Sympathy for Aline, plus my own Sad Story

by Rick Blechta

First of all, I’d like to apologize for once again failing to post. “But I have a really good excuse for why it happened,” he said, feeling like a schoolboy again. You see, I was in New York for a family memorial and wound up spending most of the trip trapped in my mother-in-law’s basement because it had a pretty bad mold problem. We were smart enough to call in the experts — black mold being nothing to fool around with if you’re an amateur — but what was to be kept and what was to be chucked needed to be dealt with.

By the time we hit the road to return to Toronto, my wife and I were both pretty wasted. I didn’t even associate the fact that Tuesday is “Type M Day” until Wednesday morning. Not that I could have done anything much about it. Driving a car on an Interstate and writing a clever bit of blog posting (Hey, I can hope, can’t I?) tend to be mutually exclusive endeavours.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

You see, I am in the same boat that Aline is. My computer — an old one — appears to be completely moribund. It’s been in the shop since last Friday and they still don’t know what the problem is.

I’ve at least learned to be prepared for these inevitable events, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Maybe, I should say “live through” since it feels as if my life is on hold.

The preparation part comes from the fact that all my work files, projects, and “important stuff” are loaded on separate hard drives. I can remove them, which I did, and carry on with the assistance of an insertable hard drive base — but it is a huge pain.

Computers are very wonderful devices. For a writer or a musician they are a godsend, but as Aline so clearly pointed out, they come with a huge caveat. Eventually they will do something, well, horrible, and you’ll hear those dreaded words: “I’m sorry. This can’t be fixed.” Be prepared to hear this sometime if you use a computer because, sooner or later, it will happen.

In Aline’s case, she’s got a corrupt file, one chapter of a book. It also sounds like she’s got a robust back-up system. In her case, though, she just threw “craps” and when a good file goes bad, there’s little that can be done. But it still is only one chapter. I’ve known writers who have lost entire manuscripts, and that’s REALLY sad.

In my case, my old computer might have just ridden off into the sunset. The only really important thing that could be lost is all my current emails and my email archives. There is a way to retrieve this information, but it will probably be expensive. I may have to just swallow that loss. Time will tell.

Barbara enjoys writing the first drafts of her books and stories in long hand. I sometimes do this, but maybe it’s time I did it more often. First drafts are the hardest things in writing too recreate. Edits are a snap in comparison.

I’ve said it here before: Be prepared for your computer to bite you someday. The moment you begin using one, you’ve opened yourself up to that inevitability. If your work-life is on that computer, you must remain vigilant at all times or risk losing what you’ve spent so much time on. Aline got bitten, and so have I. It is always a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ll leave you with my favourite saying vis-a-vis these wonderful/infernal machines: Computers are great — as long as they’re working.

You can quote me.

What Would You Do If It All Went Away?

I (Donis) have been preoccupied with tech issues today, so I'm writing this entry later than usual. One of our laptops is about to give up the ghost, so we took it in to the Apple repair place, thinking the tech was going to tell us that it was too far gone and we should put it out of its misery and buy a new one. But to my surprise, he thought it could still be updated and last for a couple more years. We've never updated that computer because I'm always in the middle of some piece of writing and am terrified that I haven't backed it up in enough places to be able to get it back if I lose it in the update. I'm told this is paranoid. I don't believe it.

Sometimes I long for the days of the electric typewriter. Or maybe the quill pen.

Chris, my brother/web master and computer expert, lost several sites in a crash a few years ago and nearly had a stroke. I think of that often and resolve to print off every entry on this site and all other sites I've ever written for, since I’d hate to lose all these pearls of wisdom that I’ve posted over the past dozen years. After his disaster, Chris told me he immediately did a database back up, burned it to a CD (This was a while back. There was no cloud.), locked it in a lead-lined steel box and buried it in the back yard to be defended by his vicious guard dog.

Chris Casey

This just goes to show that technology ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m reminded of the old Twilight Zone episode in which every speck of human knowledge was transferred to a microdot, and then somebody lost the microdot. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if electricity went away.  What would you lose forever, and what would you no longer be able to do that you count on to live?  I’ll tell you one thing, I wouldn’t be able to live here in this giant metropolis in the middle of the Sonoran Desert without air conditioning.  I’m not nearly as tough as the native people and settlers who lived here before and endured the heat without even thinking about it, really.  Of course, I grew up without air conditioning in Oklahoma, which is no slouch when it comes to summer heat. I’ve grown considerably wimpier since I was young.

Keeping Up With the Times

I’ve started a new novel and am slogging along in the jungles of the first draft. When I’m trying to get a first draft to look like something and having a tough time of it (which is always), I often wonder why I put myself through it. But then if I didn’t have a first draft I wouldn’t have anything to revise. I much prefer doing revisions to writing the first draft of a novel. In my metaphorical little world, writing the first draft is a coarse, rough, sweaty process. You slap that gesso on the wall by the bucket load and slather on the background paint. It’s messy and hard and, for me, a daily act of will to accomplish. But rewriting takes skill. It requires a true eye, real delicacy and finesse to shape that big old expanse of plaster into a work of art.

With rewrites, you get to see the story change shape and, if you’re lucky and skilled enough, grow into something beautiful. Of course, there are those horrible moments when you realize that you’re going to have to lose a scene that you really liked, or that word of which you are so enamored because it no longer fits the picture. I think perhaps that’s when you know you’re a real writer, when you can cut good stuff for the greater good of the story.

I must comment about Barbara's post, below, about how a writer faces the end of her book. I totally relate to her fear of not being able to pull it off. It's really horrible to know exactly how you want it to come off and not be sure you have the chops to do it. I never quite achieve the brilliant, knock-your-socks-off triumph that I had envisioned, but I'm usually pleased enough in the end. I often don't know exactly how it's going to end, myself, until it does. Once I do finish a book, I love to go back over it and fiddle with it, changing a word here, a sentence there, like polishing a new-made piece of furniture. Pulling off a great ending requires not only skill, but insight and not a little luck!

And one last word about computers (see Rick’s cautionary entry, April 17, below). I’m about twenty years behind the times when it comes to technology. I wonder if the reason isn't because I have no kids to shame me into keeping up with the times. For those of us who attained majority before the advent of the computer age, it just ain’t fair. We aren’t stupid. But we grew up in a world that required a whole other set of skills.

I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon who goes on about how she used to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road and eat mud for supper when she was a child, but that’s not going to stop me. I write a historical series, but I don’t think the past was better than the present.  Far from it.  I’m not nostalgic for the past. I don’t rue the fact that the world is changing. That’s the way it is. But it does seem that I hardly recognize the planet I grew up on any more. I don’t value the things that most of society seems to value.

I expect this happens to everyone, and has since the beginning of time. I wonder sometimes about those souls who manage to live to be 100 or 110. How must they feel about the fact that everyone else who understood their world has entered the choir eternal? How must they feel when the very world they knew how to live in is gone, when they find themselves on what amounts to a different planet, and they are the only ones of their species left in existence?

Hmm, there’s a plot in there somewhere. And now I beg to be excused so that I can go back up all my work.

The thing about computers

by Rick Blechta

I read Aline’s post yesterday, and contrary to what she said about my anticipated response, I  felt only sympathy.

Computers remain a mystery to those of us who grew up in an age where these mystical machines filled whole rooms and the biggest job of a programmer was to produce punch cards, those mysterious things that told computers what they were supposed to do.

We now have mobile phones that can do everything those room-size computers did back in the Dark Ages. Think about that for a moment. Technology has advanced to the point that you can slip a formerly room-size machine into your pants pocket, and contrary to making out those very abstract punch cards, my 4-year-old grandson can operate our modern devices. More about this later.*

The thing we oldsters can’t seem to get through our antiquated skulls is that computers have been and always will be Very Complicated Machines. I’ve actually seen the computer code needed to operate (what we call) a simple word processing program. Suffice it to say, it is voluminous, and to the non-programmer, completely impenetrable. Seriously, do not even contemplate trying to understand how your computer program does what it does.

Most of the time our amazing machines cooperate and run splendidly, but like any complicated piece of machinery, things do break down over time.

During the course of my work life I’ve had to learn a number of complicated programs, things that can do really amazing things. There are music scoring programs (3 of those so far), music recording programs (2), graphic design programs (3), photography (1 — thank the Lord!), web design (2), word processing (4). Literally, the instruction manuals for these take up over a metre of shelf space in my office.

Being a musician, one thing that’s been pounded into my head is that you must understand your instrument. In the computer sense, that’s the software you’re using (plus how to do various things on the computer itself). Did I spend a lot of time learning all these programs? You bet! Far too many hours gone forever but it has been of benefit.

Most people don’t  bother to reallylearn more than the bare minimum needed to operate their software. Some don’t even bother doing that. They just learn by the seat of their pants.

Blechta’s Computer Rule #1: Spend time learning your software. Like, actually read the manual first. Don’t use it as a tool to bail yourself out. It pays off in the long run. Oh, and those tutorials actually can help!

The next thing to understand is that because computers are so complicated, there are many more opportunities for them to break down. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. With that in mind, you need to take steps to protect yourself and all your hard work. If it’s a good idea to run maintenance programs on a regular basis — do it! Don’t put it off, don’t ignore it. Your computer will eventually bite you in the patootie. Count on it! (And usually at exactly the wrong time.)

Your hard drive is the heart of your machine. Think of it as your memory. What happens if you lose your memory? You’re in real trouble. Plan on your hard drive breaking down. It. Will. Happen. How do you get out of this conundrum? Back up your files regularly. You cannot be too careful about this. Offsite back-up is the best. If you, say, back-up to a hard drive you bought that sits right next to your computer, what will you do if your house burns down, or somebody robs your house while you’re out? Bet you all the computer gear will disappear. If you have offsite back-up, all you need is to download files to your new computer or hard drive, and away you go. If you’re paranoid like me, you have both a spare hard drive and offsite back-up.

Blechta’s Computer Rule #2: Always plan for the worst when it comes to computers. They will break down and you must have offsite storage or you will lose your work — or risk having to pay thousands of dollars to get it back.

Because computers are complicated, unless you’re a heavy-duty, experienced technician, you’re probably going to be stumped on how to fix it. That’s why it’s so important to cultivate a working relationship with a good and reliable computer technician. Believe me, they can be life savers. At the very least, ask around and see if you have friends or relations who Know About Computers. They can often get you out of a tight spot, and direct you to further resources if they cannot help with your problem. And don’t discount those far younger than you. *Twelve-year-old computer genius’s do exist — and one might live just down the street from you.

Blechta’s Computer Rule #3: Know where to get help before you need it.

So go forth and work with your computers in happiness and contentment — and may your hard drives never fail!

Can't Live With It, Can't Live Without It

I am in the terrible position of having to get a new computer. My PC is ten years old, having far outlasted all the fancy laptops and i-Pads my technology-addicted family have bought in between.

It’s been kept going by Brian, who comes in when something goes wrong, shakes his head and says that what I need is a new hard-drive, but then fixes it so that it works all right for a while and I put off having to face the dread of losing really important stuff in the transfer – like that email in the Family folder that my daughter sent me about a visit they made seven years ago and all the similar emails lingering in all the other folders too.

My more technically-minded husband has been helping to nurse it along but it has been a severe strain. I realised the time had come for drastic action when I found him standing looking blankly at a shelf in the supermarket. ‘I think I’ve caught a virus from your computer,’ he said. ‘My brain is Not Responding.’

So even I have realised that The Time Has Come and I have to get rid of it before it has whatever PCs have when they take a fatal seizure and die and all my files die with it.

Under the direction of my long-suffering and more technically-minded husband I have been saving all my files and email folders to a USP stick while he has been putting everything into a Drop Box so we’ve done a sort of belt-and-braces job. The new hard drive is sitting on the floor, waiting for Brian to come and install Word 8.1 - and why, pray, do computers not come with the programmes installed? I don’t expect to have to pay extra and spend hours on making my new washing-machine ready to wash clothes. But I digress.

I have a bad habit of anthropomorphising the machines that serve me and feeling guilty when their natural life is at an end: my loyal Kenwood mixer - forty years of glorious service, now old and tired and consigned to landfill; Henry, our vacuum cleaner, with the cheerful face on his cylinder, superseded by a new and - shh! more effective model.

I feel no such affection and guilt for my PC. We have squabbled constantly over the years, when it performed unprompted some unhelpful and spiteful act that caused no end of trouble and angst. Loyalty had no part in our long relationship.

But having grown used over the years to its little quirks, I’ll now have to adapt to new systems and layouts. I have the dreadful feeling that it will all have become much cleverer and more sophisticated. The trouble is, I haven’t. Oh dear.