Years ago, the girls and I watched a movie called, “Holes,” easily a very entertaining movie with an over-the-top John Voigt as Mr. Sir, and a distilled-evil Sigourney Weaver. One of the smaller parts in the movie was played by Dule Hill, better known for his role in “West Wing.” He played a lovesick “Sam, the onion man,” smitten with Patricia Arquette, who played Kissing Kate Barlow. A classic line in the movie was, “I can fix that,” to cover any variety of carpentry and handyman duties performed by Dule and as required by the stunning Ms. Arquette.
I have learned all sorts of things the past few days, prompted by disaster, of course, but the bottom line is that I learned I, too, “can fix that.” I recently purchased a KVM switch to allow me to use 2 computers with one mouse, one keyboard, one monitor. As such, and in my usual fashion, I decided to do some moving around to make the situation in my chambre a couche a bit more convenient and less cluttered. I went to plug in a computer that I had only recently brought back from the dead, had installed tons of software (for work) on, and was getting ready for the freedom inherent in ONE desk instead of two with everything I needed at my fingertips. Seems I had a bad surge protector because the minute I plugged in the second computer (on a separate plug with the new surge protector), the breaker tripped and everything went dark in my room. I booted up one of personal/work computers just recently upgraded to a much larger hard drive and a lot more RAM, it did the CHKDSK thing and was fine. The second one brought up the blue screen of death. I was heartsick. HOWEVER, as one of those frugal glitches I have, I was determined not to trash the thing. I reformatted the hard drive, gnashed my teeth, got all sorts of errors when trying to reinstall an operating system, but I finally was able to save it. It’s funny that I do things out of necessity (no funds for a new computer and really hate waste of good technology), and I use language that would make a sailor blush, but I have that obsessive/compulsive/dogged determination thing in my personality that I have finally learned to accept…and it usually serves me well. I had never ventured into the world of Fdisk and boot-up floppies and partitions prior to a couple of days ago, but I was damn good once I figured out what I was doing. Were it not for the fact that I am a “shade-tree” techno freak, I might consider doing it for a living…as long as I didn’t have a deadline. On Saturday, the computer died. On Tuesday, it was brought back to life. One of my kids got a virus from myspace.com AGAIN…so I have that to look forward to in the coming days, but you know what? “I can fix that.”
WW
Filed under: Life in general, wenchwit
