Crash and burn
by Jon Worley

My computer is my workplace. I write all sorts of things, design graphics, create web pages and do lots more on my computer. Conservatively, I spend six hours a day in front of the machine. More, if I'm in the middle of a big project.

Last Sunday, my machine went down. In flames. The LCN columns did not get sent out, and the A&A reviews did not get printed out (so that they could be sent on to various record labels).

All for want of a working hard drive.

The hard drive inside my machine, to be specific. I diagnosed the problem Sunday night. I took it in to a shop, and they spent Monday and Tuesday trying to revive my old hard drive. Not the data, mind you. I'm a good user, and I back up constantly. No, we all were trying to simply make my hard drive recognize that it was alive and part of a computer.

Alas, it was not. My old hard drive, affectionately known as "fartknocker", was dead. In a solemn ceremony Tuesday afternoon, we took the drive out behind the shop and used it for skeet practice. Such is the advantage of patronizing a computer shop in not-quite Amish country. After the requisite firearm worship, we ordered a new hard drive.

Which did not work. Two straight days of long-term holds on tech support phone lines yielded no success, so we gave up and ordered another hard drive. That one worked. I took my computer home on Friday. Unfortunately, when I restored all of my old data, my cribbed-together system (a collection of downloads added on to Mac system 7.5.3) simply would not hold. It crashed in many ways, each different from the last. My old system was dying a swift and ugly death.

Lucky for me, there is a new system in town. Mac System 8.5. Just released a couple weeks ago. So Saturday afternoon, I knuckled under and got to another local computer shop five minutes before closing and purchased the CD-ROM. After installation, everything worked splendidly.

The moral? If you've got $500 and unlimited patience, it's not too hard to deal with something like this.

I had the buckage. Sure, I would have preferred to use it for something practical like a home theater system or a bitchen new bicycle, but, well, I guess hard drive disasters are what the rainy day fund is all about. No, the money wasn't a huge issue. Patience, on the other hand, is a concept foreign to me.

While my computer was down, while my real work was sitting around in my head accumulating stress, I resorted to other ways of occupying my time. I caught a matinee of Rush Hour (funny, but not hysterical). I revamped my entire filing system, removing two hundred pounds of paper from my apartment. I read five books. I watched seven episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I wolfed down other large portions of my video library, including Raising Arizona, Reservoir Dogs and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I listened to the entire 4 CD John Coltrane Complete Village Vanguard sessions. Twice. I watched the Chiefs lose to the Steelers. I went to the gym every day. I bought a Nerf bazooka launcher (ostensibly for my Halloween costume). I drank a lot of beer.

What I didn't do was work. And you know, for someone who is generally opposed to organized labor, I missed my non-compensatory jobs. I couldn't edit my novel. I couldn't write on my new novel. I couldn't update the A&A site. I couldn't write a column. Hell, I couldn't even watch countless nations rise and fall while playing Civ II. No, I had to make do with a truly idle lifestyle. And you know something? I'm not very good at being lazy. Or, to put it more correctly, I hate required laziness just as much as I hate required work. My problem isn't with work. It's with authority in general.

Well, well. I feel so much better about myself now. I understand why I always seem to bristle when folks tell me what to do, why I've never kept a regular job for more than six months at a clip. Regulation drives me up the wall. I'm beginning to understand why some folks are Republicans.

Okay, maybe not. But it's always interesting to find out something new about yourself. Me, I learned that if my hard drive crashes again, I might as well get medicated as soon as possible. Otherwise, I just might start shooting something more lethal than a Nerf gun.

Jon Worley quite likes his new hard drive and system. He particularly likes it when the modem makes the lights flash and blink on the new internet status screen.

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