A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2

It never occurred to me that the previous post would have a sequel, but real life intruded, and here we are. Given that "A Voice in the Wilderness Says "Hi!" was all about technical difficulties and the delays that go hand-in-hand with them, there was really nothing else I could do.

My previous laptop, my happy, bright shiny Toshiba Satellite bought the farm. The motherboard blew up last Saturday and I was left bereft - sans computer. It stood me in good stead for a little more than 2 years - 7 years less than the previous Toshiba Satellite I owned, which still runs.*

The other reason to make this post a sequel was it gave me a chance to make an oblique reference to Babylon 5 - one of my favorite geek shows ever.** The two-part "A Voice in the Wilderness" episode was all about Our Heroes trying to deal with a secretive, powerful entity hidden on a heavily-armed planet out in the wilderness. Given how similar that was to dealing with Best Buy's Geek Squad, it seemed apropo.

After a few days of frantically trying to figure out what happened to it, a local store - Best Computers in Chula Vista - did a full case-cracking diagnostic (for $55 - no joke!), and gave me the bad news.

A new motherboard for the Toshiba would have cost me about $75 less than the new HP Pavilion I'm using now - which I picked up at Office Depot, and not Best Buy. I thought seriously about repairing it, but when I realized for $75 I would get out from under Windows Vista, well... that was the final reason to bail on the Toshiba.

It's going to take me a little bit more time to get all my ducks in a row. I've still got to yank the hard drive from the Toshiba and transfer all my data to this one. I could get it done at Best Buy, but I'll be dipped if I'm going to pay them $99 for about 90 seconds worth of work. Without the data, this thing is still very much a tabula rasa.

So, yeah. I'm coming out of the wilderness and back to cybilization. And as soon as I can find those landing thrusters, I'll be back in action.

------------------------------------

*Well, not so much runs as walks...with a walker and arthritis.
**I miss Babylon 5. In particular I miss the wisdom of G'Kar*** and the words of Londo Mollari.****
***"We all believe in something... greater than ourselves, even if it's just the blind forces of chance."
****"What do you want, you moon-faced assassin of joy?" and "Now, landing thrusters. Landing thrusters, hmm... Now if I were a landing thruster, which one of these would I be?" The last is from "A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2." It's all about the circles.

The Vista Crash

I own a laptop with Microsoft Vista. It's never given me any real problem. I've heard people fuss and moan about it, but to be honest, most of the complaints came from people who have added Vista to an existing computer and found certain aspects simply didn't gel.

No, I've never had issues with it. I've also never had the slightest real interest in changing to a Mac, either. I used one while working for Planet Weekly newspaper and basically found everything about it annoying. And, no, I don't use Linux or anything else like that. For all that I am, I am also still basically a neo-Luddite; that much interest in technology makes me want to blow things up.

To use that appalling ad campaign: "I am PC." By choice, I have always been.

And do you know how Microsoft repaid me?

By taking over my laptop and tearing apart my work. Friday evening, while I was making dinner, I let my Toshiba idle. The screen had gone black (as it should), and I had a few windows open. As I sat down to shut it down for a while, the screen flashed on, and that annoying Microsoft message told me that it was restarting because of my updates. Then it began to shut itself down and restart.

Problem 1: I had restarted the thing a few hours early entirely to keep it from doing that. There's absolutely nothing I hate more than Microsoft telling me it's time for me to do when it wants to do because of the updates. There had been no updates in the few hours since I'd rebooted the computer, so there was no reason for this to be scheduled.

Problem 2: Open windows. I was working on three things at the time. The first was the rewrite of Heroes... Chapter 8 - "The Shining Way." Another was the first part of Conduit. The third was some notes and outlines for yet another project. I'd saved everything except the notes when I rebooted, but everything had had work done on it when this happened. As anyone familiar with Microsoft knows, when your computer decides to shut down, it doesn't save - it autosaves. Big difference.

I was ticked, but there was nothing to do be done. The screen darkened as it tried to reboot. I let it run for a bit. Suddenly, a new screen came up, informing me that it had shut down improperly and hadn't been able to restart. I hit the key it told me to. It again restarted. It took forever to bring up the desktop. When it did, naturally the first thing I went to do was recover my documents.

The Big Problem: None of the documents that came up were as I left them. Not only had Autosave failed to recover about 30 pages of notes that simply vanished *poof* into thin air (though it did leave me with some - just not all), it also "managed" to recover only older versions of Conduit and Heroes...

Yes, I'm saying that when I dug into the files, those two open, saved files had been replaced by the files that were existant as of Tuesday. I'd done all the Conduit work this week - a few dozen pages, finally getting some traction. It was all gone - every word. Heroes... was backsaved that the 20-odd pages of rewrites and edits that I'd sweated out were now 5 pages.

How many software problems is that? It shouldn't have rebooted itself in the first place. It shouldn't have had problems shutting down. It shouldn't have had problems starting up. It shouldn't have failed to autosave. It shouldn't have failed to recover those saves. Most importantly, it should not have reverted to older version of the open files when reopening. That saved data should be the one sacrosanct thing on one's computer.

All that time I was away, furiously, frantically writing, rewriting, editing? That work? Gone. I spent hours trying to find, search, and recover the lost data, but it's simply...gone.

I blame Microsoft; I don't blame Toshiba. I think the Satellite is a bad-ass laptop, and I'm happy with it. It's just the pissant engine running it that's got me angry now. Not that that will change a thing. Microsoft is notorious for not giving a damn what people think of them, or caring what they've done to others.

So until Bill Gates returns my four days and seventy-odd pages of very hard work, Microsoft can kiss my ass. Am I PC? Yeah, but not by choice anymore.