September 11, 1997
Dear Everyone:
It was nip and tuck whether there would be a Letter
this week. When I turned the
PC on after
a week in “Cincinnati”, the PC did not come on as usual.
It came up with a single message:
“Failure hard disk 0.”
Anyone familiar with computers knows that this is a message you
never want to receive.
Oberon was dead.
Or, at least, in a computer coma.
I tried again and got an additional message, “Operating system
not found.” More bad news.
In laymen’s terms, my hard drive had crashed.
(For those of you who know what I’m talking about and are holding
your breath, yes, I did back up all essential files like my checking
account and the Weakly Letters.
Resume breathing.)
This was last Sunday.
Since it was unlikely that any commercial computer hospitals
would be open, I went over to “Jeannie’s” to see “Marshall” (who had
come up for the weekend) and go to a movie.
I took Oberon with me to work on Monday and basically threw
myself on the mercy of our technical support.
While it could be argued that this was not a
company machine and they should not spend company time and resources
trying to get it running again, it could also be argued that I do a lot
of company work at home and, if the tech support guys don’t have
anything more important to do with their time, why not let them try to
revive Oberon for me. If
they couldn’t spare the time, I would find a computer doctor somewhere
near “Livermore”.
I sent one guy an email and he sent a note back
that it could simply mean that Oberon’s system file had been corrupted
(you never know what they’ve been up to while you’re out of the house)
and this could be fixed by copying a system file from my office PC to a
diskette and back onto Oberon’s C:\ drive.
His note concluded, “...should you fail in your mission, your
support staff will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”
Unfortunately, Oberon could no longer “see” his C:\
drive. The darn thing has
over a gigabyte of memory on it, how could he
not “see” it!
Back to technical support.
The other tech support guy came over to take a look at it since
the problem looked interesting.
He got the C:\ drive working again, although, when “Jerry” and I
(thinking we’d garner some useful knowledge from the experience) asked
him how he’d fixed it, he replied, “I dunno.
Sometimes if you just wiggle the drive a little...”
It took another day and a half to get
Windows to
work again. Nevertheless,
there’s a box of
See’s chocolate truffles on their way to the tech support guys right
now and Oberon is up and running again.
For those of you who think making a backup copy is too much
trouble, remember, it’s not a matter of
if your hard drive crashes,
it’s only a matter of when.
And I guarantee, it won’t be at a convenient time.
As for the movie,
Event Horizon
is a sorry waste of time and effort.
When you consider how much money went into the production and
special effects, it’s a colossal waste.
Talk about “all dressed up and nowhere to go.”
Virtually no plot.
Characters you couldn’t care less about.
Not even Sam
Neill can save it. And
don’t bother when it comes out on video; on a small screen it would be
just about impossible to figure out what’s going on.
Save your money for the next one.
About “Cincinnati”.
What can I say? It
was “Cincinnati”. The
highlight of the trip was finding the perfect birthday gift for
“Jeannie”. Anyone who wants
to buy a share is welcome.
“Marshall’s” already in for a piece.
Love, as always,
Pete
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