Computer woes and learning experiences...
I woke up the other morning to an "unmountable boot error" on my desktop, requiring a full reboot and format. My entire hard drive is wiped, and a new install was necessary. It's my first full crash, ever! Luckily I have recently backed up most of my data, pictures, and info, but the experience is enlightening and introspective. It has caused me to reflect on my experiences with this funny little tool, a jacked up monkey wrench, that we call a computer....
I have been online and involved in computers consistently since 1997, although my knowledge is limited and patchy at times. I am not a "programmer" or techie, but I am a "Geek" of a sorts and have discovered that my over all computer knowledge is vastly more than much of family and friends. But considering that I also have a number of friends who have careers in IT and computers, and am still having a problem getting my home wireless set up, well, I wouldn't call myself a specialist, and this comes after a series of jobs and hobbies on the borderline of the tech fields through out my early years.
It started in the late 80's with a summer job as a tech assistant to a company in Dallas. Of course, like much of my generation, I remember taking an early computer class in elementary school on Commodore 64s. We, the high school kids who worked for them for the tech company, were affectionately called "cursors", that is, we ran around and did all the little jobs the Tech told us to. This mostly meant repetitively opening school computers, pulling RAM chips and installing new ones, or power supplies, etc. It got me familiar and comfortable with opening cases. I wonder if had sparked a real interest and I had jumped in then, would I have had a different career?
Then years later, I was living in an apartment with a group of guys and gals,(small apt. to many people!) and a large rack of early servers and pc's. The apartment renter, we we were all crashing with, was running a early BBS (Bulletin Board System) complete with a handset modem cradle and all. We would dial up other BBSs and exchange info and discussion threads. I was a "co-sysop", which meant that they let me moderate some of the discussions. Then, as now, I couldn't really code my way out of a wet paper bag, but I was comfortable with things. Looking back now, with the 20/20 of hindsight, it was fascinating to be involved with the roots of the public Internet and WWW. I know at the time we could sense something, like a coming storm, ions in the virtual atmosphere if you well. Of course at the time, as I had just dropped out of high school and was drifting rather badly, I only noticed with a small part of my perspective. The rest of my thoughts were wrapped up with girls...a reoccurring distraction in my life...and my next Dungeons and Dragons game. Once again, perhaps if I had noticed what was coming and taken a different path, I would have been more involved in the coming .com explosion. But life is full of "roads not taken" and regret is not something I spend too much time in.
Later, there wasn't a personal PC in my home, some may remember that even in the early 90's they were rather expensive, but the interest was there. I would read the tech magazines an follow the science fiction writers who were predicting the future we would all live in. I knew it was coming, any day now.
"Wait! Is that it? The Future? I think I just saw it!"
I read cyberpunk writers early, when the idea was new and few people had heard of it. Willam Gibson, the early prophet of the cyberpunk future and coiner of the term "Cyberspace" was an very early influence on me. I was recently surprised to learn in a news article that Mr. Gibson was never an early adopter of computer tech himself. I also remember coming across an article and picture of the dread-locked patron of Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier during those days, and thinking, wow, are people like this the future? Little did I know that I too would be a dread locked freak one day myself!
So then in '94 there was another borderline tech job. I employed by the then new company of Virtual World Entertainment, as a tech, coffee bar manager, and party planner. Virtual World was billed as a "Virtual Reality Themepark". Sixteen interlink flight simulators running two games, Battle Tech, giant walking robots battling it out, and my favorite, Red Planet, high speed hovercraft death races in the industrial canals of a futuristic Mars. Lots of fun and expensive. We had competitive leagues and international site-to-site events. The systems ran on Macintosh and I trained to operate them. Although, as so often seemed the case with me, I wasn't a great tech, OK, but not great, but I was a great party planner. We hosted lots of birthdays for kids.
After there, it was few years of traveling and such before I met Leah and settled in Maryland. Once we were non-nomadic again, I got interested in the growing Internet and in 1997 we got our first cobbled together machine second hand from a friend (Thank You Nick!) and a dial up connection. I loved it. Immediately I discovered the immense power of a printer, a cheap graphics editing program, and the flyer. Just by being able to create and distribute flyers from our apartment in Anne Arundel county, I helped organized huge Rainbow Family events, put on flea markets, and participate in big social functions. As our home based business grew, I learned that being able to produce my own brochures, business cards, and craft jury entries, would save us 100s of dollars a year. And staying connected to the growing social network would keep me abreast of growing shows and events we could do.
I have had the same email address since '97, which is pretty good for most folks these days. I found www.care2.com early and got an email with them. An environmental company who supports various "Green" causes and products. Nice company and by using them I support the programs as well.
I remember very well when I finally unlocked much of my computer ability. It was about 5 years ago, when we needed to finally upgrade from the scraped together systems we had been using and purchase a brand new system. Unfortunately a few months before dual core came out! At that time, I realized, using the tools of mental observation that I am eternally grateful to my Buddhist studies for, that the reason I had blocks to actually understand the tools, system, and software of this device I had been using all my life, was simply...fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of doing something wrong, fear of well everything. So I set out to learn and I can say that the self-confidence of learning computer skills has altered many other aspects of my life as well.
So it's been a "long strange trip" to quote Mr. Garcia, and now I am so fully immersed in the cyber culture, I feel I can't get out. Not that I really want to. I spend several hours a day in my computer chair, either processing photography or graphics, answering emails, or reading and posting on LiveJournal. Which has been profitable for us. I believe because my LJ activity and the multiple links it has produced, we are finally on the top page of Google when you search Leather Masks or other related terms. Additionally, I as comment on in a Previous Post, we are active on several social networks. And I even have a actually business virtual reality environment of Second Life. So talk about coming full circle. Everyday, two or three times, I get a little noticed that I have sold another virtual mask to someone for their avatar. For what adds up to a small bit of real money. I am very interested in Online Environments like this, at least in the idea of them. I am not active on World of Warcraft or any of the other MMORPGs but I keep up with what they represent to the "future". (There's that pesky word again!)
So hear we are, forced with having to reload and organize 10 years worth of stuff. Granted the early stuff is few and far between. But there is some there. A scattering of pictures and a few documents that have made the transitions from system to system. The funniest thing is that the experience is really positive over all. We are getting to really clean out and delete, delete, delete. And organizing is great! Considering the 10,000+ photos, the 5,000+ songs, and the 100's of documents and files, well, it is actually going very well. And I will now finally get to buy that big TeraByte external hard drive to sync to our PC and keep it all totally backed up!
So I know my posts are usually picture and link heavy, and I wouldn't want to let you down, so here is one, at the location I spend much of my time at. The computer desk. You will note that I actually have two systems running. The desktop won't run Second Life, so I run it on the Laptop, and this allows me to be productive on both anyway.
If I look a little bleary and sleep deprived, that is because this was taken in August of last year. We were preparing for the Renaissance Festival and I was immersing myself into the Second Life environment, learning an entire new set of skills, 3D modeling, SL specific coding, etc. all at the same time. So staying up till 3 AM and putting in long days as well.
So here's to total computer crashes and opportunities unasked for and unbidden. To the future, as soon as it gets here. And life slowly evolving into wholeness. Now, I have to get back to my files again....
I have been online and involved in computers consistently since 1997, although my knowledge is limited and patchy at times. I am not a "programmer" or techie, but I am a "Geek" of a sorts and have discovered that my over all computer knowledge is vastly more than much of family and friends. But considering that I also have a number of friends who have careers in IT and computers, and am still having a problem getting my home wireless set up, well, I wouldn't call myself a specialist, and this comes after a series of jobs and hobbies on the borderline of the tech fields through out my early years.
It started in the late 80's with a summer job as a tech assistant to a company in Dallas. Of course, like much of my generation, I remember taking an early computer class in elementary school on Commodore 64s. We, the high school kids who worked for them for the tech company, were affectionately called "cursors", that is, we ran around and did all the little jobs the Tech told us to. This mostly meant repetitively opening school computers, pulling RAM chips and installing new ones, or power supplies, etc. It got me familiar and comfortable with opening cases. I wonder if had sparked a real interest and I had jumped in then, would I have had a different career?
Then years later, I was living in an apartment with a group of guys and gals,(small apt. to many people!) and a large rack of early servers and pc's. The apartment renter, we we were all crashing with, was running a early BBS (Bulletin Board System) complete with a handset modem cradle and all. We would dial up other BBSs and exchange info and discussion threads. I was a "co-sysop", which meant that they let me moderate some of the discussions. Then, as now, I couldn't really code my way out of a wet paper bag, but I was comfortable with things. Looking back now, with the 20/20 of hindsight, it was fascinating to be involved with the roots of the public Internet and WWW. I know at the time we could sense something, like a coming storm, ions in the virtual atmosphere if you well. Of course at the time, as I had just dropped out of high school and was drifting rather badly, I only noticed with a small part of my perspective. The rest of my thoughts were wrapped up with girls...a reoccurring distraction in my life...and my next Dungeons and Dragons game. Once again, perhaps if I had noticed what was coming and taken a different path, I would have been more involved in the coming .com explosion. But life is full of "roads not taken" and regret is not something I spend too much time in.
Later, there wasn't a personal PC in my home, some may remember that even in the early 90's they were rather expensive, but the interest was there. I would read the tech magazines an follow the science fiction writers who were predicting the future we would all live in. I knew it was coming, any day now.
"Wait! Is that it? The Future? I think I just saw it!"
I read cyberpunk writers early, when the idea was new and few people had heard of it. Willam Gibson, the early prophet of the cyberpunk future and coiner of the term "Cyberspace" was an very early influence on me. I was recently surprised to learn in a news article that Mr. Gibson was never an early adopter of computer tech himself. I also remember coming across an article and picture of the dread-locked patron of Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier during those days, and thinking, wow, are people like this the future? Little did I know that I too would be a dread locked freak one day myself!
So then in '94 there was another borderline tech job. I employed by the then new company of Virtual World Entertainment, as a tech, coffee bar manager, and party planner. Virtual World was billed as a "Virtual Reality Themepark". Sixteen interlink flight simulators running two games, Battle Tech, giant walking robots battling it out, and my favorite, Red Planet, high speed hovercraft death races in the industrial canals of a futuristic Mars. Lots of fun and expensive. We had competitive leagues and international site-to-site events. The systems ran on Macintosh and I trained to operate them. Although, as so often seemed the case with me, I wasn't a great tech, OK, but not great, but I was a great party planner. We hosted lots of birthdays for kids.
After there, it was few years of traveling and such before I met Leah and settled in Maryland. Once we were non-nomadic again, I got interested in the growing Internet and in 1997 we got our first cobbled together machine second hand from a friend (Thank You Nick!) and a dial up connection. I loved it. Immediately I discovered the immense power of a printer, a cheap graphics editing program, and the flyer. Just by being able to create and distribute flyers from our apartment in Anne Arundel county, I helped organized huge Rainbow Family events, put on flea markets, and participate in big social functions. As our home based business grew, I learned that being able to produce my own brochures, business cards, and craft jury entries, would save us 100s of dollars a year. And staying connected to the growing social network would keep me abreast of growing shows and events we could do.
I have had the same email address since '97, which is pretty good for most folks these days. I found www.care2.com early and got an email with them. An environmental company who supports various "Green" causes and products. Nice company and by using them I support the programs as well.
I remember very well when I finally unlocked much of my computer ability. It was about 5 years ago, when we needed to finally upgrade from the scraped together systems we had been using and purchase a brand new system. Unfortunately a few months before dual core came out! At that time, I realized, using the tools of mental observation that I am eternally grateful to my Buddhist studies for, that the reason I had blocks to actually understand the tools, system, and software of this device I had been using all my life, was simply...fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of doing something wrong, fear of well everything. So I set out to learn and I can say that the self-confidence of learning computer skills has altered many other aspects of my life as well.
So it's been a "long strange trip" to quote Mr. Garcia, and now I am so fully immersed in the cyber culture, I feel I can't get out. Not that I really want to. I spend several hours a day in my computer chair, either processing photography or graphics, answering emails, or reading and posting on LiveJournal. Which has been profitable for us. I believe because my LJ activity and the multiple links it has produced, we are finally on the top page of Google when you search Leather Masks or other related terms. Additionally, I as comment on in a Previous Post, we are active on several social networks. And I even have a actually business virtual reality environment of Second Life. So talk about coming full circle. Everyday, two or three times, I get a little noticed that I have sold another virtual mask to someone for their avatar. For what adds up to a small bit of real money. I am very interested in Online Environments like this, at least in the idea of them. I am not active on World of Warcraft or any of the other MMORPGs but I keep up with what they represent to the "future". (There's that pesky word again!)
So hear we are, forced with having to reload and organize 10 years worth of stuff. Granted the early stuff is few and far between. But there is some there. A scattering of pictures and a few documents that have made the transitions from system to system. The funniest thing is that the experience is really positive over all. We are getting to really clean out and delete, delete, delete. And organizing is great! Considering the 10,000+ photos, the 5,000+ songs, and the 100's of documents and files, well, it is actually going very well. And I will now finally get to buy that big TeraByte external hard drive to sync to our PC and keep it all totally backed up!
So I know my posts are usually picture and link heavy, and I wouldn't want to let you down, so here is one, at the location I spend much of my time at. The computer desk. You will note that I actually have two systems running. The desktop won't run Second Life, so I run it on the Laptop, and this allows me to be productive on both anyway.
If I look a little bleary and sleep deprived, that is because this was taken in August of last year. We were preparing for the Renaissance Festival and I was immersing myself into the Second Life environment, learning an entire new set of skills, 3D modeling, SL specific coding, etc. all at the same time. So staying up till 3 AM and putting in long days as well.
So here's to total computer crashes and opportunities unasked for and unbidden. To the future, as soon as it gets here. And life slowly evolving into wholeness. Now, I have to get back to my files again....