Death, dying, and killing me
Sunday morning was the day I dreaded for about a month now.
It started Christmas Eve with the first sign.
It was simply a matter of how long could he be kept alive. We're talking heroic efforts here. Late nights, lots of cursing at the powers-that-be, a few beers while tending to needs. The stuff that you really don't want to do, but know you should.
We get attached don't we? I mean all the time we spend, the investment of ourselves to something we know is fleeting and could be gone at a moments notice. It's always inevitable. We know it will happen eventually. All things come to an end. Some quietly, some with wailing.
But this time, it would be a long, drawn-out affair with gnashing of teeth and a family in upheaval for at least at least a month, maybe longer.
Saturday night was the night to pull the plug. I hated to do it, but it was simply time. If there was any further hope of resuscitation, we would know soon. It could be just a coma or some deep level of unconsciousness, but Sunday would tell.
Have you missed out on the finer moments of despair?
You know the ones.
Flatline.
Asystole.
Injuries not compatible with life.
We use other cynical aphorisms that belie our jaded outlook on life.
DRT is one of the things I used to hear in the ER. DEAD RIGHT THERE. A very cold callous way of viewing something that means so much to so many.
CTD (Circling the Drain) was another one. And I had been witnessing the maelstrom for a month already.
The first tell-tale sign happened while I was editing some photos on Christmas eve.
I got the first Blue Screen (or should that be Scream?) Of Death (BSOD).
One of the central figures in our family, the nexus of our living room, the computer DIED.
The OS drive was the least of my concerns. I've re-formatted and loaded Winblows enough to know that the Operating System should be on it's own drive by itself. The other three, however, were of paramount importance.
I had removed and de-activated a lot of software. Cleaned the registry as much as possible. Tweaked the memory and a few other things. But priority was backups and selectively purchasing upgrades such as new and more RAM, faster Processor, and up-to-date motherboard.
I turned the whole thing off Saturday night when I couldn't process the 320-ish shots from the day and decided I would just see what it did the next morning.
Well, CHKDSK found more corrupted files than otherwise, based on the amount of scrolling on the screen.
My afternoon was spent tearing it down, discovering one of my 320GB SATA drives was really a 320GB IDE - off to the big box store to get a twin for the SATA drive. While I was there I got a new CPU cooler and a Thermaltake Hot-swappable SATA drive bay (really cool for backups). Since I have two SATA drives with 10K+ pics and other files on them, I decided I would keep them as backups and store them in the safe, bringing them out one at a time for backups.
And staying up until 0130hrs Monday morning trying to get it to work (unsuccessfully, btw). Actually I got XP loaded onto the IDE drive and updated, but it's not what I wanted. WHAT A PITA!!!!!
That means getting two more SATA drives for the mirrored array I want to build for internal picture access (can you have [i]too[/i] many backups?).
And finding a 1.44 floppy disk (I actually have an old drive) to load the RAID drivers for Winblows.
The 320GB IDE drive will eventually house Winblows 7 64-bit beta as a dual-boot system so I can play with that and see how it works. I refuse to use Vista for anything related to workflow.
So now I have a functioning PC with none of my pics on it. I haven't found the Outlook file containing all my e-mail from the past umpteen years, but I know it is hiding on that old 80GB drive somewhere. I haven't put any software other than Office back on it, and that only because the kids have reports due Friday.
There's a stack of drives with files waiting to be transferred. I've downloaded all the latest drivers and updates for everything to go in there. I'm burning a CD so I have them all in two places.
I should have everything up & running by the end of the night tomorrow. Lord willing. Cause I have a date night with my wonderful wife Thursday, and I'm leaving town Friday afternoon for a Sporting Clays tournament.
I just want to know one thing.
When did I start grieving technology?
It started Christmas Eve with the first sign.
It was simply a matter of how long could he be kept alive. We're talking heroic efforts here. Late nights, lots of cursing at the powers-that-be, a few beers while tending to needs. The stuff that you really don't want to do, but know you should.
We get attached don't we? I mean all the time we spend, the investment of ourselves to something we know is fleeting and could be gone at a moments notice. It's always inevitable. We know it will happen eventually. All things come to an end. Some quietly, some with wailing.
But this time, it would be a long, drawn-out affair with gnashing of teeth and a family in upheaval for at least at least a month, maybe longer.
Saturday night was the night to pull the plug. I hated to do it, but it was simply time. If there was any further hope of resuscitation, we would know soon. It could be just a coma or some deep level of unconsciousness, but Sunday would tell.
Have you missed out on the finer moments of despair?
You know the ones.
Flatline.
Asystole.
Injuries not compatible with life.
We use other cynical aphorisms that belie our jaded outlook on life.
DRT is one of the things I used to hear in the ER. DEAD RIGHT THERE. A very cold callous way of viewing something that means so much to so many.
CTD (Circling the Drain) was another one. And I had been witnessing the maelstrom for a month already.
The first tell-tale sign happened while I was editing some photos on Christmas eve.
I got the first Blue Screen (or should that be Scream?) Of Death (BSOD).
One of the central figures in our family, the nexus of our living room, the computer DIED.
The OS drive was the least of my concerns. I've re-formatted and loaded Winblows enough to know that the Operating System should be on it's own drive by itself. The other three, however, were of paramount importance.
I had removed and de-activated a lot of software. Cleaned the registry as much as possible. Tweaked the memory and a few other things. But priority was backups and selectively purchasing upgrades such as new and more RAM, faster Processor, and up-to-date motherboard.
I turned the whole thing off Saturday night when I couldn't process the 320-ish shots from the day and decided I would just see what it did the next morning.
Well, CHKDSK found more corrupted files than otherwise, based on the amount of scrolling on the screen.
My afternoon was spent tearing it down, discovering one of my 320GB SATA drives was really a 320GB IDE - off to the big box store to get a twin for the SATA drive. While I was there I got a new CPU cooler and a Thermaltake Hot-swappable SATA drive bay (really cool for backups). Since I have two SATA drives with 10K+ pics and other files on them, I decided I would keep them as backups and store them in the safe, bringing them out one at a time for backups.
And staying up until 0130hrs Monday morning trying to get it to work (unsuccessfully, btw). Actually I got XP loaded onto the IDE drive and updated, but it's not what I wanted. WHAT A PITA!!!!!
That means getting two more SATA drives for the mirrored array I want to build for internal picture access (can you have [i]too[/i] many backups?).
And finding a 1.44 floppy disk (I actually have an old drive) to load the RAID drivers for Winblows.
The 320GB IDE drive will eventually house Winblows 7 64-bit beta as a dual-boot system so I can play with that and see how it works. I refuse to use Vista for anything related to workflow.
So now I have a functioning PC with none of my pics on it. I haven't found the Outlook file containing all my e-mail from the past umpteen years, but I know it is hiding on that old 80GB drive somewhere. I haven't put any software other than Office back on it, and that only because the kids have reports due Friday.
There's a stack of drives with files waiting to be transferred. I've downloaded all the latest drivers and updates for everything to go in there. I'm burning a CD so I have them all in two places.
I should have everything up & running by the end of the night tomorrow. Lord willing. Cause I have a date night with my wonderful wife Thursday, and I'm leaving town Friday afternoon for a Sporting Clays tournament.
I just want to know one thing.
When did I start grieving technology?
posted by Raymond at Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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