The Silver Lining Looks Suspiciously Like Tinfoil Today
Woohoo! We have Internet!
Boohoo! I had to reformat my hard drive!
Woohoo! I'm typing this entry wirelessly in my apartment!
Boohoo! Our Internet is currently unsecured.
Sigh. Whoever thinks technology solves problems instead of creating new ones is still using typewriters and rotary telephones. Maybe even the telegraph.
When I shut down my computer this past Wednesday, it downloaded some Microsoft Updates without my grudging consent and proceeded to install them. However, every time I tried to restart my computer, I got stuck in the gray limbo Startup Repair. In addition to the startup repair attempts, I tried four system restore points, and those didn't work.
I called Dell and wondered whether an Indian man would answer the phone. Sure enough, one answered the phone and asked whether I would like to pay an additional fee for a Dell support line with North American technicians who would answer in less than two minutes.
"No thanks, I like India," I responded.
I didn't get to ask him where he's from, but we chatted very, very briefly about Kerala and its lovely backwaters before he transferred me to the appropriate department.
Once there, I spoke with a nice man in Chennai. He walked me through several attempts to repair my computer until he concluded that some OS files got corrupted and we'd have to reformat the hard drive.
Now, I did make a back-up of my files. All my India photos and things are on CDs anyway, and I did one or two back-ups on my external hard drive. But of course, I didn't save everything. I lost some nice photos, including my dance performance and our trip to the pumpkin patch. And a lot of the work I did on Pecan's mad-lib.
Stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid.
I will not focus on material/digital things. I will not focus on material/digital things. I will not focus on material/digital things....
I should probably focus on cultivating more foresight instead. And meanwhile, I get to reinstall Mozilla, replace all my files (the ones I backed up), reset Media Player, and all those lovely things for my poor computer has no memory of the first six months of its life.
But I have Internet...just in time for me to go to bed.
And my roommate just kicked me off the Internet while she sets up our network security password on her computer so I'll have to post this later.
Addendum: My roommate is very smart and persistent so I get to post this only a couple hours later instead of a couple days. The wireless router didn't come with much in the way of instructions so while I was reformatting my hard drive and chatting about India, she was growling at cables and hitting reload fifty times trying to get the security-enabling software to work.
I'm still smarting from the loss of my photos and files. I keep thinking of all the opportunities I had to upload photos or save them and such. And I did try. I tried uploading my dance photos at least three times, but my boyfriend's Internet connection was too slow. But I didn't lose any India photos. That's the most important.
Boohoo! I had to reformat my hard drive!
Woohoo! I'm typing this entry wirelessly in my apartment!
Boohoo! Our Internet is currently unsecured.
Sigh. Whoever thinks technology solves problems instead of creating new ones is still using typewriters and rotary telephones. Maybe even the telegraph.
When I shut down my computer this past Wednesday, it downloaded some Microsoft Updates without my grudging consent and proceeded to install them. However, every time I tried to restart my computer, I got stuck in the gray limbo Startup Repair. In addition to the startup repair attempts, I tried four system restore points, and those didn't work.
I called Dell and wondered whether an Indian man would answer the phone. Sure enough, one answered the phone and asked whether I would like to pay an additional fee for a Dell support line with North American technicians who would answer in less than two minutes.
"No thanks, I like India," I responded.
I didn't get to ask him where he's from, but we chatted very, very briefly about Kerala and its lovely backwaters before he transferred me to the appropriate department.
Once there, I spoke with a nice man in Chennai. He walked me through several attempts to repair my computer until he concluded that some OS files got corrupted and we'd have to reformat the hard drive.
Now, I did make a back-up of my files. All my India photos and things are on CDs anyway, and I did one or two back-ups on my external hard drive. But of course, I didn't save everything. I lost some nice photos, including my dance performance and our trip to the pumpkin patch. And a lot of the work I did on Pecan's mad-lib.
Stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid.
I will not focus on material/digital things. I will not focus on material/digital things. I will not focus on material/digital things....
I should probably focus on cultivating more foresight instead. And meanwhile, I get to reinstall Mozilla, replace all my files (the ones I backed up), reset Media Player, and all those lovely things for my poor computer has no memory of the first six months of its life.
But I have Internet...just in time for me to go to bed.
And my roommate just kicked me off the Internet while she sets up our network security password on her computer so I'll have to post this later.
Addendum: My roommate is very smart and persistent so I get to post this only a couple hours later instead of a couple days. The wireless router didn't come with much in the way of instructions so while I was reformatting my hard drive and chatting about India, she was growling at cables and hitting reload fifty times trying to get the security-enabling software to work.
I'm still smarting from the loss of my photos and files. I keep thinking of all the opportunities I had to upload photos or save them and such. And I did try. I tried uploading my dance photos at least three times, but my boyfriend's Internet connection was too slow. But I didn't lose any India photos. That's the most important.