright to do?

But now, thanks to Whiskers over at Tales of a Searching Kitteh I've been introduced to Lulu.com, an online self-publishing site. Seems simple and straightforward. I could do up a little booklet, market it to my clergy friends via Facebook, and get my toe in the door.

Here's the catch: Since last April, the material is here-- but not. It was all saved on an external hard drive which inexplicably chose the same time as my computer to crash. Don't think it got infected with the same trojan; it just gave up the ghost. They tell me at Staples that I can send the drive to the manufacturer who can open it up and recover the data . . . for around $1,500.00. You must be kidding. We aren't exactly talking military secrets here.

Well, I thought, I did back ups in the past to floppy disk (remember those?) and CDs. Those should cover pretty much everything.

But yesterday I looked, and though I can find diskettes labeled "Sermons," "Worship," "Business," "Essays," and so on, I can not lay hands on the ones that should be there labeled "Christian Education."

OK, what about those CDs? Hummph. When you get past the annoyance that the stupid Retrieve facility wouldn't work and I had to spend hours yesterday chasing from disk to disk to locate and copy my files onto my hard drive, I found that-- inexplicably again-- they contained only a limited number of my word processing files, and no plays and skits at all.

I'm telling myself not to panic. I have hard copies of some or all of these plays in the back of a certain file drawer. Once I dig them out I could scan them in via the OCR program and just redo the formatting as required. I mean, they're supposed to be back there; I'll look as soon as I've moved the computer stand so I can get the drawer open far enough to see. Not tonight.

Ironic, though, that the very files that would have been most useful for me to recover are the ones I don't have. It makes me wonder: Is this a Sign for me to give up this publishing idea as a bad job? Or is it a cosmic query as to How Badly Do I Want to Do This Thing?

Portrait of a Novice Writer

My operating system is reinstalled, I've got about half my data restored from Carbonite.com, and no, there aren't any residual trojans lurking in it.

I could do a post about the other big chunk of my data and files that have refused to be restored for the past week or more, but this isn't about that. It's about what else I was doing in April when I wasn't posting much.

I was taking a fiction writing class offered at a local church and taught by an author who's a prof at the local branch of the State U.

It was a good class. Good for the discussions on setting, character, plotting, dialog, and all the elements of fiction writing. Good for hearing about and discussing other people's projects. Good to be forced actually to work on a story idea I've had bouncing around in my head for three or four years at least.

What wasn't so good was that nobody else did any work at all. A lot of talking, but no work. I was the only one who actually wrote anything.

And I did. I really did. I spent long hours at it, and longer hours online reading writers' advice blogs and websites.

But because no one else brought in any writing, I never got the in-class critiques I was expecting. The teacher did tell me I should work on my novel (my novel? My novel!?) over the summer and she'd contact me about some writers' groups I might join in the fall. She feels I of all the class would benefit from being in one. But till then . . .

So I get to thinking: Should I-- might I-- would I post my work in progress here on the blog?

And I've decided, No. If it's any good, that'd queer it for ever getting published, because, hey, big chunks of it would be floating around on the Internet for free already. And if it's chozzerai, I've made a blinking ass of myself.

I've seen it happen. I'm thinking of one blogger in particular, who regularly writes bitingly-funny, heart-twistingly poignant nonfiction prose. But when she ventured into fiction, it was painful. It was as if she'd forgotten all the depths of characterization and motivation that made her blog posts so effective. And if such a fate could befall someone as good as she . . . what hope have I?

Nevertheless . . . though I won't post anything from my Big Project, I might publish here a little vignette I did for a class assignment. The writing instructor brought in an amateur oil painting she'd picked up at a flea market. It showed an old woman in a head scarf, and as a group we brainstormed who she might be, what her family, experiences, background, etc., were, and what crisis was facing her now. Then we were told to write a page of dialog based on it all.

This bit of writing isn't going anywhere; I have no wish or intention to develop this story further. So I think I'll post it. When I do, critique away. I can only learn.

In My Opinion

A special circle of Hell should be reserved for those who misuse their God-given talents to come up with trojans and malware to screw up other people's computers. I had both come to the surface on mine the night of Saturday, April 25th, and I've been living with the effects ever since.

I had to wipe my hard drive and it looks like I'll have to do it again, since things still aren't right. Two examples of this: 1) the system won't read my external hard drive; and 2) it won't accept the files I've stored online.

Last night I was talking with three guys in the choir I sing in, and they all think the trojan has imbedded itself in a data file somewhere and I'll have to junk the lot. Yeah, right. All my financial records, my photo files, my writing . . . Oh, yeah, and the hard drive of the computer itself. It'll be revealing, should they be proved right, to see how well I've really taken to heart Jesus' teaching about "not laying up for yourselves treasures on earth."

But that doesn't mean I can't think hard thoughts against cyber vandals. As long as they don't repent, of course.

So How Did It Go?

. . . Living without a computer for over two weeks?

It felt like the kind of vacation you take when you decide not to go anywhere; no, you're going to stay home and Get a Lot of Things Done. And a day goes by, and another, and another, and you realize time is passing and you're not getting all that much done.

So you put your back into it and start some serious work on the project you were looking forward to. You find yourself dreading the time when your vacation will be over, because then you'll have to go back to the office and when you'll really be able to get back to your home project you have no idea.

What I was working on I'll be talking about on my house blog. But that's how it was. I wanted the computer to stay away as long as possible.

The only time I really yearned for it was when some wallpaper samples arrived from the UK and one of them wasn't quite the color I'd expected. I wanted to go on the website right away to see what they might have instead.

But funny, my processor arrived back on Tuesday, I didn't unpack it and hook it back up till today, and I still haven't gone back on that site to order another sample.

I admit I wasn't totally computer abstinent these past sixteen days. I went to the local library two or three times to check my email. And found out that their pr0n filter is so strong it wouldn't let me log into Blogger to check my own blogs. I acquired a Pittsburgh Carnegie Library system card specifically so I could use one of their computers to update something on my house blog and respond to a comment or two on this one-- I figured their filter wouldn't be so strict and I was right. And I surreptitiously logged on on a laptop at Circuit City last Sunday and made another quick blog update and verified that my scheduled posts were appearing all right.

But other than that, I found being computerless to be rather liberating. It was nice not to feel obligated to plow through reams of junk email every evening. It was charmingly decadent to read four or more mystery novels instead of browsing random websites; I would've consumed more if I hadn't been stripping woodwork so industriously. I went back to faithfully keeping my handwritten journal (up to last Sunday). Hey, I got to bed at a decent hour!

I can't give the bloody thing up completely, of course. Not even if I wanted to. It's expected that you'll be connected these days. And I did miss communicating with you, my readers. But maybe, maybe, I can learn to be a bit more prudent with the device? Like keeping it my servant, instead of me being its?

It Will Be Interesting to See

. . . How I do for ten days to a fortnight without a computer.

Late last month, I established with the HP phone tech support people that my CD/DVD drive is toast. They sent out a guy to put in a new one, but alas! my processor is one of those skinny Slimline models without a lot of maneuvering room, and somehow the cable between the CD drive and the motherboard was broken. The only way for me to get it fixed is to send it to the factory repair facility in Indiana.

It was still under warranty-- just-- when this happened, so that's all right. HP has sent me a prepaid box to send the processor to them in. I waited two weeks while Carbonite backed up my data-- the repairs shouldn't affect the harddrive, but you never know. I've dealt with my online banking through the end of the month. I've taken care of some volunteer work that I needed the computer for. And tomorrow I'm going to pack it up and send it away.

I'll try to get over to the public library from time to time to check my email. Ideally. No guarantees of regularity. Maybe I'll post a line or two on my blogs, sans photos.

Otherwise, I'm going to party-- I mean, function-- like it's 1992. That's the last year I had no word processor or computer. In the coming days when I am not sitting in front of the monitor writing things or tarting up my blog entries with pictures and links or looking up interesting facts on the Internet (like this one I came across last night. Hey, I was in the middle of that and never realized the phenomenon had such a distinctive name!), how will I occupy my time?

Will I write letters by hand, or will I be stymied because most of my friends' addresses are on my computer?

Will I work like a Trojan on the house remodelling, or will I listen to what they told me at the chiropractor's office, that I'd exacerbate my accident injury if I do that?

Since I won't be able to download them, will I control myself as to taking digital pictures, or will I max out all my storage cards and buy more?

Will I build my plant-starting frame and get some seeds in against the Spring? Will I get some old sewing projects done, or will they continue to sit where they are?

Will I read the important books I ought to be reading, or will I let my trips to the library to check my e-mail give me the excuse to check out and read mystery novels and other frivolity?

One thing I'm pretty sure will happen, I won't be drying out my eyes staring at the screen till all hours of the night.

I've scheduled some installments of "My Cut-Rate Grand Tour" for publication in the interim. Comments always appreciated, even if I may not respond to them very quickly.

But it's been a long time since I've been computerless. I truly will be intrigued to observe how I take it. Will I suffer IT withdrawal, or will I experience almost a sense of back-to-the-simple-life freedom?

We shall see!

Time Warped

The other night I was looking up something on a health website. As health websites tend to do, it featured links to other articles the reader might be interested in.

"Ten Reasons Why You're Always Tired." Or something like that. Worth clicking on, since these days I get at least eight hours of sleep, sometimes nine or ten, but still feel drowsy by late afternoon.

(As for feeling bright and cheerful to pop right out of bed in the morning, let's not even bring that up.)

This article suggested that if it takes you a long time to get to sleep (as it does me), maybe you should rethink spending time in front of the computer or the TV just before going to bed. Sitting in front of the bright screen inhibits the body's natural output of melatonin, the chemical that tells you a) it's getting dark, b) you're getting sleepy, and c) it's time to get some shut-eye. Turn off the computer or the tube at least an hour before bedtime, and you should get to sleep faster and have better sleep.

Hmm, think I. There may be something in that. Night is my computer time, mostly, and I've noticed that I can sit in front of the screen for hours on end, feeling tired and tired and more tired, but not exactly sleepy. Could melatonin inhibition be keeping me awake? That, on top of the stimulus that's pushed into my brain by whatever I'm working on and whatever I'm picking up surfing the Web?

Very possibly.

So for the past few nights I've tried not going on the computer after 10:00. Which, given my habit these long evenings of working in my garden till the light is gone and then coming in to make and eat dinner, means I haven't come up to work on my computer at all. And so, no new posts on my blogs.

But tonight I thought I should post something. At least as an explanation. Even if it wasn't exactly worth waiting for.

There is one other thing, about this, however:

Two years ago I was having trouble with falling asleep in the middle of the day, sometimes when I was behind the wheel. My GP sent me to a pulmonary/sleep specialist. I'm sitting in the Great Man's examination room, he walks in, and without preamble says, "All right, who made you come see me? Was it your husband? Your boyfriend? Your roommate?"

I was surprised at the question, but I gave a straight answer: "I came of myself."

"No, you didn't," he said. "Nobody ever comes of their own volition. Somebody always makes them."

A bit (no, a lot) more of this from him revealed that he was convinced that every problem with daytime sleepiness is caused by sleep apnea, one symptom of which, of course, is snoring. He was sure sleep apnea was my problem, and once it was confirmed by the sleep study he was prescribing for me, he'd get me set up with the CPAP machinery.

I was permitted to get a few words in edgewise, and I mentioned that when I'd been working intensively on something (like a sermon), I found it hard to get to sleep afterwards, even when it was very, very late.

"Your work has nothing to do with it. Your subconscious mind is keeping you awake because it knows you're stopping breathing in your sleep and it's afraid of that."

At which point I began to wonder if he were getting kickbacks from the CPAP machine sellers.

Well, I did the sleep study and no, I did not have sleep apnea. The Great Man thankfully left the explanation of the results to a medical assistant, who basically told me, "Hey, if you're only getting four or five hours a sleep a night, you have to expect to fall asleep in the middle of the day."

But after seeing that website article about the melatonin-inhibiting tendencies of staring at a computer screen just before bedtime, I have to wonder why the Great Pulmonary Specialist was so tunnel-visioned as not to think of it.

I think it's worth considering, myself.

Both Heaven and Earth in Lytel Space

Yesterday afternoon was the deadly-deadline for submitting the last of our assignments and projects for Introduction to AutoCAD 2008.

I was up all night the night before finishing the required work and then seeing how much headway I could make on the extra-credit parts. By 2:50 PM I had one EC drawing done, but there was No Way on God's Green Earth that I was going to get it dimensioned and labelled and still make it 26 miles down the highway to get it printed and handed in before the end of the school day. Besides, I had to meet some of my community choir colleagues at 4:45 PM, thirty-five miles back up north again, to carpool to our first performance of the season at a Light Up Night festivity.

So cutting my losses, there I was scrambling round my office to gather things up, trying to remember what I needed to take to campus to get everything I'd completed in.

Then I remembered: I needed one thing only. My thumbdrive. My last assignments, my final project (with extra-credit submission), everything I'd done all term was contained on that one little 2" x 1/2" x 1/8" device.

Res miranda! Not that long ago, who would have thought that so much could be contained in such a wee bit of metal and silicon! What a marvel!

And there are much smaller and more capacious devices than my thumbdrive-- tiny mp3 players, implantable chips, things I know about but can't even name. It really is a modern scientific miracle.

But "miracle" is an elastic term. And is this really the first time in human history that such a thing has been? If I really want to marvel at much and more contained in less and little, I'm a fool not to look at the season we're about to celebrate.

For see what happened at the first Christmas. The second Person of the Trinity: the eternal Son of God, who fills the universe and by whom the universe and all things were made and are sustained: this immense and limitless Being condescended to be contained as an embryo in the womb of a young virgin mother. All That . . . in so little!

Our modern material science has figured out a lot, but it will never comprehend the marvel of what happened then.

There is no rose of swych vertu
As is the rose that bare Jesu,
Alleluia.

For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in lytle space,
Res miranda.

By that rose we may well see
That He is God in persons three,
Pares forma.

The aungels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis Deo,
Gaudeamus.

Leave we all this wearldly mirth,
And follow we this joyful birth,
Transeamus.

Alleluia, res miranda,
Pares forma, gaudeamus,
Transeamus.

Whoops! Spoke Too Soon

Concerning the AutoCAD 2008 class I started yesterday morning:

The "Oh, golly, everybody knows this!" phase ended very quickly. Like right after break.

I perceive that even though this class is considered an introduction to AutoCAD 2008, it's not an introduction to AutoCAD or computer drafting itself. A lot or most of my young fellow students encountered some earlier version of the program in high school or wherever.

Me, I'm thinking, thank God I did those last two projects at the architecture firm last winter by the seat of my pants in AutoCAD 2007. Otherwise, by now I'd be completely washed out to sea.

As it is, I'm barely keeping myself out of the riptide. It doesn't help that my middle-aged eyesight makes it difficult for me to see both what the instructor is doing on the main classroom demo screen and what I've got in front of me on my own classroom computer. Once I asked the teacher, "Where did you get that?" when he swooped up and brought down a menu from some fuzzy and indiscernable icon. He said, "Up here." I can't see what's "up here"!

I'm not asking again. Obviously, it's something we're supposed to know from Before, and for that I can play around with the student version of the program I now have installed on my home computer, or I can look in the great, big, fat textbook.

So far, I'm not sure what we have the textbook for, except for reference. Or maybe because the software came bundled with it. The syllabus seems to bear no relation to it, and the second exercise (which is due Tuesday) is out of the manual for AutoCAD 2002.

This morning the regular teacher couldn't arrive till the beginning of the second hour and we had a sub up until break. I have to say I liked her technique better. She was much better at taking things step by step and having us do them two or three times so we could really get them into our eyes, ears, minds, and hands.

Well, no griping, no moaning. This class cost good money, I need to get good value out of it, regardless.

Keep an Eye on the Road Ahead

Currently in the break period for the new AutoCAD class.

I see it'll be like those math classes in junior high: we start with the "Oh, good grief, everybody knows this" stuff in the first day or the first week-- but if you let that put you to sleep, you'll get left in the dust.

I just completed the first Activity assignment, just now during break. It was only setting up folders. Big deal. But I see that the next one gets serious, using some techniques I didn't use when I was teaching myself CAD at the architectural firm.

So let me be warned.

Modern Life

I've just spent the past seven-plus hours on the phone trying to get a clean copy of Windows XP onto my little IBM ThinkPad 240X. I have three operating systems sitting in parallel on my computer, the bootleg XP Professional that came with it, the genuine XP Professional I paid a fortune for last year, and a vestigal version of the Windows 98 OS that was on it when the computer was new.

I want one system. Period.

I've been everywhere by phone or computer since 2:30 or so-- MicroSoft, the IBM/Lenovo website, IBM support in Atlanta (three or four times), and an auxiliary group called Experts Live. I've got a charge against my credit card for a service I didn't ask for and isn't looking to do me any good. And still, nobody can tell me what I didn't already know from the last time I tried this marathon in March.

To-wit:

a) this computer can't boot from an external USB CD-ROM (which is all I have to get stuff onto it, unless you include the thumbdrive, which plugs into the same USB port), because

b) the BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB device, and

c) This is a hardware limitation. I have to use the Boot Disks for clean installing Windows XP.

I knew all that before I even picked up the phone! All I wanted today was to find out, where do I get the boot disks that weren't included when I bought the little laptop off eBay over a year ago? And how do I use them to get a clean, genuine, non-parallel version of XP onto the thing once I do have them?

But seven hours later . . .

The problem is, everyone wants to be helpful. Everyone wants to be the one who Finds the Solution. So all these techies take me through all the steps with the BIOS Setup, etc., etc., etc., that I've been through before. And I humor them, because hey, they might just magically find something the last guy didn't. And they never want to give up! They always want to try One More Thing! There's always One More Patch to download and run through the system!

In fact, I'm even trying installing a Data Killer program, to see if maybe that'll get rid of the redundant systems and let me start over.

But I'm probably whistling in the dark. The fact remains that for some silly reason, this laptop with no integral A:\ or C:\ drive will NOT allow one to boot via the USB port.

And what all these enthusiastic, well-meaning, but ultimately not very effective people should have told me in the beginning is

a) I can't get a boot disk from IBM. They just don't provide them anymore;

b) I might be able to get one from some website or via eBay. Maybe;

c) If I do find one, I should Google for some other website to tell me how to install it; and

d) It's sure as shootin' that I won't be able to install it without purchasing or borrowing an external A:/ drive that runs off the serial port. Or I can try some local computer geek who has one and can do it for me.

The hilarious thing is I was trying this now because that I wanted to take the laptop with me when I go away tomorrow. I'm assembling with the rest of the North American Welsh Choir to sing a concert in my hometown this coming Saturday. I'm bunking at a friend's, and I really don't want to have to borrow her computer all week. Or to shlep my bigger, heavier Toshiba Satellite along.

But it looks like I'll have to, one or the other, if I want to keep up on my email, blogs, accounts, and so on.

But think of it-- twenty years ago, this would not have been a problem. Computer? Why does anyone want a computer with her on vacation?

But I've travelled with a laptop since 1995, and how can you expect me to stop now?

Oh, Joy!

Thank you, Jesus!

The USB-parallel port printer cable and extension I ordered on line the other day have come, they're connecting my old printer and my new computer, and they work!

And I have my sermon for this evening printed out in one go!

Yes, for this evening. Tonight and this Sunday I'm supplying the pulpit at a Lutheran church down the Ohio River, thanks to the interdemoninational agreement between the PCUSA and the ELCA.

It'll be my first time celebrating the Lord's Supper at a Lutheran Church. This congregation chants part of the liturgy, which I shall rather enjoy . . . except that I don't know the tunes yet. And I'm told that Thursdays are always a capella.

Meaning I'd better get ready and get on the road. Maybe if I arrive early enough, someone will be there to go over the music with me.

It Happens to Me

This afternoon I was in my study finishing my sermon for tomorrow. Since it's Pentecost, I was writing on the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives.

I wrote that to call the Holy Spirit the Comforter is not to make Him into a spiritual duvet that makes sure nothing bad or sad or awkward ever happens to us.

No. He's our Comforter in and through our troubles. He's the one who unites us to Christ in His sufferings and therefore to Christ in His resurrection.

So I finish my sermon early in the evening, about time for supper. But first, I decide to finish the job properly and print it out before I go downstairs.

Now, I use WordPerfect. WP61, to be precise. I use it because of the beautiful Reveal Codes, and I use it because it's so easy to format and print out my sermons in booklet form, which is nasty and hard to do in Word.

So my text is done and I go to Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. All very simple and straightforward. I've done it hundreds of times, on this computer and its predecessors.

But for some reason, this time, instead of printing four sheets worth of odd pages (that I will reinsert to put four pages worth of even page text on the flip sides), I get eight sheets of everything.

My blood sugar is low, but I take myself in hand and try to see if I can put those sheets back in and print on the other sides and get two good copies.

No.

I try turning off WP, then turning it back on and printing again. This time I'll try Even pages first.

No. Same eight pages. Blood sugar still crashing. Frustration level mounting.

Damn, she says theologically. If the new computer and the new printer are doing that, let's save the sermon to the thumbdrive and print it on the old computer and the old printer.

I boot up the old laptop. Defective patch cord comes loose and machine goes down. I try again, open WP, and bring up my sermon off the thumbdrive. Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. Message appears on the screen: "Printer cannot print on paper size chosen. Printer will choose paper size." Or something like that. No option to cancel print. Happily, I've only chosen "Print current page," in case the old cartridge needed priming.

Test page comes out vertical instead of horizontal, with the text cut off on both sides. With the low blood sugar, I can't remember how I worked around that in the past. And why am I getting a window telling me to reinsert the sheet to print on the back? That's only supposed to happen in Word, not WordPerfect!

I try the new computer again. Warning message: "Black ink cartridge is low!" What? I only bought it a month ago! It can't be low! I don't have a spare!

I don't believe the warning. I try printing again.

Damn again! The new cartridge is out of ink. Wouldn't have mattered anyway. It's the same useless eight sheets coming out in the tray.

By now I'm getting very annoyed and very frustrated, and it ain't just the low blood sugar. It's been a good two hours since I started trying to print this blinking thing, and blast it, it won't behave! Why do things like this happen to me!? Why do things seem deliberately to set out to sabotage me?!? It's not fair!!! It's JUST NOT FAIR!!!

Then it hits me: You idiot. Tomorrow you're going to preach that people should depend on the Holy Spirit to get them through death, dismemberment, and disaster. Don't you think He's capable of lending you patience enough to put up with technological glitches? Don't you think He can give you serenity and wisdom enough to figure out how to get your sermon printed out?

Yes. Rebuke taken, and applied.

So it was back to the old computer and its printer. Got the page orientation problem figured out. At the cost of a few more sheets of paper, worked out the implications of the Word double-sided printing issue that had somehow found its way into WordPerfect.

But at last I got my sermon printed out.

And I got my own sermon for the night.

Yes, it does happen to me, the temptation to think everything should always go well in my little world. The temptation to depend on myself and get fractious when I can't make things work instantly. The temptation to preach at others when I should be applying my sermons to myself, first.

But the Holy Spirit and His wisdom happens to me, too. And it's God's own gracious blessing to me that He does.