Catching up

It's not that there hasn't been anything to write about since the first of the month; quite the opposite in fact. For those who don't want to read through the whole story, I'll try to summarize: new computer (AMD K6-2 500MHz > Athlon 1.7GHz), new OS (Win98 > WinXP), install issues, file transfer/recovery issues, dead old computer, and day trip down to my old home town for my father's birthday.

( The whole story )

Oh, and it's been dreadfully hot, and the county fair starts tomorrow (the fairgrounds are two blocks from my door).

What's that saying about going home again?

For my father's 63rd birthday this past Saturday, my brother Travis had the idea of taking a road trip back down to the town where we all grew up -- Oakland, about 60 miles south of Eugene, Oregon. Specifically, taking our father out to dinner at the town's one claim to fame, a restaurant and soda fountain called Tolly's. I'd only been in there once or twice, and not more recently than twenty years ago.

"Historic Oakland" pretty much defines the place now. It was always kind of small and sleepy, the archetypical small Central Oregon farm town (population under one thousand), but now most of the buildings -- including several that were working businesses when we moved to Roseburg around 1980 -- are closed up and full of museum knicknacks. Every window has a little placard about what it used to be. "Antiques" signs are all over the place. The bank's closed, as has the post office, and the library has moved up the street to the new town hall. About the only thing still exactly as I remembered is the school buildings up on top of the hill: Oakland Elementary and Lincoln Jr. High (and the high school, which I didn't attend). And, of course, there's Tolly's. The meal was excellent, by the way.

Perhaps it's that we went there on a weekend, but it felt very eerie and deserted walking along the empty streets, seeing the town I knew as a boy reduced to one big museum exhibit - hardly even a functioning town any more.

We also stopped by our old property, about a mile outside of town on seven acres (just the right size for a young couple up from California, looking to raise their three boys in the country). The new owners have been busy; it was impossible to recognize even the outline of the old house under the current dwelling, and the yard has completely changed. If I was able to wander the back country, I might find some familiar hill or meadow... but that's not going to happen. To paraphrase the elder Rose, of TITANIC: "That place exists now only in my memories."

Me and Computers

It's been a love affair since my school down in Roseburg got a pair of Apple ][s in the library, back in the early 80s. I still have the first floppy I ever bought, as well as a disk image of it and other old Apple disks that I play with on an emulator now and then. After a brief flirtation with BASIC programming and then learning Pascal in high school, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't as interested in the nuts and bolts of computers as the fun I could have with them.

So I'm basically a user, not an admin, for all the little bits of knowledge I've picked up along the way - no formal training, no certifications. I'm a fast typist, can tweak a Windows install or insert a new hard drive or PC card, which apparently puts me above a great number of other end users (the kind that are the butt of innumerable tech-support jokes). But when something seriously breaks, and resists my attempts to fix it on my own, I'm lost. Worse -- I'm frustrated, anxious and betrayed.

Not only are there issues of ego involved (I thought you were smart, so why can't you fix this?), I've invested so much of my focus and time into these machines that when they don't work for me, it's a major crisis. It's like having your hand-tuned sports car break down, or a relationship go on the rocks. Suddenly I can't check email, or play games, or surf the web, or listen to music, or talk to my friends, or... With such a big chunk taken out of my day-to-day life, it's hard to think straight about it. It can send me into a deep funk, or cause me to lash out at people. Just like love, eh?

To wrap up the metaphor: I've learned to read my lover's moods, but I can't say that I know exactly what makes her tick. I don't have the necessary detachment. But hey... the rest of the time, it's a lot of fun.