Computers-R-Us...again

Well, it's the weekend, and instead of skiing, reloading...heck, even blogging, I've once again descended into Comptuer Hell. It's partially my fault, too. Here's the story...

My Sweetie uses an ancient H-P Windows machine, so old that I think it uses punchcards or those great big reels of tape that you see on WWIII movies made in the mid-1960s. We have a sort of Maginot Line of Technology between our two home offices. On one side of the line, the computer as typewriter and messaging unit, facilitating a law practice. On the other side of the line, an EXPLOSION AT COMPUSA! Screens all over the place, blue ethernet wires snaking here and there, unonopened boxes of some gadget or the other.

Okay, that's an exageration! But between the television business, which screams out for faster, bigger computers to handle video, the fact that I actually am a writer and the other fact that I've been involved in personal computers since there were personal computers (heaven help me, but I consulted for IBM and wrote computer books in the Back When! Somewhere in my past is a book titled Everything You Need To Know About the IBM PCjr!), my office tends to be computer heavy. About 10 years ago I switched from PCs to Macs, and I've never looked back. I like to think of my office as the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise, if only Captain Kirk was allowed to have real guns and Spock had an aquarium.

Anyhow, my Sweetie's ancient PC lumbered to stumbling halt on Friday afternoon. Not a cataclysmic Yeti-scream crash, but more of a "I've fallen and I can't get up" moan. This, of course, triggered massive activity on my side of the Line based on the Three Laws of Computers:

1) Save the data
2) Access the problem
3) Go buy new stuff and chalk everything up to experience

Points 1 and 2 went pretty well. My Sweetie's computer firmly refused to believe it was part of the hard-wired network, so we got most of the data off in a motley Battleship Gallactica collection of various removable disks, CDs, weird Microsoft back-up files and even 1.44 meg "floppies" (Jeez, who knew anybody still used those things; much less that it was happening in my house!). The problem was a combination of old age and a truckload of sneaky crap that AOL (I know; I know!!!) downloaded onto the machine to "help" her use the internet.

Point 3 seemed a slam-dunk. I have a pretty good Mac, one of the natty Cubes that just never caught on, just lying around, having been obsoleted by an even faster Mac in the recent past. Now comes the confession...I'd been "putzing" around with the old Mac and had managed to crash it mightily. So when my Sweetie said, "Can't I just use the Cube for awhile?" all I managed was a sickly smile.

"Sure," I said. "I just need to dink it a little for you!" [DON'T SHOW FEAR!]

I frantically went to the Cube Owners forum groups, where help was available in the form of Alec, one of the gurus and all-around nice guy. After a couple of hours, it became obvious to both of us that...we...were...down...to...the...final...least attractive...solution...

There went Saturday. After a few minutes of prayer and clearing the immediate area, Saturday morning I finally exercised the nuclear option, reformatted the Cube's hard drive, reinstalled the original operating system, OS9, rooted around in my closet and found all the original software installation disks and reinstalled the "mission-cricial" software (i.e., what disks I could find) in the OS9 versions so if I ever got the operating system upgraded to OSX I could install my current program upgrades, went to CompUSA and bought—at retail...retail!—a new copy of OSX Panther and an additional outboard hard drive, came home and had dinner with my Sweetie and her brother, who's a computer guru in his own right.

"How bad is her computer?" he asked when my Sweetie was out of the room. I shook my head. "Shoot it," he replied. "It's not worth saving."

Okay, so here's where I am this morning...OSX Panther is—so far—happily installing on the Cube. If everything goes right, which it won't, my plan is to spend enough time with her PC to allow me to vacuum off her entire hard drive through an ethernet crossover cable through the Cube into the new outboard drive. She can use the Cube for as long as she wants, and when she's ready to get her own box (or another one of my increasingly frequent cast-offs), moving data is simple...it's all on the outboard disk (and optical backups! Backups! Remember backups??? ALL MACHINES BREAK! Even Glocks break, occasionally!).

At noon I'm going to crack open my last six-pack of Abita Turbodog beer. OSX is busily installing Danish on the Cube (I couldn't face a custom installation this AM!).

Pray for me...