Confessions of
a computer addict (1996)
Y'see, it's like this. I can't help myself:
I go to write a simple article or essay, even a little ditty
like this one: twenty minutes, on the topic at hand: "Confessions
of a computer addict." And what do I spend twenty minutes
doing before writing even the first word? --Trying to get
that new macro I made yesterday to work in the template
for this document; the one that inserts a hyperlink automatically
from the table of contents. I realize I could have also
used the built-in macro for tables of contents, but what
the hell, I like the challenge of figuring out how to do
it in every way possible.
Know the feeling?
It's not enough to have one internet service
provider: I need two or three at a time. Four Web browsers
now; a half-dozen electronic publishing programs that I
haven't even started to learn beyond my basic word processor,
which I decided on only after months of critical comparison
with its chief competitor (Word Imperfect, as my daughter
sagely called it)
Line noise: my prime nemesis. Oh, well,
at least I have power: I did that my way, too, installing
a twelve-volt charging system off my waterline. That way
when the snow storm knocks down half the trees in the forest
and the power for the valley, I still chug along merrily;
but the phone lines are another matter. This is ancient
wiring and switching equipment, and that loud hum has returned.
Alas, I can't get the latest roster changes for my favorite
baseball team over the Net. I know, it's January after all,
but I mean...
This morning I got sidetracked revising
budget figures, learning new wrinkles about spreadsheet
charts. I spent more than I thought last year, like half
my total expenses on computer, phone bills, software....But
it's so much fun. I was at it from six a.m. till midnight
yesterday, with time out for meals, a bath, a quick ski
for exercise, and a brief cuddle with my partner in bed.
I had nothing to talk about at suppertime, while she chattered
on about the downed phone lines, the unsanded road, the
loading of manure. Tomorrow we're going skiing all day.
I don't know if I can stand much more of that kind of distraction...
another day...
another week, actually, wasted--oops--invested,
on computerizing. It all started with great hopes for completing
(that is, starting and completing) a webpage, my first webpage,
since I downloaded the easy do-it-yourself HPWiZ from CompuServe,
for the Ourworld
section...but then I got, well, you know, distracted. See,
for some reason (I wasn't getting sound from the CD-ROM
programs, Encarta and Dangerous Creatures (which I didn't
use much anyway but my daughter did and, you see how it
goes...) So I tried the usual readme file methods to no avail
(of course) and then took it into my own hands to go the
route of reinstalling them, which didn't work; so then I
thought I'd try reinstalling the sound card driver software
from the floppy that came with my machine. Unfortunately
this stuff wasn't what my Win95 system was running, in fact
it overwrote the proper CD-ROM audio driver (again:
see, I'd done this already and botched my system utterly
and had to reinstall Windows95 after deleting the sound
card devices entirely, or something, in the fall, but couldn't
remember exactly what to do this time). Somehow I got away
with it; and in the process of trying to reconstruct my
system.ini file, discovered the missing lines controlling
the multimedia sound on the CD--but now the music audio
didn't seem to work. In due course I discovered that I had
a newly installed 16-bit CD-audio player from the floppy,
which worked, though it didn't play automatically as the
Windows 95 audio player had. Small inconvenience: but (of
course) intolerable. I'd already spent several hours the
previous week on these problems and wasn't about to quit
now.
I finally got through on a direct call (miraculous)
to the computer company technical support, and the guy advised
me (or rather I advised him, after he tried to tell me it
was likely a hardware problem) that my audio driver could
only be fixed by yet another reinstall of Windows 95.
Sigh. So this is how I spent my Monday morning.
It entailed another several hours, because contrary to the
technician's assurances, I had to go through all the installed
components again, since now I seemed to be missing some,
at random: MS Paint, Wordpad, Hyperterminal, Microsoft Network's
Internet support. Oh, great. The previous week I'd lost
my Compuserve access by "upgrading" their interface.
Now at least I had that back, thanks to a call to their
help line. At least, I hoped I still had it. Without my
network access I'd be...nobody: just some rural bohunk lost
in the sticks: out of it.
Where was I? Oh yes. Do you really want
to hear more? I'll make it short: I finally reinstalled
the missing components. Next day I was up around five, downloading
and browsing more from CompuServe and Internet, and then
spending the entire day going through my whole collection
of downloads from the past several months: a hundred items
backlogged, programs and forum threads, advices and offers,
net leads and cautions, advices and admonitions. After all
this I felt so intimidated about going ahead with my first
web page (except that some advice said clearly, "Just
jump in, go for it"), that I quit, exhausted after
another full day.
But I couldn't wait long. I was awake at
2 a.m., ready to go surfing again: prime time for me because
I have to pay long distance charges. By the main morning
time, I was ready for the tutorials for a new baseball program,
and so put in a solid three or four hours on these before
taking the afternoon off to make tofu, bread, chocolate
cake and tapioca: my main domestic responsibilities for
the week. I was on cooking, and these would go a long way
in the preparation of quick meals. The next day I buckled
down to some real cleanup, because my hard drive, all 540
megabytes which looked so ample when installed a mere four
months ago, was full. Many zipfiles and visits to the recycling
bin later, I had a cool 100 megabytes back ready to fill;
and proceeded to start filling them with my old floppy data
disks for an earlier version of the baseball program.
Today, alas, I had to spend with my daughter:
homeschooling and going for a long walk in the sunshiney
spring snow. On the way home, of course, we stopped by a
neighbors so I could grab a quick copy of the old Windows
3.1 file, Calendar.exe, which one of my new downloads required
for one of its accessory functions; and while lasagne noodles
boiled I installed it and discovered next that I needed
(yes, needed, by now you know the meaning of that word)
also a file called Cardfile.exe, so I guess when I go back
as I told Rosemary I would to try to scope out her printing
problem (no installed fonts...?) I'll get that one too. And
now, a good lasagne dinner under my belt, I couldn't wait
to come crying (or is it crowing) to you about my obsession,
my addiction, my love and my life, more again to do now
to investigate find-functions and drivespace and performance
tips...
20 May 1996
So today was another one of those days...
How did it start? I can hardly remember,
through the fog of shutdowns and macros and workarounds
and error messages and... I know I did accomplish something
today...oh yes, it was the selected list of software I've
used. It came to around forty items, and counting. That's
the short list, the final cut. It's mostly fine-tuning,
at this point. You know, like spending three hours on macros
that might shave milliseconds off of occasionally used multiple
commands. Just for the fun of it.
It's the challenge, right? Like turning
to an external macro recorder to get around the limitation
in Word macros, because they don't record actions in dialog
boxes. Unfortunately it took me an hour or so to twig on
that particular lesson (I'd already learned it months ago,
as I recalled later, but inconveniently forgot in the meantime).
But I and my little helper Recorder.exe from Windows 3.1
solved the puzzle finally. The other bugaboo in the macro
dept. (besides a mysterious tendency for the new but useless
toolbar icons to resist all efforts at deletion) was the
apparent inability of the Word find command (though I'd
designed a particularly elegant random number generator-and-finder
macro around it) to recognize list numbers. Oh well. Put
that into the support /complaint file.
Over supper while trying to explain it all
to my gamely listening spouse, we lapsed into a discussion
about the relative implications of the terms "limitation"
and "shortcoming" as applied to one's software
(and one's own skills in dealing with it). I felt fine about
my experience, figuring out some of the challenges and overcoming
some if not all of them: the ones I couldn't get around,
I blamed on the "shortcomings" of the software.
My own shortcoming is reflected more in the fact that I
never did get around to those novel revisions I'd meant
to do today. Far more interesting it was, to track down
all the Net locations and prices of the utilities I've installed
recently; to juggle with the table settings on my homepage,
which maddeningly resisted my efforts to push them into
logical shapes; to tackle at long last (but with unsatisfying
results) that elusive "transparent .gif" dilemma;
and through it all to try to determine the causes of the
conflicts between SmartBoard and Word, Recorder and WordPad,
RegClean and VB40032.dll, and CleanSweep's Install Monitor
and Windows 95 Explorer--any of which was enough to crash
my system--temporarily--and force me outdoors for a breath
of air or to the sink for a glass of water.
Sigh. Another day gone. A few steps of understanding
taken further into the world of computer logic. Is there
such a thing, in reality, or is it, like Plato's ideal forms,
a figment of our shadowy philosophy about how things should
be, once fully exposed to the light of day? In the meantime,
more clouds, more rain. And a subtle sunset showing through.
© Nowick Gray
|
Cougar WebWorks 
Further
Adventures of a Rogue Journalist
Learn djembe and dundun rhythms the easy way