How can you get very far,
If you don't know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don't know What You've Got?
And if you don't know Which To Do
Of all things in front of you,
Then what you'll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.
When we bought our very first computer I did some research and learned that Mac's were supposed to be simpler and more reliable. Since I'd never used a computer before I knew that I had no choice but to shell out the extra dollars; I definitely needed something idiot proof. So I bought an imac. Great, I was hooked. It lasted for years until at some point 96 mb of memory seemed woefully inadequate and high speed internet finally came to the back woods. Then I splurged and bought a new emac (note the mistake here is "emac" and I don't have any recollection of how I decided on that!). It was big, heavy, expensive, and had the stupid "on" button hidden BEHIND the machine. Still, I was happy. OS X was wonderful. About a year later it died. Yep, dead, gone, kaput.........a door stop. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem except that this is Wyoming and no one in our area would/could work on a mac. At the time it was our only computer (for the three of us) so we decided to buy a cheap pc (emachine) to use in the interim while I shipped the "good" computer to Montana. 4 months and much hassle later they shipped it back to us with a brand new motherboard courtesy of Apple. Great! Now Zoe had a cheap pc of her own, and Larry and I had our mac back. That was 3 years ago. Since then Zoe is still using her emachine and Larry is on his second PC .....which I won't go into.
Back to Thursday.............I soothed myself by declaring out loud that "its no big deal. I mean we can just share until I decide what to do............right?........... right?!"
~insert resounding silence here~.
Okay I decide, I'll just run into town and pick up a monitor at the Salvation Army and use Larry's old pc until I get this worked out..............an idea which was enthusiastically seconded by everyone. So that's what we did. First thing Friday morning (before the blizzard) we ran to town and bought a cheap monitor ($10). I then spent the next several hours bookmarking, removing programs, downloading, installing software and vehemently cursing Microsoft's ineptitude. I mean what is the deal with all of the infernal back ups, updates, and security threats. And for crying out loud YES, I REALLY DO WANT TO EMPTY THE FREAKIN RECYCLE BIN ALREADY!!! Interspersed between shaking my head in frustrated disgust I tried to remind myself how lucky I was to even have this option. By early afternoon everything was good and I was back in business; my Mac sitting forlornly (and dustily) at my feet. But true to my slightly OCD nature I just couldn't let it go (as if spending the entire morning dorking with computers wasn't enough). So I sat down on the floor and tried to get it to boot.......again. (and again and again). no luck. I tried to start it from the installation cd and while that worked Disk Utility failed to verify or repair the hard drive..........repeatedly! So I tried safe mode.........nope..........single user mode.......no way.............I reset the pram.......several times...........nothing. (dragging this out for hours!) Finally I decided to partition the hard drive and what do you know, it worked!!! I lost everything but it worked! I was thrilled. Then, as I repeated my morning of changing settings and installing software in preparation for returning the Mac to it's rightful place on my desk, reality set in. The emac only successfully burnt discs about a tenth of the time. It never configured Photoshop properly so images had to be opened in preview, copied to Appleworks, resized, imported to Photoshop, edited, saved to desktop, and imported to iphoto before they could be used or printed. And while I love OS X for it's elegant simplicity Larry's old reject burnt discs flawlessly, was faster on the internet, and has (the more extensive and versatile) Photo Impact.
My point being that yesterday was a long journey to nowhere. My mac is still on the floor and I'm typing this on WordPad not Appleworks.............by choice. But, when I've finally had enough of Vista and chuck this baby out of the window, I'll still have my emac.........just in case.
If you don't know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don't know What You've Got?
And if you don't know Which To Do
Of all things in front of you,
Then what you'll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.
~Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh
Thursday night I had just gotten back from town, stoked the fire, fed Purr, and changed back into my comfy lounge pants only to find that my mac wouldn't start. Okay, not a big deal. It must
be a fluke, right? So I tried it again................and again...........and again..........x 100............with no luck.
be a fluke, right? So I tried it again................and again...........and again..........x 100............with no luck.
When we bought our very first computer I did some research and learned that Mac's were supposed to be simpler and more reliable. Since I'd never used a computer before I knew that I had no choice but to shell out the extra dollars; I definitely needed something idiot proof. So I bought an imac. Great, I was hooked. It lasted for years until at some point 96 mb of memory seemed woefully inadequate and high speed internet finally came to the back woods. Then I splurged and bought a new emac (note the mistake here is "emac" and I don't have any recollection of how I decided on that!). It was big, heavy, expensive, and had the stupid "on" button hidden BEHIND the machine. Still, I was happy. OS X was wonderful. About a year later it died. Yep, dead, gone, kaput.........a door stop. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem except that this is Wyoming and no one in our area would/could work on a mac. At the time it was our only computer (for the three of us) so we decided to buy a cheap pc (emachine) to use in the interim while I shipped the "good" computer to Montana. 4 months and much hassle later they shipped it back to us with a brand new motherboard courtesy of Apple. Great! Now Zoe had a cheap pc of her own, and Larry and I had our mac back. That was 3 years ago. Since then Zoe is still using her emachine and Larry is on his second PC .....which I won't go into.
Back to Thursday.............I soothed myself by declaring out loud that "its no big deal. I mean we can just share until I decide what to do............right?........... right?!"
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