Yumm ... frying up a desktop
I cop to a lame excuse for not blogging lately, but I've been wrestling with a couple of issues that have taken my time. The first was a business trip to Saskatchewan, and the second was a complete meltdown of my desktop computer.
The Canadian trip was fun and rewarding. I got the chance to work closely with a lot of Canadian court managers grappling with technology issues. Theirs is a "common law" court and not a separate branch of government, which is pretty standard in English courts. Nonetheless, they experience the same problems as we do trying to manage US courts, such as an extreme rise in self-representation, taming the paperwork, making a formal record of proceedings, security, etc.
Just before I left, my desktop computer started acting strange ... it would freeze up, not access the Internet, and finally failed to recognize a thumb drive I was trying to use to load some files onto my laptop. I tried "system restore," which is a shaky venture for Windows users in which you try to use a "wayback machine" to restore your computer to a previous (presumably well running) state. Surprise - it didn't work. When I tried to use dial-up to load files via the Internet, it failed to recognize my modem. I knew this was serious so I held my breath and tried to reload Windows, which wipes out EVERYTHING and forces you to reload all your software programs.
OK, all you Mac-heads and open source freaks out there can quit laughing. If I thought I could get away from working in a Microsoft-head world, I would do it. But all those pesky clients live, think and breathe MS, so I have to grin and bear the idiosyncrasies of Windoze.
Back to my Windows reload ... most computers used to come with an emergency Windows reload disc. Now, they mostly come with a portion of the hard drive partitioned to hold the reload which is accessible by pressing one of the function keys while booting up. So guess what? IT DIDN'T WORK. It still wouldn't recognize any of the drives, modem or network card. Grrrr. So I used my laptop to surf the HP site to order a Windows reload disc by mail.
By this time, I realized I was had. If I bought a new desktop, I would either have to get one of the few remaining with Windows XP as the operating system or (gasp) upgrade to Windows Vista. Drat. That meant that most if not all of my old software would have to be upgraded as well. Double drat. For those of you unfamiliar with the good, the bad and the ugly of Windows Vista, see my previous posting of the top 10 reasons to (and not to) upgrade.
I opened my wallet wide and ordered a new HP desktop with Windows and while I was at it, I ordered MS Office 2007. Now instead of productive work, I will be slaving over a new shiny black box, loading software and cursing under my breath. They arrive on May Day. How fitting.
Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com